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I felt it was underwhelming and didn't do good damage. But then I watched vids and tips online to the point where I felt the best style to use destruction.

The trick is to have low health for the player, and a huge amount of magicka.

Now, you may be thinking "what does that have to do with damage output?"

The thing is, by playing with low health, enemies have the potential to do a lot of damage to you easily. If you have a mage with a lot of health, enemies take too long to kill you, so you bump up the difficulty to master/legendary, where it takes too long to kill anyone.

If you play on a lower difficulty with low health, you can dish out more damage to enemies because of the difficulty, while they can do the same to you.

I am currently playing a lv64 dunmer mage, with 960 magicka and 130 health, on expert difficulty. He has 100 in all schools of magic, and I have to say, its fun doing large amounts of damage to enemies.

And its not to the point where you one shot everything either, expert difficulty is good enough that it takes some time to kill enemies, but not too much time.

You don't die a lot either because a mage is supposed to keep his/her range, which is why spells are cast from a distance.

Also, if you have dragonborn dlc, whirlwind cloak is a must, makes any melee enemies easy prey

Hmm, well I hope you're having fun. Having little health is something I personally wouldn't do.

Why?

health is too low it doesnt matter how good you are in avoiding hits sometimes it doesnt go that well in case of multiple enemies in different directions they can kill you easily with 2 or 3 hits especially archers

^

Besides, enchantments/perks will balance out the cost anyway.

Wow! There's still hope in this world yet. Congratulations OP! Btw, it's not really a secret. It's the basic archetype of a mage, low endurance, high intelligence and willpower. I mainly love destruction in this game because it is the only balanced skill in this game. For me, I feel it's overpowered in later levels mainly because of all the magicka points I have. I don't do enchanting so I bump it up to master as the default gear provided is overpowered.

This is how I played my Mage too. No points in Health and Stamina, all points in Magicka. I did no Enchanting with this Mage either.

I played on Adept. It was a fun very character to play. It wasn't always easy to play, especially at lower levels, but that's exactly what made it interesting to me. I had to think ahead and pay attention to what was going on around me.

I plan to make another character very much like it in the near future.

I've been thinking about doing that as well, been too long since I had a typical mage playthrough. I'm thinking a Nord, for the frost resist, and the life-saver called Battlecry. Good thing to have, just in case

Yay! Another convert. Yep, I love my pure mage character. Same thing all magicka.

I use a similar system but I put every third or four point into health instead of leaving it untouched these days. It get the wizard feel I want pretty well.

Did OP colour his text white? I only see a big white space. (using mobile theme)

I'm level 114 with 300 health and 1300 magicka, my health is high enough that I won't be one hit like I was when I had 200 health but if I forget to use Dragonhide then enemy archers will destroy me, especially if I'm caught out in the sunlight since I'm a vampire and my health regen suffers badly.

I don't often run out of mana, unless I'm fighting a Legendary Dragon or Arch Warlocks, Arch Warlocks especially since they just keep healing themselves and using wards and since I'm not a warrior or archer I can't do physical damage to them, but thats where Dremora Lords come in handy. .

Focusing mostly on magicka is the way to go, especially since you don't need to focus on spell reductions enchants that much anyone. For example, one cast of Thunderbolt costs me 50 magicka(back in the early days this would have been half my total magicka gone lol), with 1300 magicka I can cast 26 of them. It's enough to take down most enemies and the ones which it won't take down I've got my Ultimate Potion of Magicka for.

Yea i cant see it either.

Yeah. I had to switch it to the web version.

That was weird. On my phone I couldn't read it. Now on the PC I can.

I understand being able to deal more damage on a lower difficulty but I don't see how having lower health has anything to do with it. That makes zero sense.

For me it's always been about the rate at which spells consume magicka. But for mages I always add enchantments that make it come back faster. Plus if you are smart about the spells you are using anyways you shouldn't have too much trouble. Ten again I never change the difficulty from what it starts on because they don't really optimize the game for anything higher.

Needless to say I've never had trouble with any of the magic skills.

People just think it's weak because it isn't as powerful as a weapon improved to legendary stats. The cruel reality is it's not. Frost magic can prevent enemies from even getting close to you(in vanilla Skyrim to boot), fire magic actually does pretty good damage(ethereal shout + firestorm is more brutal than you'd think), and lightning is not only really cool looking but incredibly good at getting those pesky flying scaly gnats out of the sky. To add to the point, just like other play styles, you won't even be just using one skill to begin with! Just like warriors and blacksmithing, enchanting makes it even easier/deadlier and usually you'll have other skills if you're a mage, such as conjuration or illusion. Add high alchemy stats with some good fortify destruction potions and you'll be putting out quite a lot more hurt than archery.

Because on a lower difficulty you also receive less damage. If you stay on lower health, a lower difficulty is still dangerous enough to have fun in combat.

To look at the other (flawed) logic:

Some people think they are going to use cost-reduction gear anyway, therefore they don't need magicka. They put all their points in health, add armor and defensive enchants on top of it and end up with having 600-800+ hit points plus other defensive stats. Since they are unkillable on the lower difficulties, they increase it to master or legendary so that they are no longer invulnerable, and then realize that they can't onehit their enemies anymore.

Thats why all my mages use destruction as a secondary form if magic, not primary.

Lol, how often does that happen to you?

I use lightning spells to deal with archers since it hits them immediately

Also become etheral is good too

Doing it myself, it isn't level 20 yet but it is an Altmer with pure focus on Magicka, I am training my enchanting however but also playing on Adept. I always loathed destruction magic in Skyrim until I realised the absence of restriction caused me to bump up the difficulty, which we all know in Elder Scrolls is just stacking up the damage versus damage taken ratio into the enemy favour.

Right now, I like how it is. If I don't approach something correctly, use the wrong spell or don't check my magicka consumption, I am dead. But if I am, the enemies are toasting. There's finally some tension and the OP inspired me to do so. Thank you.

I've been trying this too! I started with a spellsword...but as time passed I put more and more into magic as I needed the points.

I still pack my Dawn Guard Rune Axe as a backup weapon...looks good with my Telvanni robes...but my go to first choice is destruction spells [Ignite from that ring from dragonborn rocks!].

Lowering the difficulty made it more fun as well...still a challenge for me, but not the stress of dying so much.

OP, 960 magicka?? whooahh... did'nt know you could go that high.. that is suprising, but then again I'm still a "newbie" to this...lol..

Without using Legendary on your skills, you get 10 points 80 times by level 81 and you start at 100 points in each. This means you can go 100/100/900 (health/stamina/magicka). The only way to go above 900 magicka is with race bonuses, using potions, using enchantments, or other active magic effects at level 81.

There isn't a hard cap on any stat besides damage resist, magic resist, and spell cost but there is a soft cap to everything else at level 81, but after level 81 using Legendary then you can go as high as you want.

I like magic, but for my main character, I only use magic when it is necessary.

In regards to whether magic is powerful or weak. The two spells chain lightning and thunderbolt combined with 100% destruction magic cost reduction enchantments and all relevant perks is actually a bit overpowered. Dual cast thunderbolt to pick enemies off and dual cast chain lightning when they're grouped. The spamming of 200+ DPS plus a stun at long range instantly makes you untouchable and you can just get health or stamina. Also since literally nothing in Skyrim has shock resist besides Storm Atronarchs, you can use it in any combat situation except stealth based objectives.

I just dislike the master tier spells. Pretty useless in my honest opinion, even if you use etheral prior to casting or any other setup. Dual casting expert and adept spells is just better. I feel the same way about Two Handed weapons.

I also play in Adept difficulty. I prefer having absolutely NO damage multipliers in the game. I don't want to deal less/more or take less/more damage what so ever. I want to play the game as naturally as possible. I don't care for making the game harder or easier.