The fire storm does more damage than stated, it takes down a good 1/2 of a deathlords health if you're right next to it (master). The lightning storm isn't to bad either, good for hitting flying dragons. How do you handle the magicka costs?

Destruction can be powerful in the right hands, but I think most people's gripe is that it's nowhere near as powerful as stealth or melee combat.

Here's the issue lot's of people have with destruction mages. On my high level warrior I can walk anywhere without fear. I can enter any cave, no sneaking, and go right up to any mob and kill it in one or two shots other than boss types which may take 3 or 4 shots. In those few hits I take almost no damage and have no fear whatsoever of dying. I have 100 smithing and have Legendary gear with mid level single enchants for things like 1h attack pwr and archery but no double enchants and nothing overpowered. I have most of the relevant perks in the 1h, heavy armor, and blocking trees. Warriors can be crazy powerful in this game without much effort.

Now my mage, who has very low health as a mage should (I think at the very start I put one point into health the rest have gone into my magicka pool), has to worry constantly about enemies because a lot of high level foes can one shot him. And while I have no issue 1v1 with any enemy in the game due to impact, multiple enemies still are a cause for worry since one overlooked archer or mage can easily mean instant death. Not to mention being attacked in close quarters by 3 or 4 melee attackers. It's not always possible to keep that many foes stunned. I learned to rely on conjuration because companions just get in the way and get themselves killed by my spells which is extremely annoying. 4 double casts to kill a drauger lord while 2 more are bearing down on you is not a nice place to be. My mage has the gear you mentioned so incenerates now only cost 12 magicka but gear does nothing for damage on a mage where my warrior gets boosts from gear, from weapon enchantants, from smithing, from poisons if I choose, from potions, and from perks. The imbalance there is undeniable. A high level destruction mage, just like a high level warrior, should fear nothing. Or that at least should be an option.

My warrior could be even more powerful if I chose to level enchanting to 100 and double enchant everything. I could also get better weapons since I'm not even using the best in the game and I haven't taken all the smithing perks yet. On my mage there is no way, other than potions, to make my damage go up. It's stuck. It's stuck where it was when I got the spells and it will never go up any further. Why is that? Why do mages get stuck at a specific level of damage with no options for raising it? That is the problem most of us have with destruction magic. So while it may seem to work just fine for you, that doesn't change the fact that the way damage leveling works for magic is way off the mark compared to how it works for melee and archery classes.

i love Destruction. great for crowds, and easier to us ein a tight space than archery. i'm planning a mage/archer build, using both Destruction and Archery for different circumstances. Dest for confined spaces and melee-range combat, Archery for sneaking, open spaces and sniping. and maybe carrying basic 1h gear in case needed in an emergency (such as magicka pool emptying in close-quarters combat). Destruction's damage can be raised by perks, but other wise not much more other than using expensive spells. Melee fighters do big damage, and do not have a limited energy source required to swing the sword, and no archer would be stupid enough to have less than 30-50 arrows in their quiver, and arrows can be picked up again after use. most wold have at least one or two hundred with them. arrows can also be looted off corpses. have you ever looted magicka off of someone?

one thing i dont like is that dualcast uses more magicka per damage point than two single casts, (a dual cast costs 2.8x the magicka of one single cast, but does only 2.2x the damage) what does that 60% (of the cost of one cast) go? if you're like me, and you only use one element (i use shock most of the time, altough i will use fire evry now and then, usually to light oil etc) ,it's more efficient to spend a perk in Augmented X than to get dualcast, unless you plan to get impact as well

The problem with destruction is that there isnt any spellmaking.

Sure, glyphs are cool, but totally and completely pointless past level 15 or so.
Sure, the master level spells look cool, but are completely and totally unusable due to long casting time and inaccurate casting.

Youre basically stuck with two spells the entire game and that is quite, quite lame.

Every enchantment you're wearing, or the magnitude you can enchant equipment? So I can surpass my 32% enchanting potions and 130% smithing potions if I gain this perk as a vampire?

Two spells that aren't particularly destructive.

Every other form of combat is strengthened both via perks and by leveling up. The fact that you can't really make any of your spells stronger through leveling up (in other words, becoming more versed in the school and a more experienced mage) really seems to be a misfire.

If you are wearing a 40% alchemy enchanted item (for example), the 40 would be boosted to 50, allowing you to craft stronger potions. But it also boosts the strength of the potion when it's used, it increases duration by x1.5 and magnitude by 1.25.

It's stong enough though, 90 damage or 198 damage dual cast, considering how fast you can fire off those spells. Have you even played using it?! You can take down a deathlord on master with 3 dual incinerates.

I have, and I find it thoroughly unpleasant to use as the main form of offense. The magicka regeneration is incredibly slow, meaning a battle you should be able to end almost instantly will take you roughly 40 minutes early on. It's ranged combat, but most of the combat takes place in dungeons, which don't really provide for an easy way to do combat at the start of the game. To make the school viable at early levels you'll have to power level enchanting to reduce the cost of the spells. Otherwise you'll be torn to ribbons.

Besides, Incinerate is an Expert level spell, meaning you'll have to be level 65 in the school to be able to buy the spell, or you can hope to find it as a random loot drop, which is unlikely.

That's an argument against archery too then.. I've never had a problem in dungeons, undead are weak to fire so fire destruction kill them quickly.

It's the opposite of what you said, the novice and apprentice spells are fine fo use at early levels, they don't cost to much. Adept, expert and master spells cost huge amounts.

If you join College of Winterhold, you will grow in power. You will also gain better cloth with better magical benefits.
I don't believe in potions, I do it for the money, only.
Never done enchanting for real yet, but I may do it later at some point.

But hey, what do I know. I play on normal and will always do.

Archery can be improved with smithing, it can double in strength through perks, it can get a sneaking bonus that doubles or triples the damage it does, and a Bound Bow early on is easily one of the most destructive things you can find in the game at the start (With no perks it does more damage than the Apprentice level spells right away). Not only that, but it increases in damage as you level up, unlike Destruction.

The problem is the destruction school was designed to be used with the other schools of magic making it very weak on it's own.Mages only have two perks for increasing damage excluding necromage which is only useful against undead.Heres a quick comparison of how a sword and board warrior and a mage can increase their damage.

Mage
-------

Two elemental perks for Fire,frost shock. - 50% increase
Spell type - adept,expert etc
Potions.

Warrior
----------

Weapon type.
Weapon skill.
Weapon quality - smithing
Critical damage.
Weapons with elemental damage effects.
Perks - Armsman 5 ranks - Savage strike etc
Armour/ring/necklace - increasing one handed damage.
Potions


The scope for mages to increase their base damage is tiny when compared to what a warrior can achieve,they can only reduce cost through items and enchanting.When mages are having to spec for 90% cost reduction at the expense of everything else then theres a problem.

we should not have to use other schools to make one-handed viable, but i would say the exuberant stamina requirement for such weak attacks ruins one-handed. and it is ridiculous that I bethesda practically forces me to wear armor because I keep getting hit when I try to attack with one-handed. i should be free to use only one-handed and nothing else and be perfectly fine.

You see, thats an askew anology.
First of all, one handed damage scales as you level.
Secondly, there is an abundance of better weaponry to be found or made.
Thirdly, perks greatly increase viability of one-handed as premier source of attack (which is what the poster you quoted was talking about, but you knew that.)
Fourthly, one handed can be further enhanced by enchanting and alchemy.

In conclusion, utter and abject nonsense. Its a quib at a serious issue people have, by overexaggerating into the ridiculous.
Its not funny, and its not clever.

Do you not see how you contradict your argument, melee NEEDS to be used with smithing and good armor for it to be effective. To use melee you have to be right up in the enemies face, where they hit like a train on master, destruction and archery can be used from range, so you can get away with no armor using destruction (I do).

You see if you can hit for 220 damage in one hit without ANY smithing using melee like you can destruction, the problem with this scenario is that the costs for dual casting an expert spell are absolutely huge. There is the real problem, magicka cost, not damage. I imagine you can hit 220 damage with a 2h daedric war hammer (which are incredibly rare) but the stamina cost is enormous, also hits at a much much slower rate than destruction.

Let's say a draugr deathlord, they have the equivalent of ~1400 health on master, I believe the highest you can get a daedric sword (which again, are very rare) without smithing is 72 damage, resulting in 20 hits to take one down (or 7-10 power attacks depending on perks).

Now dual cast incinerate deals 198 damage (220 with the illusion perk), resulting in ~300 damage given the weakness. So 3/4 dual casts (you also have fire damage) will take down that deathlord, from a safe distance.

Destruction is not weak, this thread was never about comparing the two, it sort of is now. My main point is that destruction does enough damage for you to use it well on master.

If you want to deal huge numbers with destruction with potions and poisons you can hit for over 1500 easy, but you don't need to.

Also people keep saying melee damage scales with the skill, it's barely noticeable, iirc the difference between level 15 and 100 is barely 30%.

First of all, you get access to better spells as you level

Fourthly, destruction can be further enhanced by enchanting and alchemy.

that is, possibly, the single worst argument i have ever heard for a few reason:
1) you dont need stamia to attack, only to power attack
2)1 handed damage scales
3) 1 handed weapons have stronger varients with little change in the stamina cost (not as much as spells at least)
4)1 handed is viable without armour, i did it with my redguard
5) spells take longer to charge at higher levels aswell while 1 handed always stays the same ammount oftime to prepare a power attack

Something I find funny with this argument is that people compare it a things like a warrior build, but the problem with that is that a warrior is a combination of more than one skill. Having one-handed alone will make you very weak since not only are your physical resistance next to none existant, but you are also forced into melee. Sure, you do decent damage, but you will likely not live to tell about it.

What is my point? I think the different skills are not meant to stand alone. That means a pure destruction mage will be weak and should be weak. However, even with this I feel there is something wrong with the destruction skill; I think it takes a bit to much magica to cast the spells that are useful at higher levels.

I'm complaining because I have to wreck my mouse before I can kill someone with expert level destruction spell.

Magicka-inefficient. Sometimes completely inefficient; I'm fairly sure wall spells are bugged and runes don't benefit from augment perks.

And the Master spells are laughable.



Enchanting simply reduces magicka cost. Playing an infinite peashooter isn't an attractive option.

And alchemy is ridiculously unbalanced for all archetypes and requires the player to chug potions every 60s.

The only thing really wrong with Destruction magic is the awful mana system Bethsda cooked up. Spell efficiency as you level up goes down the drain and unless you dump a LOT of points in magicka at level up, OR you exploit enchanting to nullify spell cost, there's no way to have a sustenable fight without drinking a magicka potion per spell cast. And since monsters are huge HP sponges at master difficulty at higher level, killing stuff through destruction is either trivially boring (impact + 100% cost reduction) or incredibly tedious and ineffective.

Spellcrafting would do nothing to solve the issue unless you are in a 100% cost reduction mode where it would allow you to cast 9001 damage AoE spells forever if it was allowed which would be even more [censored]. OR, you'd not be abusing cost reduction enchants and all spells you'd make would be either very slow to kill or extremely inefficient in mana usage.


Doing a "I kill stuff with Destruction magic only" isn't exactly weak depending on the support skills you use, it's just completely unbalanced no matter what you do.

You obviously haven't read what I wrote at all, just following the bull [censored] that other people say 'damage isn't good enough'. Well it is, the expert spells when perked do more than enough damage, I can't be bothered to repeat what I've wrote, read the OP and my other comments.

Master spells aren't laughable, I cast fire storm next to a draugr deathlord and it takes of half is health (master), it does more damage than stated, try using it and commenting rather than just making a blind statement.

Your right about the magicka inefficiency though, it's ridiculous how much the adept and expert spells cost, you have to use fortify destruction gear (you don't need enchanting though, you can find good enough gear).