I might be off a little when I say this, but I am going to make an assumption and say- As a one handed player, my melee perks are pretty limited. Blacksmithing is my ONLY way to improve my damage other than potions, right? Last time I checked, destruction perks granted some amazing bonuses, enchanting can boost destruction stats, as well as potions too?

I still don't get what everyone is complaining about? I haven't found being a pure mage to be impossibly difficult. I mean if you guys are playing as a mage and die once do you scream "[censored] THIS [censored]!!" and come rage about it on the forums or something lol? I'm honestly having no problems with being a pure mage, I may die a few times here and there, but not to the point that the game is completely unplayable.

youre level freaking 2 dude. This is a pointless thread, completely ignorant.

1. people are only complaining about destruction not scaling after level 40. If you arent this level yet, then don't make a topic belittling them. Thank you




No, stop posting things that simply aren't true. If you want to learn about the subject, then do so. Don't say things you aren't sure about though. Come on now -.-

This thread hurts my head.



This.

There is a difference between the material of a weapon influencing its damage and the effect of a spell. There is no law that dictates Flames MUST be weaker than Firebolt. But it is known that the dwarven axe is less durable and powerful than ebony or daedric. A better anology would be to compare weapons of the same material but different design, like a dwarven axe or dwarven sword. Neither one is extremely better than the other, it depends on your play style. There is no reason why a ball of fire has to be stronger than a jet of fire.

please do your homework if you try to give your own opinions. one hand weapon damage does scale with your skill even without the perks. Also weapon perks get 100% damage increase + enchantments increasing weapon damage by certain percentage+ betteer smithing which further increases weapon damage + also better smithing which can improve weapons at the highest level roughly 100%. all these are percentage increase, resulting in monstrous damage.

lets look at what spells get shall we? +50% from perk. fin.

Right, because your voice is the only one that counts. Great effort in adding to the topic. I am not saying that it's as easy as melee or that I think it should be. Casters in any game are squishy, and I don't see why it should be any different this time around. I can't sit here and deny some of the points people have made because some of them are obviously true. I am not level 40+ so I can't say that I am as knowledgeable as some of them are on mana classes, I'm just going to leave it on the note that I disagree. That is all.

Well that's too bad.


Why couldn't Bethesda just have made more powerful spells for sale then.
Scaling is one thing, but that never happened in Oblivion, what you did is that you bought or learned a more damage dealing one.

This is what they should offer here, as your level progress they should then offer 75 damage, a 100 damage one a 120 etc.
Also do it in all classes of each spell, for example the fire flamethrower should have constant upgrades from the basic 8 damage per second, and just continue up to 15, 25, 50 etc.
This way people can also use the ones they like the most, some love the flamethrower but if it never increase in damage dealing it becomes nullified and useless after a certain point.
That is one thing that would upset me, cause I thought we could use all variants as a viable option if we wanted, just had to buy a more powerful version.

Granted, the people saying a Pure mage isn't viable are probably playing a Master difficulty setting, what if you tried to play it on Expert or even Adept?
Obviously if it is as you all say it is, that you're TOO weak as a pure mage, well perhaps that is not the case in those lower settings, hence playing Pure mage on adept or expert is equal to a Melee player playing on Master.
Seriously there is no shame in playing a lower difficulty level. It might solve most of the problems?

Also, playing as a PURE mage does not mean, destruction spells only, that would be a PURE DESTRUCTION MAGE ONLY.
There are many that say if they level up their conjuration and use flame atronachs etc along with powerful destruction etc that they do just fine.

I personally don't understand this notion that "I don't want to use all mage tools", that is pure BS, a warrior can't say I only want to do max level two-hander and use mage robes.
It doesn't make any sense, he would be forced to go at LEAST max light armor and preferably heavy armor and get the best versions of it all.
He might need some Archery too etc etc.

Playing a PURE mage, means you use ALL mage abilities but no melee or archery.
Technically you can be a pure mage in fully leveled heavy armor and just enchant the armor with magicka regen etc ( a smart thing in my book) since then you can take more hits.

For those of us on PC, most of this will be solved via mods if they ever come out with the creation kit.

This.

...so to sum it up, after level 40, destruction mages have already gained the best spells and perks (most of which zap your magicka quickly). Leveling past 40 does nothing for your damage output but only increases the level of your enemy. phew. I feel like I finally understand haha.

If I'm correct, then I now see where all the complaints are coming form. All the hard work that gets put into leveling only serves to make your character weaker (relative to your enemies). I was sort of excited when I heard comparisons to Morrowind's magic system, but this Skyrim's seems less of a challenge and more of an unfair flaw.

This.

People dont seem to understand the concept of why its so difficult to play a pure mage. A pure-fighter who relies on melle weapons can continue to attack once he runs out of stamina. A pure mage cannot continue to do anything when they run out of magicka to fuel their spells, all you can do is run away or die, and even running away isn't an option most of the time due to confined spaces, or literally being locked into a boss battle. Being a mage is semi-convenient for anything but combat, but since almost all of the game's best aspects are based around combat, being a pure mage svcks. Every bear or OP bandit kills you because you run out of magicka and cannot defend yourself.

Since destruction is virtually the only way for a pure-mage to defend themselves, it really needs to be made more reliable in it's higher tiers. Every tom dike and harry shouldnt be able to make use of advanced destruction, but if one chooses to invest ehavily in it, they should find it completely reliable for combat.

Simply put, unless you've got something negative to say about pure-magery, then you are ignorant. Anybody who's actually played the game (the game OTHER than the friggin main quest; which is designed to be managable) with both a pure-fighter and a pure-mage would know the extreme discrepancy there is. A pure mage is perfectly capable of taking on enemies below their level of expertise, and can kill them rather violently and explosively, but the second and enemy whos better than you approaches you, you have absolutely no chance to kill them because as a PURE MAGE you have no secondary means of defense BEYOND MAGERY, which in and of itself, is reliant on MAGICKA, which simply does not regenerate fast enough to be used.

On top of that, the game bottlenecks mages into wearing enchanted gear, it is even more impossible without using it. What happened to "be who you want to be"? why is the game forcing me to use pre-made enchanted gear that is wildly superior to what I can enchant?

While i agree with the OP. This is very true.

Oh god, this.

However, I've learned to keep a greatsword in my inventory, in case I need to make one desperate swipe in the hopes of finishing off that last little bit of an enemy's health.

And of course I keep an eye out for "restore magic" alchemy ingredients and harvest them as much as I can, but they seem to be quite a bit more rare than, say, "restore health" or "damage x" ingredients.

Imagine this as a pure mage:

Fully level Conjuration so you get :
2 flame atronachs that has more health and last longer (they are powerful).

Level up enchanments til you can get 2 enchantments per piece of armor/clothing.
Also select the perks that enhances the enchantments.

Use heavy armor for protection.

When at high level use Daedric armor or something similar, fully enchant each of the four pieces with all magicka regen, could possibly end up with 300%+ magicka regen.

Level up most of Destruction, including impact perk that knocks back enemies.
Get the extra regen and extra health in restoration and alteration.

How can THAT not make you powerful enough to handle anything?

You can take a beating cause of the armor, you can regen your magicka fairly well, you have two powerful summoned being taking the focus of the enemies and them dishing out damage ala a great player melee warrior, TWICE OVER.

And you playing the battlemage GOD controlling it all and smacking enemies around.

Not forgetting to use Dragon shouts, like the unrelenting force to knock back enemies that get too close to you.
Or use the "etheral form" whilst your magicka regenerates back up (you're invulnerable).
How about some CC with the ICE dragon shout?

Come on people use your imagination and FOR THE LOVE OF INTELLIGENCE, make use of ALL the abilities.

Don't be a moron and say " I only want to do destruction spells as a pure mage", that is just plain idiotic.

As a mage you use ALL mage abilities or playing on master you ARE bound to fail, but only because you're not smart enough.

PERIOD!!!

PS, a game is NOT balanced according to hardest difficulty setting, that would make any class OBSCENELY powerful at normal setting which 95% play on.

TL:DR

Use your head and use ALL mage abilities.

Like the saying :

"You're doing it wrong"

A pure Melee warrior can't use conjuration to summon two flame atronachs to help him.
He has to rely on his ( YES MORE POWERFUL) weapons, cause that is ALL he has.

A mage has destruction that up til level 40 does decent damage and is still useful but NOT on it's own after level 40.
So therefore as a mage you technically can be MUCH more powerful than a lone warrior, how you say?
Yet again the two flame atronachs will be dishing out a lot of damage more than enough to augment your lvl 40 destruction spells.

Yes, destruction alone might not cut it at high level, but this is WHY you make use of other tools at your disposal, common FN sense...

A pure mage =/= destruction mage, so people STOP saying " Playing as a PURE mage is not viable", it's [censored].

Okay god forbid you use anything BUT your destruction spells. I put points into shielding, heavy armor, one handed weapons, and others for crafting. Your saying that you shouldn't have to use destro+ anything else because..? I use a melee class and I even put some points into resto perks and mana because I don't claim that if I can't go all melee the game is crap and unbalanced. My point here is that if people actually used common sense and put points into summoning and hired a merc, they would indeed be acting as... YES, A CASTER.

Seriously, I can understand the points made here if someone wanted to do a SOLID destro class, but I can't do a solid melee class without using POTIONS. Same as any friggin caster. You can't pull out a melee weapon and rely on it because, why? Like I said, I use mana/resto on top of being melee.

If you were more or less forced to supplement melee with direct-damage spells in order to do decent sustainable damage, then yes, people would be complaining in droves.

translation to plain english: Use every other school other than destruction. :flamethrower:

not really adding much to the point of the thread, but okay :laugh:

Generally, a mage should do significantly higher damage than a warrior because:
1. They have significantly less armor and health. Bosses and stronger enemies can two shot mages.
2. They are more limited by their resource(magicka) then a warrior character.

For people saying "buy better spells", imagine that you're regular swings no longer inflict significant damage after level 40 or so. Imagine that you have to use power attacks ALL THE TIME to do significant damage. Now you should see the problem. Higher level destruction spells have magicka costs through the roof, even perked up, and will never do as much damage as someone with a one handed sword and +100% damage from perks and smithed/enchanted weapons.

Are weak enemies one shotted by my fireballs? Yeah. Do bosses and other enemies take an absolutely [censored] number of firebolts before they're down? Yeah. While fighting a dragon priest, I had to run around four seperate times waiting for my magicka regenerate so I could even do ANY damage to him. It took FOUR mana bars to down him, and I have almost all my level ups into magicka, am a high elf, and had good gear. Seems a little silly to me.

The other schools make up for it some, but most bosses will kill your summon in a few hits, and conjuration magic is incredibly magicka intensive. Alteration is pretty moot for battles.

that reminds me, some bosses have non-playable spells that can take control of your summon. :laugh:

The master level spells in general are worse compared to your firebolt in a lot of ways...

Exactly, but these guys don't seem to get that.

They keep saying "pure mage", when it isn't, it's destro only. A completely different thing.

You need to augment your classes to their full ability WITH the abilities that go a long with it.

The only thing a "pure mage" stand for is, NOT using melee or archery but only spells to control the battlefield and deal damage etc.

I can't play the game as pure melee with only two-hander and not wearing armor to protect me on master difficulty and then expect to survive, it makes no sense.
More times than not, a melee warrior need to augment with at least the healing spell.

what are you, like level 10?

destruction is somewhat equivalent to one handed/two handed/ bow skills. It's your main damage source. ofcourse you could play well into master difficulty with other schools but that doesnt excuse the game mechanic from making destruction, traditional damage dealing skill of mages, to become completely underpowered late game.

Beth needs to give at least one of the following:

1. spell damage scaling with skills + spell damage enchantments

2. spell making

3. weakness spell

So having two conjured flame atronachs that can dish out damage probably comparable to a high level player character, and you can get TWO at once, then on top of that you as the mage can dish out pretty decent damage to augment them with destro powers..

All in all the damage you as a mage can put into the "battlefield" just playing the mage is the accumulated damage of two atronachs and your own damage dealing powers.

I'd say that is probably more than TWICE the damage a high level warrior can dish out all alone.

As for the atronachs dying by a boss, first off get the perk that makes them have more health, secondly it is a BOSS, it's not suppose to be a cake walk.
Especially if playing on Master.

You complain about "FOUR MANA bars" to take down top level boss.

How about you ask a Melee warrior how many times his stamina bar is depleted with just one or two power swings? It also needs to regenerate or you are just doing base damage.

A warrior would also have to run and hide and use restoration spell or potions to stay alive, they also need to get CLOSE to actually do damage.
A mage can KITE around and do it from a far.

It seems silly too ME that you think one of the toughest bosses are hard, is that how it's suppose to be?
If you are playing on high difficulty level EVEN MORE SO.

Seriously people think before you post...

I get a destro mage alone is not powerful enough, but this is why you have other magic to use.

So have I, but that's the irony of it. While pure stealth and pure combat are completely viable, pure magery is not.

A good 75% of the time, I find myself whipping out my dual swords to polish off targets once you magaicka is gone, and it's rather comical how much damage I can deal with a dual flurry. A dual attack flurry will do the same volume of damage that my entire 400 magicka bar just dealt. That is a viable means of combat, but I had hoped pure magery would be possible, and it's not. destruction spells are simply too expensive and do too little for what they cost.

The games skill system is very well suited and balanced for hybrid characters, but there's the issue. They've nerfed destruction so that hybrid characters wont abuse it, but in doing that, it's become very heavily nerfed for people who need to rely on it.

I don't think any "spell" could ever beat dual welded 2742 damage swords. :laugh:

Actually feels like you're grasping at threads, conjuration is the only viable addition. everyone knows that.

Illusion effect levels cap off, Restoration damage and wards suffers the same problems as destruction, Alteration doesn't matter when you get one shotted. and no where near the 2000 armor sets you can craft with immunity to magic.

I know what you are saying a warrior with only warrior skills and just decent smithing(not grinded to 100 when you are level 10) is in for some hard time even as early as level 18. Boss enemies melee takes roughly 1/5~1/4 your health bar, I can't even think to attack unless I bash my enemy first to make them stagger because regular block doesnt stagger them. but bash eats up stamina as well as power attack. all this in expert difficulty. simply put with no enchantments/100smithing improved armor.weapons game gives some challnge to every class I think.

problem is at this stage melee has future. He can look up to levelling his enchantments/smithing to vastly increase his damage output. mage is stuck there, only to fare even worse as you grudginly increase your level.