I've not been playing the past 8(?) months and I'm thinking about rebuying the game if I can play more of my characters now.

Does Alchemy + Enchantment + Smithing still produce better weapons, as early as 10 hours into the game, than any of the gods ever have managed to make in their lifetimes?

Has destruction been fixed to be viable for the highest difficulties?

you can't spam iron daggers that's about it you can still spam other things to raise smithing tho

fortify smithing potions/enchantments plus high smithing skill still produce massively powerful weapons. but then custom enchanted weapons are often stronger than unique weapons, even in the previous games.

as for destruction, i dont think there have been any changes because it works as intented


i would refer you to the patch notes for more detailed info on the changes

A little bit has changed, as asker509 mentioned about the daggers. But like in all TES games, being overpowered is still an option so self regulation still needs to be applied.

It's interesting that people expect developers to release balance fixes for everything. I've yet to play a single-player game with a massive balance fix. Even DE:HR with its horrible boss battles was never fixed - and this game needed it even more desperately than Skyrim.

Like asker said, spamming iron daggers doesn't work anymore. Instead, you can spam jewellery and all things dwarven. This is the only change.

I recommend you buy the PC version and install balancing mods.

bethesda said pre-release they would release balance fixes but like the ps3 had received "parity" with the xbox 360 version it was a lie unless you count the dagger fix as a actual balance fix destruction needs fixing much more IMO

I was silly enough to buy the 360 version last time.

I don't think my laptop can run Skyrim.

I have yet to play a singleplayer game where summoned MINIONS deal more spell damage than my own spells.
That was the truth of it when I left the game:
A conjurer / archer dealt more bow damage and had fire atronaches that dealt more fire damage than a destruction mage.

...
So after playing a conjurer / archer, I didn't feel any need what so ever to continue my destruction mage who was a gimp compared to my conjurer.

I did enjoy the game immensely, and consider the game great -- but the balance!

It takes 10 hours in real life / 10 days ingame for a level 1 character to make stronger artifacts than the gods are capable of making.
Why?

A destruction mage cannot compete with archers nor conjurers for ranged damage.
Why?

just keep in mind that if something doesn't work the way you would like it, it does not mean it is broken

and if something isn't broken, it will be not be fixed

Good points, but I don't think this will be fixed.

I excepted this then they said that they would remove spell making. However its worse than expected because of no spell scaling and low damage high level spells.
Nothing new, mages in Morrowind required some sort of exploit or loads of restore magic potions as they had to sleep to restore magic.

Inn all games since Daggerfall user created items has been far better than artifacts. At least in Skyrim you can improve the artifact weapon and armor and some has useful effects.

In short elder scroll games are not balanced, in WOW people scream if one class does 25% more damage.

Both are working exactly as intented and require no fix.
Perhaps you should try and, I dont know, not make an uber character if you dont enjoy playing like that?

But WHY won't they at the very least buff destruction to the point where a fire spell CAN deal NEARLY as much damage in active combat as a conjurer can deal while sitting on a bench polishing his or her nails?

I would have bought the game again if destruction was improved -- if it scaled properly.
It doesn't need to be as powerful as smithing, conjuration, enchantment, archery or one-handed are.

But... powerful enough to make the game feel playable using that character after playing an archer.

In any case, I will check back in another half a year then.

This is kind of sad:
It would take one developer 3 hours to fix this at the maximum.

No repurchase then.
I can only play two of my eight prefered characters in skyrim, which is the reason I sold it in the first place.
Two characters are not enough to buy the game again and the two expansions.

Buffing destructions would have made two more of my standard 8 characters playable, and would have made me buy Skyrim plus the two expansions.

Without any balance fixes, the two expansions won't add enough content because I have to play or restart my two existing characters and leave my level 8 destruction mage in limbo.

Yeah thats a bit of a puzzler and no mistake.
I blame the loss of spellmaking.
Removing a flagship feature is probably the most ill-thought out thing you can do to a franchise, but there you go.

It's a choice. No one is forcing you to research the strongest alchemical combinations and abuse them. Nor is anyone forcing you to smith jewellery until you're walking around in legendary Daedric armor. You can blame your lack of enjoyment on game mechanics, but that doesn't change the fact that it was your choice to become overpowered.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with being overpowered. In many regards, I prefer it to the 'balance' everyone seems to try and achieve. I like feeling that accomplishment that my character has gone from struggling to kill the weakest of Draugr to slaying Dragon Priests.

The first few months after Skyrim was out, the forums were full about people complaining that destruction doesn't scale in damage but only in magika consumption. To this date, the only way to make destruction more useful is to abuse enchanting and make objects that will decrease magika consumption down to zero.

I don't believe Destruction has been changed at all since launch; your summons will still do more damage than you at higher levels and Blizzard is still a completely useless spell due to a glitch.

I highly doubt that Bethesda will fix (or attempt to fix) the balance issues with Destruction, but mods fix many of the balance issues in the PC version. While you may not have an adequate PC to play Skyrim, going down that route is really the only way to go.

Don't expect anything to be different when you check back here in six months. I suppose there's a chance that Bethesda releases a pricy DLC to help remedy the problem, but that's both unlikely to happen and unlikely to work.

When you go back to the game, just don't do the Alchemy+Enchanting+Smithing abuse. THAT was easy!

Yes, Oblivion had lots of decent spells who could do 70-80 point damage as expert.With the spellmaker you could make stronger ones, with weakness effects you could scale the effects up far more and make fun combinations like turn undead for 10 seconds, weakness to fire 100 for 10 seconds, fire damage 5 for 8 seconds, switch to an high effect fire spell and blast away.
your 50 point fire spell does 125 damage on the fleeing undead.

Now 70-80 damage is comparable with Skyrim spells however enemies has far more health than in Oblivion.

I dont know about you all, but the stagger spam perk more than makes up for the damage issue with magica. I'm on master and my mage is fine. And he's not utilizing the 100% destruction cost exploit through enchanting. Only in-game items. Sure other characters and enemies do more damage on the spells that they share with you, but most (if any, not sure) dont have access to expert spells, and none have access to master spells, and not to mention the perks you have access to that they dont, mainly the awesome stun lock one. Mages are op (means awesome). More damage seems a bit much to me.

Does that make destruction stronger than ONE of my conjurer's summons or his summoned bow?
Does that make him compare to my smithing + one-handed + sneak melee character?

Not nearly close.

Wasnt the point of that post. The point was so you dont make an overpowered character.

You are comparing one skill to the combination of three skills. Destruction, Alchemy and enchanting makes a very powerful destruction mage. You cant be a one trick pony in skyrim, otherwise you could be a powerful destruction mage with 100 in one skill and 8 perks.

As far as the destruction magic goes, it is a bit under powered based on an individual spell cast. However, once eliminating spell cost for destruction spells, it is pretty damn potent with impact and augmented perks. Mage path is a much slower process compared to a melee character.

Now as far as producing godly weapons. They can become extremely overpowered if you so choose. However, you can no longer reach 100 smithing within 5 hours of gameplay. They patched the hell out of smithing and for the good. Which in turn eliminates making "God" weapons unrealistically quick.

in the past 8 months i think they only came out with 2 or 3 updates, and no they dont balance crap.

BUT that doesnt matter cus its not an online game, so you can play the game however you want, just dont use smithing to make god weapons, its not that hard.

I have tons of warrior characters that use smithing, but my smithing is always lower then any other skill (usually im at one or two teirs of armor lower then what i can find in the world) and i dont buy ingots for the sake of smithing useless stuff to put the skill up, i let it go up very slowly and gradually as i play. ( i have yet to get a character with smithing over 80)

And yeah destruction, its a shame that a pure mage is almost impossible on master difficulty, but every other archetype is waaay easier. Of course, once you get illusion to 100 though, you're pretty much unstoppable.

Not true at all. You dont even need exploiits for it. Pure mages are very viable on master. Especially if destruction is combined with conjuration.