I'm thinking about perking the 25% damage to a spell type so thinking about which one to pick. Frost and shock damaging stamina and mana seems straightforward. The wording on fire of "targets take extra damage while on fire" is a bit ambiguous. Does that mean it continues to burn for a small amount of damage, or is it like a built-in "weakness to fire" effect that benefits subsequent spells? The elephant in the room is the mana cost - shock costs a ton more than fire, with frost in the middle. Is there some factor I'm neglecting that justifies the extra cost? Frost seems like it would get the short end of the stick as far as encountering resistant creatures in Skyrim, but I would have thought shock and fire would be on equal footing in that respect. Finally, the higher perk of shock blasting things to ash when low on health looks superior to its counterparts, but not enough to justify the mana difference.

Fire just does some extra damage for a second. Similar to the bleed effect I believe, but fire.

Fire has the greatest damage because of the additional damage. Fire also tends to be the most mana efficient. And is the least resisted type in Skyrim. Frost is most resisted.

Id say that lightning is the least resisted.

Eventually Lightning will far outstrip fire damage when you get disintegration.

I find a lot of guys wearing resist shock armor, so I'd have to disagree Erandur.
After you hit a guy with fire, he lights on fire (taking DPS).
While a guy is on fire, any fire spell deals additional damage, I'm not sure exactly how much.

Guys wearing resist shock is just as prevalent as resist any other magic. the only thing resistant to lightning is storm atronachs. While every Dunmer (half) and Fire atronach is resistant to fire.

This does not seem to be working properly. With your novice ability it only works on the first tick and you have to stop and cast again to get the effect. Fire bolt woks better but the flame effect is so short that unless you are at point blank range, you shots will not reach in time to get the bonus. Of course flame fire effect lasts longer so you could try switching between it and fire bolt (not optimal)

Oh and dual casting seems to increase disintegration's range.

Until someone mods the ability to actually see health bar numbers, this is all speculation and feeling atm.

Projectile speed is something else I just thought of. Shock is considerably faster, so that can justify some of the cost, though not for cone and rune spells. Does anyone know exactly what constitutes low health, for the destruction perks that key off of that?

As in to trigger the added destruction effects? Its under 20% health.

Meaning the range of health where it activates?

Not true, does the same damage rate at the same levels. Disintegrate is a perk that only adds a visual effect where the enemy will disintegrate when hit with electrical magic when their health is low.

Wrong, it does 15% damage to their health at the same time. Sure that might be hard to tell with low level mobs but in your 50's you will be just plinking away at their health and then suddenly blam! dead when they reach 15% health.

This seems like its closer to 25% if you are dual casting.

OK, show where in the stats it says it does this. Looking at them, all I see is a perk with no indication to adding damage, but only a visual enhancement. The enhancement description says exactly that, and it offers no more damage. If it did more damage, the description would indicate that as other perks do. The "Augmented" perks are the only ones that increase damage ratios in the "Destruction" tree of perks.

Read here: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Destruction

Disintegrate at low health, as in you did not have to get them to "0" health. There is a 15-25% difference between low health and "0" health. That means that you do not have to do that last 500-1000 hp of damage on a 4000 hp mob. Its like you just did that as damage. Very noticeable at later levels. when their HP is friggin huge.

I hope this helps you understand.

That would only be for the final hit though wouldn't it? If something takes 5 hits to kill, the first 4 hits have no benefit from the perk and in a lot of cases the final shot could be an overkill that won't benefit from the perk.

Truth, which is way its a "LATE GAME" advantage that outstrips the others. If its only 5 hits then you could use anything you want.

When it takes 50 hits, this saves you 15 hits. Destruction doesn't scale like the other abilities in the game so this is the only ability that does.

You're simply describing what "Disintegrate" will do when the enemy gets to that level of health, not that it does more damage. You all but confirmed what I said the perk does. Again, all it does is give a disintegration animation, that's all. Go look at the perk tree and you'll it offers no other damage, the "augs" do (obviously). Again, if I am wrong, show where the game will change the power or percentage of the damage given for that perk, not the ratio of damage given by the actual spells used when either augmented or not..

It doesn't add damage, per se, but it makes things die at the next hit after 20% instead of 0% when you are hitting with lightning. That's as good as adding damage.