Destruction magic doesn't scale as well as melee damage and I believe that's working as intended.

A warrior has to waltz into a room and eat damage until everything is dead. If he couldn't front-load a ridiculous amount of damage he wouldn't last very long. A mage, on the other hand can summon minions, turn enemies against each other, heal, shield themselves, fear, set traps and any number of other things. Not to mention the larger variety of ways a mage can deal damage. Being able to put out focused damage that's comparable to melee classes on-top of everything else would be ridiculous.

Mages are balanced fine, but relying on destruction is foolish. The mage schools all seem to be supplemental; except conjuration which is overpowered. Use them together and play right if you want to pwn face, or turn the difficulty down to nothing and do whatever you want.

Yup, you just need to use a decent strategy now.

No more "derp ima spam fire ballls y0"

couldn't agree more. many that complain that they've been nerfed seem to be focused on just one school, maybe 2 instead of being creative and using all the schools to their best advantage.

Its not nerfed at all, its Balanced.

Oblivions system was extremely over powered. To the point of ridiculousness.

Not sure why you felt this post was so amazing it needed it's own topic instead of just replying to one of the other half dozen destruction topics on the board.

It's funny how you mention Destruction magic scaling being fine, then site examples such as summoning and turning enemies against each other... different schools. lol

In either case I'm not high enough in level to be able to say whether playing as a destruction mage is crap or not, I'm just enjoying myself

Logic gets ignored in topics that were created purely for ranting; which those horrible topics were. You have more sensible discussions when the original topic is sensible. I'm glad to see people grasping the point in this thread; they weren't grasping it in the others.

They've removed warrior mana bars/ability to use scrolls so that they can no longer use supplementary spells?

I see, so you want to force people to play in a certain way and reduce the amount of choice in this game? Interesting take.

see, that's the problem people have. they want to specialize as a mage (i.e. destruction). doing so will result in a nerfed toon. now, mages have to be at least adept in other schools of magic as well in order to truly realize their true potential.

It's scaling is fine because it's not a stand-alone skill. Mage schools are all supplemental and the schools that supplement destruction more than make up for the less scaled damage.

Such a simple concept.

I doubt the herp-a-derps will every understand it though.

Gonna be so mad when they patch ithttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu8DJnR9zNw

This is a single-player game. Balance can go [censored] itself. By level twenty I should be able to steamroll through anything on Adept difficulty, using any character build I please. Including a mage that relies purely on Destruction for damage output.

There's no reason they should have nerfed magic like they did. Or reduced the amount of spells available. Or removed spellcrafting. These things are what made magic unique and fun in the Elder Scrolls series. Now it's not fun or useful.

I re-rolled a bow-using character and am having a blast. But the characters I made who were mostly magic-users? Feh, deleted. This is not their game, unfortunately.

Nope, just stating the obvious. If I decided I only wanted to use speech, alchemy, blacksmithing and enchanting I wouldn't expect to survive very long in most dungeons on master difficulty. If you don't at least attempt to make a viable character for combat you're going to have to tone down the difficulty.
Unless you gear and spec for magic use you won't be very effective with it.

Here are the facts. I'm tired of idiots on this forum like OP who are just too ignorant or trolls. I've lost all respect for people like that but I'll give you the facts.


There are just TOO MANY points I can make that say mages overall are underpowered compared to warriors that I can write a book on it. Here are just a few

1. Destruction never gets stronger.

2. Mage spells are either too weak or cost too much mana to sustain in a fight.

3. Mage runs out of mana, has to run. Warrior runs out of stamina, continues to pound heavy damage.

4. Mages do less damage than warriors AND are 10-100x less durable in battle.

5. Master level destruction spells take 5 seconds to cast, cost too much mana, and don't get stronger after you get them at level 50 while monsters get stronger.

6. Warrior late game can have insanely strong legendary armor and weapons that do 500 damage per regular swing without power swing and tank like a god, mages have the 100 damage master spell that takes 5 seconds to cast when they are vulnerable.

7. Warriors can faceroll through the game with 2 skills and two hack buttons. Mages need to constantly switch spells, run around, drink potions, use shouts, use lydia, ect just to get by.

8. Robes with magic regen/cost reduction is nowhere near as good as the armor that makes warriors unstoppable late game.

9. Warriors with heavy armor and weapons can whip out their flame spell anytime and do as much damage as a mage while able to tank so much more, mages who want to fight with swords end up getting [censored].

10. I have yet to find a pure mage at any level able to complete the main quest line, I see warriors level 20ish complete it easily.

11. A TON of people complain about destruction being underpowered and mages in general compared to warriors. No one complains about warriors be underpowered, only overpowered.

12. This is a TES game. Players should be able to play how they want. If they want to focus on destruction without much help in other magic fields they should be able to do that. Game favors warriors heavily to faceroll through the game. Destruction is probably the most important school magic yet it is one of the more useless and full mages can't seem to do well with it without resorting to conjuration.

13. Full mages have to switch between 3-5 spells, conjure creatures, bring lydia, drink pots, hide behind obstacles shooting down enemies, scout the enemies well, before EVERY battle. It's fun on the first few battles but throughout the thousands of battles it becomes tedious and worthless. Warriors just charge into 10 men mobs without thinking and faceroll everything.

14. People say well mages have stunlock and with late game enchants can cast spells without mana. Don't be dumb. It still takes 10 spells to kill one same leveled thug and it's only viable 1v1. Warriors just charge into 10 men mobs button mashing two buttons and tanking all they want.

15. In even decently balanced games, warriors can always tank more damage while mages do much more damage and can nuke from afar. Mage destruction spells are mid-close range spells and can't nuke while warriors do more damage. In league of legends we see spell casters like ryze who die instantly and move slowly but can nuke so well and does more damage than tanks like malphite who are very hard to kill but barely do any damage. Imagine if malphite did more nuke damage than ryze. Who in their right mind would want to play ryze then? Everyone would want to play malphite. Same thing is going on here. People play the more balanced characters and like to play by what is better. This is an elder scrolls game and people should be able to play how they like but instead are forced to be melee or struggle through as a mage.

OMG PEOPLE NONE OF THE SCHOOLS SCALE!!!!! JEEZUS WHY DON'T YOU GET THAT. YOUR SUMMONS WILL ALWAYS BE WEAK! YOUR ILLUSION LIKE WISE!

I'm pretty sure if you maxed enchantments alone you could roflstomp a lot of dungeons with your fists. Anyway, that's besides the point they're called NON COMBAT skills for a reason. Destruction is a combat skill. This is like if you maxed Speech and couldn't sell fenced goods. That's not even a somewhat convincing leap in logic. Also it's funny you mention that, because back in Daggerfall (yes I've been a fan that long) there were classes who had no major or minor combat skills, and Bethesda clearly thought that was viable back then.

Umm, this game was balanced purely FOR the herp-a-derps. Magic was made the least useful of all the builds so that they wouldn't feel like they were missing out on something that seemed too complicated for them in the previous ES games. And thus they could just go back to playing this like it was God of War with no worries.

Balance should and will exist in every game. You certainly should NOT be able to do whatever you want and still steamroll everything; that would make for a horrible game.

2 problems with this entire subject:

1) Destruction really does need to scale and there needs to be enchants for it. This is a RPG ffs, the whole point is to keep making your character stronger. If i cant do that after lvl 35, then lvl 35 is the end of the RPG game for me.

2) Destruction should never be allowed to deal as much damage as melee toons, unlike what most pro-destro seem to think it should. You have too many advantages. Range, CC (stagger/slow/freeze), and enough mana and mana regen to make the access to other schools of magic viable (Yes, warriors can take conjuration... and then not have the mana to cast anything passed Novice because he has to focus on his health and stamina.). No matter how much you want your 1337 pure destro mages, you can't balance in a vacuum, because that would mean the game is too easy and broken for those who do want to delve into those trees.

Mmmhhmm. That's why there's a few people with half a brain who've managed to have a successful mage build.

Its how you use what you have.

This is a joke thread - he must be taking the p*ss

Point 2 isn't true, there's more than just dealing damage there's also taking damage. Mages are supposed to be glass cannons. Hence high damage and low ability to take damage. So comparing damage alone is deceptive and incorrect.

It's an unbalanced system....that's not even an argument. I highly doubt Bethesda would purposely have made only ONE way to be a mage when there are MUTIPLE ways to be a warrior.