Agreed. Imagine if Warriors had it bad and everytime they mentioned how it was weak they would be redirected to this thread: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1279078-2419-armor-6399-damage-using-smithing-alchemy-enchanting-only-33-perks-329k-backstabs-post-3/

What a cop-out.

And you are missing the point. If I am a destruction mage, thst means I use destruction magic. Not enchantmenting. Meaning I should not have to use anorher school of magic to make destruction powerful.

Protip: no, they don't after they hit the mid 20's. Your health regenerates faster the more health you have. Once you hit 350 - 400, you almost never need to use potions again except under the most extreme conditions. You only need enough stamina to power attack 4-5x and extra for sprinting.

Those that also think that the "sword and shield" style does the least damage obviously like conforming to a strict playstyle, because on Master, you use sword and shield, and once you knock them down, switch to dual-wielding.

You'd think they'd realize why every mage-associated character tends to have both an alchemist's table and an enchanting altar near where they tend to be located...

They don't want to be active.
They want to play a passive boosted class.

In Dungeons and Dragons my Warrior wore plate mail and swung a massive two-handed sword. He had a bag with some food and a potion. It was basically auto-attack. A very passive playstyle but did lots of damage.

And I remember my Mage having a Bag of Holding full of staves, wands, scrolls, potions, spell reagents and a dozens of spellbooks. I had a familiar and I had to prepare for fights with buffs and traps and then use every spell I had memorized. He was very active. I didn't just cast Magic Missile...

There is a difference between playing passive and active. Final Fantasy Warriors basically auto-attacked while the Mages always had to go through and find the right spell for the right situation, even if it was never Fireball and it was always Sleep... I think that form of game play is lost of people today. They play games like WoW or Rift where all the Mage does is stand still and cast Fireball.

A perfect example of this style of play to me is 3 bandits up ahead. You cast a rune on the ground infront of you. You Frenzy the caster and let him get killed by the other two bandits. They come running for you. You Pacify one on his way up to you and the other sets off the rune you laid. You quickly paralyze him then fire a couple spells to kill him. Set up another rune and then use your staff to kill the remaining bandit before he gets to you. It's complicated, you gotta do it just right, but you're a Mage, you have to think.

My Warrior holds up his shield and swings when he can... So fun...

And you don't have to..
Use staffs..

Staffs benefit from impact even when something else in other hand.
Cast with spell in one and staff in other hand and win..

I think the system is great. People want destruction to have the same damage output as a warrior, yet sit back 50' away from any damage safely hurling fireballs at their enemies. Destruction magic should never be nearly as powerful as melee because it requires no risk to sit back in the corner and hurl magic. To be effective at melee you have to get in the face of danger so the risk/reward is balanced.

Also the game mechanic has a synergistic effect. To be an excellent fighter you need good armor, good weapons, and good potions, as well as good one or two handed skill. So to be an excellent mage you should need several schools as well. Gandalf used a sword as well as his staff and magic. Do fans get upset by this?

No one is missing your point. They are disagreeing with it.

The game provides many more perks and skill ups than are required for just one skill. As a rough estimate it seems the devs are expecting you to take something like four to eight. If you're going to take just one, while seemingly going pretty far out of your way to avoid all the other helpful tools the game is offering to you, and then complain you are not also reaching max power... well in my book that reflects a lot more poorly on your play choices than on the game design.

So basically, I can't play like i did in all other TES games.

Oh and conjuration/illusion doesnt' require several schools to perform well. DW/2H/BOW also have no over-reliance on a single exploit. Wassup with that?




What level is your mage? runes end up doing crap damage and will make you go out of magicka too fast on high levels.

The issue with destruction was it's damage ... not mana. But apparently if you drink 2 pots every fight even your dmg is fine

Enchanting is not a school of magic. When you confine yourself to one role, you're not going to do well at all. Consider for a moment your typical warrior. It's not just his one-handed daedric sword that keeps him alive, it's the fact that he's specialized into heavy armor, block, and smithing, all trees designed to increase the warrior's survivability. Without those he will be brought down by a single arrow because he doesn't have the necessary physical resistance to survive.

By using a staff in one hand and a spell in another you do only 5% less dmg then dualcasting but you spend only a 1/3 of magicka.
Therefore you do almost 3 times the dmg of dualcasting.

Its enough power to take down a whole room without a potion.
Without illusion.

The problem is the specific over-reliance on 1 school, and an exploit inside of it.

I have resto/alteration/destro - so did I make a wrong "build" for Master when not including enchanting?

LOL. What an absolutely horrible anology. Are you required to dump a bunch of perks into an entirely different tree just to get more powerful bows or arrows? No. You can do so and get better weapons faster and you can also make better than you can find. NEITHER of those are a requirement for Archery to function, and both are overkill on Adept or below. You continue finding better weapons as you level up. You do not continue to find better spells after you've picked up the last (terribly inefficient) Destruction spells around level 30.

exactly this. unfortunately thats too much for the poeple on this board.

Completely missed the point of my post...
Woosh...
Stop looking at the numbers ok?
Stop worrying about whether Shadowbolt does as much damage as Starfire ok?
Just for a minute... And just think about this as a role playing game... Just for a minute.

to be good with swords on master you MUST use smithing, and alchemy applies for mages. SIMPLE.

lol, I know how to play perfectly well thanks
My first character is a level 44 pure mage (no armor, no weapons). 100 destro / 100 conj, with alteration, enchanting and alchemy as minor skills. And no he does not conjure weapons, ever.

Yes, Destruction is viable, I didnt suggest otherwise, my point, directed to the OP, was that using potions to double/tripple spell damage does not make it on par with physical damage that can benefit from similar potions AND enchantments AND smithing buffs. Its not even neccisary to spent perks in the crafting skills to do it either if you are happy with lesser results.

IF one could smith staff upgrades, and IF one could use enchantments that increased combat spell effectiveness, then destro probably would not be underpowered compared to weapons. As it is, while destruction is perfectly viable as a pure mage (i.e. using more than just one school of magic and no physical damage), physical combat skills vastly out strip the scale-ability of the destruction school.

For the 7th time, use a staff in one hand and a spell in another.

Just like I said, creative thinking is frowned upon by the complainers regarding making skills even more useful.

*golf clap*

You really don't need to use a potion to begin with, just having the two thunder bolt spells in your hands with 100% reduced destruction is enough to match the output of an exploited daedric bow and surpass the output of an exploited daedric sword. The difference between a mage and a warrior (both playing under exploited circumstances) is that the mage doesn't have to get close to their opponents in order to do damage. On the other hand, a warrior has to get close and risks getting swarmed, disarmed by those bastard spawn draugr shouts, etc. I honestly cannot tell you how frustrating it is to have your weapon and shield stripped out of your hands before you get swarmed by 6 draugr wielding bows and swords.

your buiild is wrong due to the lack of one of the crafting types. sorry, i know they said play how you want but on master a crafting skill is not an option it is mandatory.

Different situations need different spells, chain lighitng is good against 3 oponents, hell even master level spells like lighting strike is better suited for that. Still just using a spell without any strategy wont get you far. Use vendor make potions and poisons to boost your dmg and get an egde against any oponent. Use the correct spell against the correct enemies, use AOE spells for more than one oponent. Use different spells depending on your mana situation and they`re efectivnes.

Man thats the problem people like you telling destro is weak becauseu they cant or dont want to play it properly and I dont even mean exploting, using synergies or secondary crafting trees. You want destro to just become goodlike without needing to lift a finger, yet you dont have a problem uppgrading your gear, enchanting it and drinking dmg pots to make meele build dmg scale as you call it.

Your saying destro svcks and everything else is better while you make a comparision of base destro spells without any normal gear, pots or poison used against totaly haxed meele/ranged builld using haxed enchants and haxed pots. Not only that your using bugged pots and exploiting the stamina bar bug to power attack as much as you want, yet you deny using 0 mana cast on 1-2 shool trees for the mage (while it is avaible without any exploits or synergies)

Your like a blind man saying the sun dosnt exist because you cant see it, and force everyone to think your way.

destruction is powerfull even without reducing costs to zero, tho is essencial to have a big reduction.
stagger is over the top but I rely more on paralysis anyway.
alchemy pots do boost damage very high, but I never really needed it before lvl 50 to do kickass dmg, but ofc its always good if unsteady reliability.

tl;dr: destruction is awesome, even without exploits alchemy pots or abuse of the stagger perk

OP, I'm coming to this thread late. But I think you made a great post with excellent posts, thanks.

I have not yet played a mage character, but mages where great in oblivion. I figured there was a way to play them despite the comments on the forum.

In Oblivion never relied on one particular magic school. And Destruction was kind of boring to me. I figured that if various magic related powers are combined skillfully a mage can be very powerful. And you pointed out how.

Other great posts here, in my opinion, for exampe: