I've been reading the forums, and I've been hearing people say destruction magic needs to be fixed, I just wanted to know, what's wrong with it? I don't see any problems

These people are whiny little cry babies sometimes. I say follow your heart's desire and be a Destruction Mage if you want!

At higher levels it doesn't scale. That's the short answer.

there are none, people just dont know what they are doing with certain aspects of the game

You wont see any problems yet until you reach approximately level 40, where enemies will start to out weigh in terms of difficulty, the damage output of destruction spells, as destruction doesn't scale with your enemies level, as someone said before.

As in monsters get harder and your magic doesnt get better?

Seems fine to me but my pure mage is only lvl 5.
I heard it's useless past lvl 35 or so because it doesn't scale like melee/ranged.

exactly

In other words, you need to keep updating your spells arsenal with more higher level destruction spells frequently, other wise you find some areas overly difficult that could be accomplished easily by a two handed specialist

@Zerafas actually, that's part of the problem. There is no more updates after a certain point. Your power doesn't scale with your skill level, and the last updates still aren't strong.



Yeah, that's about the spot where your power diminishes and your spells are overwhelmed by a sea of hitpoint bloat.

Fortunately for PC users you can get this to help with the higher level stuff:

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=611

Exactly.

Yeah. Monsters get harder, but the spells you have do not improve in any aspect as you gain skill. So at some point - level 30 to 35, you get the master spells, which do the most damage, and... that's it. Monsters keep increasing in their hp, but your damage spells are done. Moreover - you cannot improve their damage via equipment, or enchanting (while you can with meelee / archery. In addition to that, the master & expert spells cost a lot, so unless you abuse the enchanting and get 0-cost destruction, you will burn through potions stupendously (because, again, due to low damage you need to use a ton of these spells). Meelee and archery on comparable levels and skill points does far more damage at a much, much lower cost.

Indeed, but when you have all the master spells in the game and the bad guys are still getting stronger what do you do then?

Yeah, that's some great advice, and +1 on the well informed reply on what is "really" going on! :toughninja:



Finish the game as quickly as possible, start over with anything other than someone using Destruction as their main damage source...enjoy the game at your leisure.

This succinctly describes what the issue is. Anyone that tells you different is either sadly miss informed or telling pork pies. It's surprisingly often the latter, not sure why people would have some sort of 'warrior supremacist' agenda in a single player game.

This is what happens. The problem is no spell increases in damage as your skill goes up. And any spell other than flames and firebolt has an area of effect which is really dangerous to companions. The best thing you can do is fortify destruction until spells cost 0 and double cast with the impact perk to stun enemies... You can also conjure atronarchs and use spells of their element which will prevent you harming the atronarch but will increase your damage.

I really don't know why you cannot buy or upgrade flames and firebolt to do more damage.

Yes. Plus with little to no magic regeneration in combat boss battles will kill you.

I'm level 48 on Master difficulty. I kill most enemies with 4 Incinerates. Each Incinerate also stuns the target rendering them unable to fight back.

I don't really understand how destruction is weak. Sure, it's not a 600 damage bow, but do you even really want that?

And this is bad?

Exactly ^ ^

For some people who prefer to explore more than rush all the spells in the game first, then yea maybe.

I was a destruction mage got to around lvl 24 only, but as my mage went up in lvl it felt like he was becoming less powerfull, so i could understand the ppl saying destrustion is bad.

I re rolled my toon, and now i an assasin, and boy im having so much more fun.

I will carry on with my mage toon once the mods atart coming.

One question though ... if you get 100 in destruction, restoration, alteration, speech and lockpicking, you are done as destro mage ... you don't have to level up anything else. Doesn't that mean you stop leveling up at certain level ? Maybe even before lvl 40 ?

That's where chants come in. You can do some crazy gear improvements with chants. As a spellcaster, chanting should be near the top of your list in terms of perk points.

Most of the whines about destruction magic on this forum, that I've read, came from it not compare to the damage you get if you exploit smithing and enchanting, through which it's possible to craft items which are five to six times better than what you'll find and then enchant their damage % to insane heights making it possible to one or two hit everything except bosses and never take any damage. Technically you can also exploit smithing a bit as a mage, making your spells cost nothing or next to it, but since there isn't a % damage enchant for destruction your spells will stop scaling before an axe or bow would.

Of course playing like that is pretty much the equivalent of using a God mode cheat and while some people think that's awesome I found it pretty [censored] boring.

Magic is fine though, a character that only does destruction magic isn't going to do very well. But then again neither would a melee ignoring armor/smithing or a thief ignoring sneak. So if you level up a few different schools of magic and actually use it you can play the game just fine.

It'll never deal the same single target damage as a 2handed mace in the face, but on the other hand you'll be the king of AoE and it involves more than just mindlessly bashing away until you win.

+ it's a singleplayer game, who cares if it does 20dps less if it's more fun?