Everything is overpowered with a maxed out potion... Who would want to constantly maintain their supply of potions though let alone drink one every minute?

Excellent example - I myself only view Mages using a staff in one hand.

No perks are wasted unless your min/maxing in which case your unlikely to be playing with destruction anyhow. All of those "near death" perks have upsides and downsides... if you blast something into ash you can't zombify it, likewise turning things to ashpiles makes necro lairs much easier.
Killing a foes stamina reduces their melee damage and makes your pet last longer too, which is why necros will use ice over lightning.

Amending my original statement, it's a perk there for fun, kind of the same reason one-handers have specialities for maces, axes, or swords. There are just a lot of options for people to choose from to try out a fun and creative build. This isn't an MMORPG where the bottom-line is maximizing your output, which interestingly enough, seems to have captivated a good majority of the people discussing destruction magic. Everything is geared towards maximizing this, maximizing that almost to a point people are more fixated on the raw number rather than the single-player game at hand.

@Sanctuary

I don't know, I don't question the play-style of others, and most definitely not the play-style of a min-maxer because it's clear where their intent lies.

min maxing? no wasted perks?
you cant be serious... I'm not a min/maxer but I sure as hell dont want to put points into perks that are not usefull... I consider them wasted perks, because perks are hard to come by and while leveling especially you need to prioritize...
placing a perk into either the fire or frost perk over ligthgning, IS a waste, it doesnt give you more control (not really since you have much better and more reliable forms of control) it doesnt save you mana, and it doesnt do more dmg, the lightning perk does 2 out of 3, it does more damage and it saves more mana...

taking that perk even after you have the lightning perk over MANY other perks that are actually lower in the tiers of other skills is also a waste, quite honestly I cant think of a single perk that I would not prioritize over them unless I had all the ones I wanted/needed.

its a fun perk, but it is NOT pratical or usefull perk, and if you want to zombify a mob, all you have to do, is not zap it when under 50-30$% health, no need for those perks at all... for that



honestly? anywhere but the lockpicking and pickpockting tree is good... no really, depending on what buildup you are following, you will have room for another good perk in another tree tht will give you much better benefits...
have an armor skill you using? invest in giving it more armor rating, giving it an anti stagger, removing its weight etc... have restoration skill investment? ALL perks here are better, even theo ne that restores stamina with your healing.
alteration? ALL of them are better, illusion? if you are going for illusion you absolutely will needs alot of perks here...

I honestly cannot think of a perk that is a worse investment in terms of efficiency/usefullness in any tree but pickpockting and lockpicking.

Yeah those low-HP bonus perks are kind of meh, I would certainly love mods that make them more interesting.

Maybe a passive Dot for fire damage, bigger movement slow for frost, paralyze chance for lightening? Many possibly for mods!


I honestly don't care about enchanting debate anymore, the regen mod I just got fixed my issues and I still have to properly manage magicka without exploiting. I can play my playstyle just fine and fun now.

I amended the original statement, look at it if it matters to you. My original statement though, was more directed to pure destruction mages, those who refuse to spread their perks out into another school except for destruction. You touch upon the other schools as a worthy investment, however, I established that in some of my previous posts. There are those that continue to debate that investment and herald destruction as their only school of magic for speciality.

The lightning low-hp perk is quite good it triggers at 15~20% causing instant-death(even to a dragon) which can be useful on master since many enemies have tons of HP.

lol yeah those are usually the ones that say destruction is "broken", they can and should just use the noob mods and not give it a second thought >_<

but yeah I have both perks on my 52 mage, because I wanted to try them out and though they were fun, and they are but if I was doing another caster with destruction, no matter the buildup I would not pick them over any other of the perks that are usefull for that buildup, unless ofc, I wanted to have the fun they give, by wasting the perk points

Yes, everything can be made broken when you apply crafting. The game's whole combat system is a mess of overpowered and exploitable things.

Non-exploited destruction is still significantly worse than non-exploited melee/archery though. And no, you don't actually need smithing or enchanting to do well with melee or archery. You don't need any extra skills for success with archery, really. Melee admittedly you probably need armor skill/perks on higher difficulties - or sneak. They're also superior choices in combination with most other skills than destruction is, sneak has synergy with archery or one handed, illusion has synergy with sneak, conjuration has synergy with any weapon skill, smithing has synergy with armor and weapon skills, etc. etc. There are very few ways to enhance destruction through other skills, pretty much only enchanting and alchemy and those are bother overpowered when it comes to buffing any skill.

Your non-exploited meele without smithing, enchanting and alchemy does less dmg that a non-exploited destro without enchanting, alchemy and smithing.
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1283497-destruction-versus-one-handed-statistics/page__view__findpost__p__19434212

Part of it is also play style.

However, once again we have people who prefer melee trying to claim that max damage is what matters. No, it does not. Finishing what is trying to kill you is what matters. It doesn't matter if you kill it 1000 points about its health and I kill it 1 point above its health. It's still dead, and that's all that matters. I hope this closes the case, as another poster (mistakenly) claimed.

Oh, and as others have pointed out, being at range PLUS doing AoE rather than single target sort of matters in many contexts. Otherwise, you have "wow, I really plastered that one enemy! Oh crap, I just died from the other 3!"

Just to say from low lvl PoV. I tried literaly dozen different destro mage builds. Always to lvl 10 or so, always trying to figure out the right build that would be suitable for dead is dead gameplay. The best I tested was 1:1 health:magicka destro/resto/1h build. Still died with it several times in various situations. So for a change of pace I tried conjuration/archer/1h/resto. Long story short lvl 11 and so far 0 deaths.

From my PoV destro is ok, but ANY of the other dps styles, be it archery or 1h/2h or conjuration, is just better. The only thing I appreciate about destro is aoe and lightning attacks.

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