Except for using a staff. Using a staff of fireball or staff of chain lightning makes you beastly for a while.

Destruction magic is useless, USELESS! You run out of mana and get slaughtered with ease. Sure you can exploit mana reduction enchantments but I can put fortify 1h/2h enchantments on my warrior and will easily out DPS any mage.

That said, it is totally awesome when you can go into a battle completely naked and win. Pure warrior can’t really do that, pure mage can.

Also: Matters on Racials.

Orc Warriors due to Berserker Rage. ( My favorite of all Warriors)

ATM I roll Dark Elf as Mage. They get a Defensive Aura that Burns people, Burning people = They take more damage over all + Dot.
I don't even know if Altmer still take 50% magic damage...

Breton Mages = King of the Game. You want Easy mode? Roll a Breton. Orcs I think should be the cookie cutter but people don't like an ugly character. lol

Using a staff isn't the destruction skill. :rolleyes:

With 550 magicka, I think it takes me 4 dual cast expert spells to run completely out of magicka when not using cost reducing enchants. That's not even enough to kill a single tougher mob. To play destruction without enchanting is to not play at all.

My warrior used a staff of fireballs just fine, is there actually some sort of a mage stat requirement for it that I am not aware of?

Sorry if you missed it, but I never meant for enchantments to be COMPLETELY against the rules; you just cant make them yourself. Finding them/buying them would be perfectly fine, and would allow for significant reduction in magicka costs.

Additionally, The large pool of magicka serves the same purpose as stamina does for a warrior; you use your most powerful attacks first, and then switch to less damaging more effecient options. For example, a master dual wielding flames spells could do about 26 damage per second, roughly, which is the same as the warrior's base damage. Using apprentice spells you could double that, bring you up to the same normal damage as the warrior, except with a feasible powering rate.

Since this discussion derived from an experience you described where you had upgraded ebony set, I'm going to assume that is still the case. If so, What. The. Hell.

First, you mention getting destroyed by a bandit chief with upgraded ebony set. The same bandit chief which you destroy with flames.

Now you mention master difficulty? I'm calling BS on this story. If you really tried master difficulty, you know that even the most generic bandits at level 5 takes about good 6+ seconds of flame casting to take down. That's at level 5. Only mobs that flames work ok throughout the entire game is on stuff that can't scale past very low level, like the default wolf (not ice wolf, they will pwn you if you try pure flame).

And with upgraded gear, where are you getting this fear of "all his buddies" when you can just demolish any group you meet? Again, this is with upgraded ebony against mobs that you are killing with flames. Your story and theorycrafting has this giant hole in it.

If you can kill it with flames, you can pretty much be immune to it with ebony armor and one shot it with ebony weapons without stealth.

It comes down to: Warriors need Health POTS and Stamina POTS, Mages only need Magicka Pots.

Forgetting to mention, No Stamina Means your still face to face, meaning you're taking damage. You can't swing at all when your dead. You're DPS drops as a Mage, but your survival rate still viable, versus a warrior who....might be fighting against something magic? something poisoned? something enchanted?

Mages, I run out of Magicka, I can run, wait till it comes back up/Climb a higher ground, LOS the guy...Warriors...you're out of stamina and low on health...you're going to cut it too close too many times. Mages can TAKE zero damage in a fight versus a warrior who has to take damage to deal damage.

And yes, Bows are game changers. I think the person wants to know about upfront fights seeing we had a Destruction versus Bows thread already. Mages can be upfront or ranged, Sword and Shield Warriors or Two-HAnded warriors or Dual Wielding Warriors are always Melee range.

Yeah, it's pretty obvious that he's just arguing for the sake of arguing. Destruction on it's own, without custom enchanted items, is worthless.

Destruction perks increase the damage dealt, and having higher destruction skill increases the number of uses before it has to be recharged. Which does matter, until you get Azura's Star... just another case of gear benefiting warriors much more near the end of the game.

Lol.

1.) If you get enchanted items for your mage as long as they're not custom made, then I get them as well on my warrior. I'll just use a weapon with Absorb Stamina for unlimited power attacking potential.

2.)Uh oh, I'm close to the enemy? I guess it's a good thing I was able to spend all those points on health instead of magicka, huh?





Wow, and those things don't affect mages, huh? I'd say that if anything, they're more susceptible, because they have to dump all those points into magicka to not run out halfway through killing a single Horker.




Or, you could not charge in blindly as a warrior and choose your fighting ground. You know, strategy, like you're using on your mage.

I dont really care about your bickering, guys. They can both use all sorts of things to be better than one another. All I care about is the raw statistics in contrast to how they feel. I dont think anyone here has actually played both styles side by side, which is unfortunate, but i guess that is the nature of a public forum.

I will conclude with this: From what I can see of the stats, Mages and Warriors do roughly equal damage, when lacking smithing and enchanting.

Make of this information what you will.

Incorrect

1. You can still attack without stamina, and it does pretty high damage with the right weapons and perks.

2. It only takes a sliver of stamina to do another power attack, thats a few seconds.



Until magicka runs out, which it does very fast w/out enchanting. At that state melee begins to tipple the dps.

Either some people on this topic never actually played as a warrior or just being trolls. You can get really good heavy armor really early in the game and if you are willing to spend gold you can get a pretty decent enchanted blade. Some people brought up magic staffs, but warriors can use them just as effectively while they still have insane fortitude and up close DPS for when something gets close. I have never chugged stamina potions by the way, even on master difficulty I rarely see the need.

Actually My first character was an Orc Jack of all Trades. I reached level 39? Before deleting him and making more solid characters.

Fully Upgraded Ebony Gear, Dwarven Shield, Ebony War Axe, versus a bandit group out in the broken down Pride of Velos or something Ship where Brand-shei in Riften sends you.
My Orc rolled mostly Archery and Sneak seeing Sneak had the ability to upgrade One-handers as well. I never go past Armor on Sneak-Plate Trap Perk I don't get., My stats were all equal due to un-enchanted gear. I literally made all my stats 220 on each one. So I had 220 Magicka to cast Flames and Sparks together, 220 HP, and 220 Stamina.

I had one Perk in Destruction and One Perk in conjuration so I could cast Novice Spells (Trying out Spells) to cut in half, so Flames/Sparks didn't cost [censored].

NOW....AGAIN...How do you not take into effect? Well for starters, NOBODY HAS MAGICKA RESISTANCES Unless Racial, you are at 0% Magicka Resistance unless you gear for it. Versus, The guy having Heavy Armor + What ever his level was probably had higher health/Damage reduction on physical attacks (Arrows-Melee Weapons) and what ever stats he has for being on Master. (I play on Xbox, so no console commands to cheat. ).

So...Get this! If The guy is decked out in Armor, Has high levels, His Gear is moot, his stats matter. Bandit Chiefs have more health and are harder to kill in general, its how they are supposed to be. So his Armor negates my attacks, his stats negate more damage. HIS DAMAGE is going to be high, his Two-Handed Weapon abilitiies will probably be through the roof. So HIS Weapon will have negate armor, two-handed abilities have negate armor.

Mmmmmmm....yep...I'm Theorycrafted....yep....

Versus Fire Damage is Magic Based, he has no Resistances due to being a Nord or an Orc (I forgot, been awhile since I played that character/file @_@), I literally ate through his [censored], Kited him around, because if I took him HEAD ON, He'd LITERALLY TWO-SHOT me...Even when I sneak attack on him, because he was a high level he'd literally find me immediately. (He is standing near the right side of the inside of the ship's room. I have to be at the door way so to shoot him means I'm out in the open).

The two ways I destroyed him cause I had to reload my save so many damn times was...use arrows, and Drop backwards off the broken middle piece of the ship. And continue to do this/had to wait for him to go back to his Spot. If I moved, it let him see me for some reason @_@ (And I was a stealth base and one handed based). My Arrows were critting each time, and he STILL took barely any damage from behind on an Ebony Bow with I think Orcish or Dwarven Arrorws (Orcish being 12, Dwarven being 14 at the time).

This is BEFORE Patch 1.3 so, if patch fixed some things like that (Which I highly doubt it did), I don't know.

But that IS My experience, and since then, Magic has dominated my gameplay. I use Conjuration with Flame Atronach (basic Daedra summon) and Flames on most things. Fireballs/Lightning Bolts/Ice spikes on Bosses.

Krosis I think his name is? Draogn Priest near one of the shout stones, Sheersomething Peak, Try fighting him as a warrior watch his ass destroy you on Master. I literally had to Mage-Range Tank his ass.

I have both a high level mage and a high level warrior. Destruction is positively useless due to its incredibly low damage and lack of scaling. Not being able to use enchanting to reduce the spell cost to 0 only makes this worse.



That's simply not true. Once again, weapon damage and weapon quality scales with skill and level, and weapon users have many perks to increase damage.

The warrior can just enchant -100% destruction gear, stay at base 100 magicka, and cast the destruction mage's spells, dealing the same damage, untill enemies reach melee range.

Sword with paralysis, anyone?

Or even bow:
50% chance to stagger, plus you can add paralysis on the bow for 5 bloody seconds, and then throw in a 25 damage fire enchantment for good measure.


On your armor you can have 4 slots of +40% weapon damage AND -25% destruction cost and cast free spells.
Or even summon free daedra -- which would severely interfere with the destruction mage's mana pool.

I have never seen any non-immune enemy survive paralysis + stagger from my arrows.

...

Warrior wins, hands down.

This is with my experience from one destruction-mage abandoned at level 17 because I didn't want to (ab)use the 0% casting cost and didn't want to always wait for mana to regenerate -- and two warriors I abandoned because they overpowered the game entirely -- one through smithing and the other through conjuration.

Mind you, the conjuration-archer warrior broke the game twice, first with summons -- and then with a 4 second paralysis glass bow once I decided to simply ignore conjuration (including the bound bow) and play without it for a challenge, without smithing -- but with enchanting.

The 4x40% (160%) bonus damage enchantments are very powerful.

Why is combat regeneration so low anyway??
Did they intend for you to kite for a minute in every fight against a boss-like creature that a warrior can tank in 5 seconds?

Here is a nice information on weapon damages done by Cheshyr

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1310006-complete-character-design-freedom-damage-resist-caps-and-ridiculous-damage-thread-6/page__view__findpost__p__19713495

Now since Daedric is pretty rare without crafting, going down to ebony you would be doing about 2 damages less.



Both scale very little unless you throw in blacksmithing in there. But then again this is bit silly for a theorycrafting :/



It is when you bring in FLAMES. If you have "fully upgraded" ebony waraxe like you said, you will do more damage using that weapon than flames even if your target reached armor cap. Even with armor cap, you never negate an attack completely.

And guess what, bandit chiefs never reach armor caps anyway.

Killing level 39 bandit chief with flames on master just says it all.

1. Thats if you don't get two shotted by a Bandit Chief because we're talking about Melee moves. you have to be near him which means strike distance versus Ranged regardless of where your at (Mage is Ranged)
2. Yep, and your health means jack squat when the game [censored]s up and takes you from full to 0 thanks to executions.
----
3. Fighting Enchanted Items? Poisoned Items? Magic Items? Doesn't effect a mage when you DONT...GET...HIT...
----
4. I'm not saying you do, but if you want to be affect MELEE DPS, which is what we are talking about..you know...a Warrior? You will get destroyed thanks to broken game mechanics.

I've rolled an Imperial Dual Wield/Sword and Board (All one Handed weapons, no Two handers), My Orc was Two Handers, One Handers, Sword and Shield, Archery, and Sneaked mostly.

So yes, Sneaking + Warrior doesn't exactly equal a WARRIOR, WHICH IS WHAT WE ARE Talking about. So Strategy? you has none, you go in, and fight. <---You can't run or use power attacks with out stamina. Which means you are doing little to NO damage, WHILE being hit/hurt. As a Warrior versus Multiple Opponents (Ranged, Melee, hell sometimes ALL, Mages/Warriors/Archers) you're going to be hit, hard, with everything under the sun. Versus a Mage who jukes and jives.

I'd rather being doing no DPS and LIVING, versus doing little dps to DEAD due to Executions bugs.

Personally, I agree, Dual Wielding from what I understand IS the Most Powerful (x2 All of what your doing) but I'm not talking about straight Damage, I'm talking Survival + Damage because I think THAT is more Powerful. One on One Melee Warriors will drop some one a lot quicker with out smithing versus a Mage with no enchants. Perks as well.

My Arguement isn't one on one, why? Cause I barely ever get those thanks to the AI calling on Friends/always being in huge groups. I can juke and Jive and cast spells still, I run out of Magica? Switch to Lower Costing Spells and keep casting when guy gets closer. Warriors, Melee Specifically (Which is the topic At HAND, being, Bows = Stealth-Thief Class weapons BTW so is SNEAK) have to take damage to deal damage due to being upclose and personal. You run out of stamina its because you did power move in melee distance OR to CLOSE the Gap against ranged guys you had to run, due to animations taking so long, I can do a power attack and the mofo can still hit me. I can bang on the guys shield with no stamina and still be hurt, you can ALSO MISS.

Have you brawled a lot of people? do you notice when they juke you on your power swings? And they can TRY to do that in combat. Its frustrating. Versus Ranged Mage move like Bolts or Spikes, but I can aim for middle of the body/Center Mass and as they "Side Step" I'll get their arm or hand etc and it will still do X amount of Damage, versus you, swinging your sword, and the guy moves just right, and you totally miss. That's 0 Damage.

These are HAPPEN STANCES, YES, that is "Theorycrafting" portion of my take on the situation. I take them in to effect because paper and pen doesn't always happen, in fact, you have a higher chance it seems at fighting a regular dragon then it is to get the AI to do the same [censored]/LET you hit them as a Straight up Warrior.. You have to take the AI into effect. If you don't, you're lying to yourself because you'll let your paper and pen do all the talking and it won't happen the same way every time. I get it, paper and Pen Warrior > More Powerful, But Strategies like Juking and Jiving don't always work due to being able to be "clipped" at the Arm, as a Warrior/Melee. YOU versus AI is a lot harder versus you as a Ranged (Mage spells have better range, even the Cone ones).

Master diff I don't know how any one can play a straight up WARRIOR, The AI moves too quickly, and thanks to bugs, Executions show up out of no where.

Are you thinking I killed him instantly? Is that what I'm getting from this? No it took me a good while, I had to run around the Boat maybe once? I didn't have to wait for my magicka though, having 220 magicka (Again I had 220 on each state), Novice Perk in Destruction, Flames in Two Hands...

I don't think you see what I'm telling you:
Two Handed Flames = 16 Damage (Flames does 8 damage per second I'm hitting this guy) + Extra Damage from being on FIre. So....Do that math if you'd like..but its not hard to see how.

220 MAgicka, Novice skill makes it cut in half on magicka Cost, Two Hands casting means I'm only really casting ONE Flames in cost.
16 Damage over...and over...and over + Extra burning, Versus I can't keep swinging on a guy with said ebony war axe due to being two-shotted...so I have to move in, Power Swing, move out, and hope he misses me when I side stride.

How you can't believe it..thats ALL...ON...YOU...but I don't just STAND there and get shot/hit, but thanks to power attack animations, it slows you down to the point you can't side step and do a power hit that counts. And yes, even when I was hitting him, I was barely dropping his health. He was literally ignoring my one handed strikes.I had to reload the game save 3-4 times thinking he was bugged.

I finally got him with 7x Ebony Bow Crit strikes, the game messed up a few moments later...so I had to reload from that point...I tried it again this time with magic seeing he was only wearing Iron/didn't look like he was deckedo ut in enchants...and I took him down. -shrugs- Theory craft it how you want, but I saw how I did it.

not sure why you can't either!

so Far, My imperial only reached 29 and he was Dual Wield. I had to chug a lot of health and stamina pots, and I put none in magicka.
My Argonian was pure stealth, I tried some more magic on him seeing my orc had some good shots in with it...and it did ok, not really stealthy though thanks to not going Illusion. (I only made it to level 15 on that point).

If you all are talking End-Game, past level 50, You might be correct. but I'm talking starting out, which is the toughest part of this game.

Try running into a Whispmother at level 3 with an Imperial who Dual Wields, versus that same fight as a Dunmer who uses Destruction spells...I literally dominate with Spray-Juke and Jive moments.

Drinking Heal Pots + Stamina Pots to be effective versus Magicka pots...does turn my favor to mages.

By the way, Warrior + Enchanting is better than Warrior + Smithing. A level 100, fully-perked set of dragonplate (or daedric), including shield, hits the armor cap with 0 smithing. If you have the Lord Stone, add Ebony to that list. With Fortify armor enchants you could probably hit the cap with Glass armor or with shieldless Ebony. You take a damage loss, but at 100 enchanting the extra effect will be better than the smithing improvement (unless you were looping enchanting/alchemy/smithing).

As for the mage, your ability to use pots and scrolls is limited only by your wallet, so theoretically, the strongest mage would not use Fortify Destruction enchants (health, magic resist or armor). Also, without enchanting or smithing you could drop some perks into speechcrafting to improve your cash flow.

Destruction actually CAN be buffed with Alchemy. Fortify Destruction potions actually increase spell effectiveness instead of decreasing spell cost.

You decimated a Bandit Chief in level 39 with Flames? Please stop posting. Such useless dribble is not even worthy to be seen by anyone in this world. That is simply not possible unless you want to take 10 minutes in killing 1 monster.

Sure warrior has good damage up close, and can take a punch. And sure, the mage has great damage from a distance. But a thief can wreck them both. For one you can't hit what you can't see, and with nocturnal's blessing all I have to do is crouch to become invisible. 15xdmg with daggers, or 30 with dagger and DB gloves. Do two daggers with those bonuses and add poison: instakill. If not there is always paralysis poisons, or doing the Shady Sands shuffle.