Yes that is the issue nobody can seem to grasp.

Bethesda tore the spine from magic because everybody was complaining it was overpowered. That is the only reason for that. People chose to make their spells overpowered. The spell creation offered choice.

Spellcrafting in the past had the potential to be overpowered and unbalanced, but what we have now is not proper balance either. They simply swung the imbalance in the opposite direction, solving nothing in the process.

I don't understand why these threads keep popping up. If there is such disagreement then obviously something's a little wonky. I hate how people are acting like mages are just clueless, like 1/4 of all mages don't have a flipping clue how to play and that's why there's an issue.

Destruction is definately underpowered in Skyrim, but its really only noticeable if you play on the harder difficulty settings. One of the main reasons they did this is because they wanted to encourage pure mages to actually use some of the other schools of magic for a change. In previous games, you could basically level destruction to 100 skill and own everything in the game without ever being touched by an enemy. This was too easy, and it completely invalidated the other schools of magic rendering them useless. I think the objective for Skyrim was to make magic more strategic and fun while expanding the number of spells a player needs to use to be successful as a pure mage. In all honestly, I have no problem with this. It is disappointing that my nukes are more like spit wads now, however I have fun using Illusion and Conjuration like I never did in previous games and these skills are very much viable in Skyrim.

Destruction is still useful, but its not the end of all skills like it was in the past. You need to use your full arsenal as a mage now, you need to use Illusion for crowd control, then summon zombies from their corpses and whatever your zombies don't finish you can move in and use destruction to clean up. Sneak is your best friend here too, I can't stress this enough. Quiet Casting + high sneak skill is a necessity for any mage playing on master difficulty, you will not survive without it. Alchemy potions can give you more damage with your spells as well.

No its not. Illusion or Conjuration don't need the other spell schools. Its been tried and tested on Master. And if they do, If they choose destro over bows they are gimping themselves on Master.

Also take into account archery/melee + the 4 other schools can result in a superior character than destro + the 4 other spellschools; as you'll have more magicka to cast them while putting out more dps.



Its just an isolated issue with Destro scaling and dpm (damage per magicka) resulting in a very unfun character and forcing you to to xploit crafting.

Some people just don′t GET IT (like the OP)...

The problem is not that a Warrior deals more DPS than a mage. THE PROBLEM IS THAT DESTRUCTION IS WORTHLESS AT LEVEL 45+.

I play a mage and I don't care if the warrior can deal 1000000 in damage. I don't think Bethesda should nerf warriors or archers. Bethesda should make destruction useful at higher levels.

I am sure that posters that play as warriors would complain if 1H damage didn't scale or couldn't be increased with enchantments.

The word balance gets thrown around, but it is the wrong word. Mages work well for the most part, but they become less fun after 45 because destruction is useless.

That is the main reason these pop up. In this entire thread there are only a few people who actually point out good reasons as to why some magic skills are NOT underpowered. However, there are still more reasons to why they are. There would be an agreement if we didn't have all the people who only have 1 reason which is that they abused it in a previous game...

is destruction lame? yes

is playing mage lame? no

is playing mage who only uses destruction magic lame? yes cause destruction is lame.

ppl saying pure mage is broken cause destruction svcks should check his/her warrior character's skill levels. surely no one plays a warrior character with just one or two handed skill. lets leave enchanting/smithing aside. a warrior who only utilizes one skill is gonna die so many times early game when you dont have decent armor and even with daedric armor if you dont invest in heavy armor perks its going to be hard. so ppl should stop complaining mage is broken because destruction doesnt scale. im not saying pure mage should use conjuration as a must..but if you are indeed a pure mage you will have to utilize more than destruction. and as pure mage i think at least three~four skills from mage skills-thats gonna give you illusion or conjuration, both excellent for a mage to handle foes.

[quote name='Cathalo' timestamp='1322294249' post='19470763']
One of the main reasons they did this is because they wanted to encourage pure mages to actually use some of the other schools of magic for a change.

No, the main reason they did it is to make the people crying for balance happy. Now they have gutted the system. They have taken away customization and overall power from certain schools and its not just destruction alteration took a heavy blow too.

they took something people chose to unbalance and watered it down to a basic foundation upon which a magic system could be built.

What I was trying to say is that most of the other schools of magic were rarely needed in previous Elder Scrolls games, especially if you focused entirely on destruction. I think Bethesda wanted to funnel more people into using Illusion and Conjuration in this game, not saying I agree with them but I do see why they would do it. Almost nobody I know who played any of the previous games ever used Illusion or Conjuration except when they got bored. Everyone used Destruction and when combined with spellmaking, it made the game ridculously easy.

Pure mages actually have to use strategy now, which isn;t such a bad thing imo.

There is an easy explanation for people who think destruction magic is fine being under-powered;

As has been said already, the destruction school of magic is a skill for dealing damage to ones enemies. Currently that skill for dealing damage is not working correctly as it doesn't level the same way the other damage dealing skills do. It doesn't have to be as good as the others, but it does need to be comparable to be viable.

Damage for One-handed, Two-handed & Bow scales with skill and character level. Leveling with the skill itself is an increase in base damage. Scaling with character level comes from the different material types (the higher your level the better grade of material you get).

Magic gets the different material types through the skill level, not the character level. Count novice, expert etc as you material types. So, this means that magic needs to scale in damage based of character level. This will fix the imbalance.

Now put any of the other main damage skills above into this position and ask yourself, "Is this fare?"
Eg. Take your Norse barbarian with his two-handed greataxe and tell him that after level 35 or so, he has to stop using it and learn to use destruction instead and see were that gets you! "Wait a minute" he would say, "I hate magic! I shouldn't have to go against everything I stand for to continue".
Feel free to exchange the words "destruction" and "magic" for the words "bow" and "ranged attacks".

Can you now understand?

Wow, this has to be one of the dumbest most ignorant posts on the entire forum.

Nothing but one giant ad hominem against people who think magic needs a buff, no facts, no research, no nothing that shows in any way that the disparaties that people have already shown in numbers aren't there.

Fail, and everyone who agrees with this garbage just as much.

Read my above post Cathalo I messed up the quote, that is what Bethesda has done.

That is possible, however they should not have butchered destruction to do so. Instead, they should have made the schools that were lacking, more appealing.

All schools took blows with lack of spells, and they axed one magic school and moved some of its effects around...

No they don't. A conjurer only has to summon two dremera lords. Illusion only has to spam calm or frenzy. Neither need heavy investment in other schools or massive spell switching. To maximize damage neither will take destruction - its a waste unless they power-level enchanting and exploit. On Master they are almost always better off with other weapons. This is the issue.

This is still an isolated issue about destruction.

I can agree with the first sentence, but I think skills with a particular job should be roughly equal. Obviously mana cost vs. stamina cost, ranged vs. melee have to be considered, resists and armor of NPCs, etc. etc. But with that factored in, destruction is a poor skill to take for dealing damage.

There is no "mage" and "warrior" in TES games really as much as just general skill sets, and actually some magic oriented skill sets aren't weaker than warriors. A well built illusionist and/or conjurer can be just as powerful if not better than melee even on master.


Destruction should've had talents that improved it's damage more. They also just made a poor decision when it came to implementing fortify skill. Making it increase damage for one skill, but reduce cost for another, was not a good design decision. And the crafting skill issue was a pretty bad oversight. IMO they probably shouldn't have brought back the fortify skill effect at all.

I probably didn't pay attention to forum back then and I mostly only use wiki, but I still don't understand all the "balancing" is about. Yes, you can do whatever you want in TES but that doesn't mean Bethesda can't make any decision about the rules of the game. If Bethesda decides to favor melee/range skill over magic skill, what is so bad about the decision? Why does Destruction skill has to be on par with any other damage skill in terms of damage? Are you saying that sneak attack can't do 15x damage with a dagger because it won't be "balanced"? I think you are too hung up on stats/damage and set yourself up for unnecessary frustration because I am pretty much sure magic casters can do well in this game, just not as well as stealth/melee. If it makes you feel any better, magic is "overpowered" in Morrowind. I think it just goes around. It really shouldn't affect your playing experience unless you keep thinking "oh man I wasted perk points on Destruction, my character is so not perfect." Discovering and comparing the effectiveness of different skills is part of the game for me, So I don't know.

I think it is boring if every single damage skill achieve the same amount of damage at a given level. Then, everything comes down to personal reference and it becomes a big dress-up engine. A true sandbox, but not a game anymore.

Though I have to agree that I missed the utility spells. I wish I can fly over some of the slopes. Sigh.

I think a lot of the "ppl saying pure mage is broken" have fully explored conjuration, illusion, and restoration, but none of these are effective enough to really make a difference. Mages have zero defense, and because of that, they should be glass cannons. Because strong enemies knock you out in one or two hits, restoration is irrelevant.

Of course they want more balance in the game, they want to make it more challenging. Is this such a bad thing? Mages can still be powerful, we just can't get away with using 1-2 spells to kill everything anymore. Now, we actually have to hotkey 6 or 7 spells and play more strategically. We can't just cycle the same 2 spells to kill eveything in the game ad-infinitum.

Personally, I welcome this change. One of my biggest complaints with the Elder Scrolls series up to this point is that none of them were even remotely challenging for my mage character. I had to limit myself in previous games to the point where I wouldn't use heal potions, mana potions, wait healing, etc. Thats how easy those games were. I welcome Skyrims changes because it makes me change my strategy a bit and actually use my head.

The strongest build that does not rely on exploits or Shadow Warrior (to abuse terrible AI) is simply a straight up Archer build that uses Conjuration up to Twin Souls or a "Warrior" with the same investment into the Conjuration tree. There is absolutely ZERO reason to play as a "Pure Mage" other than RP reasons. Illusion can also be abused for both sneak attacks as well as just manipulation, but it's not needed and is actually slower than physical + Conjuration.

I know, the game isn't about "big numbers!", but that's not the point. The point is that it's infinitely slower and annoying to actually play a Mage when they should have as smooth of a time as anyone else with their damage school, but they don't.



I puke a little everytime I see this same, inane and condescending remark. It's just so laughably off base to assume that because you are not cognizant of the problem, it does not exist and that it must just be the mental defect of others that is giving them the "illusion" of a problem. The game is not hard, and playing a caster does not make you a special little snowflake.



This number seems to rise and fall depending on who posts it. The difficulty also plays a huge factor, because it's well before 30 on Expert.

you dont have to abandon destruction aftet level 35. yes it gets relatively weaker and i too think destruction needs higher damage caps than NOW. nervertheless even if youre playing a pure mage there are skills that can augment you immensely like illusion or conjuration. you dont have to abandon destruction-it just will just be less important in your arcane arsenal.

Read my post threwout this thread and see I am not only complaining about destruction. They have gutted and watered down the entire magic school. They did this basically from all of the people complaining because they chose to make their spells overpowered in Oblivion. I care because they focused on action and axed my favorite thing about these games. That is why I am irritated with the design concept they created for magic. It does not even feel like a fully developed system, it only seems like the beginning of a magic system.

The OP is saying that balance between "classes" or "trees" is not a goal in itself for a good Elder Scrolls game. Sure, melee, stealth, and magic-focused characters should all be fun to play, but the speed or ease with which they can kill an opponent don't need to be equal, precisely because the combinations of skills a given character has are nearly infinite. There isn't an ideal "spec." You can be effective as a mage with a shield, or a thief with a 2h axe. The fun, for many of us anyway, is solving the problem of facing an enemy using the skills we've chosen to use. Mage battles are awesome, imo, exactly because they take longer and may involve more skin of your teeth decisions. That doesn't mean Bethesda made these skills perfectly, obviously some tweaking is possible, but "dps" balance isn't really the criterion of that tweaking.

WoW, for all its virtues and faults, is a massive experiment in group think. Social pressure and, over time, the game itself penalizes unorthodox builds or strategies. In a single-player game like Skyrim, there's more room to experiment, multiple opportunities to shift course, and no one to lolz at your noobitude as you build something that you enjoy to play. Overpowered and underpowered are meaningless when you're comparing characters.

Now, whether the player skills are fun in their current state, or whether certain creatures are overpowered, underpowered, is another set of questions, and a more relevant target for tweaking. I'm shocked that so few creatures have resistances, but I actually like my magic mechanics even more difficult.

They did not balance it they killed balance with limiting options.

Again this is choice choice is why these games are great.

Limits that you choose are choices. You can do that with options, in Skyrim there is no options worth noting for spell casters.