For many days I considered Destruction underpowered. I shared the frustration experienced by many players who felt that casting destruction spells did basically nothing to kill enemies (even with Destruction perks). However - I have recently discovered that there IS actually a way to make Destruction very powerful (even on Master difficulty) and that not only is it very satisfying, but actually logical, balanced and more importantly - simple.

The single important lesson: A combat skill requires two other skills to be really powerful.

- For One/Two Handed weapons, you need Smithing and Light/Heavy Armour skills to maximise combat efficiency. The skill by itself isn't very powerful. Unless you use Smithing to make your weapons stronger, and unless you use Light/Heavy Armour to increase your damage resistance... you won't get far.

That same applies to Destruction. Destruction requires Enchanting and Alchemy to be powerful. And BOY does it become powerful.

1. Enchanting.
With the right enchantment skill, all Destruction spells cost zero magicka. Yes... you read that correctly. ZERO MAGICKA. Please stop and grasp the profundity of that result. You can actually legitimately enchant Destruction to no longer require magicka AT ALL. It becomes an unlimited, indispensable, perpetual source of combat attacks. You can literally just keep casting any Destruction spell immediately after each other, for an infinite amount of time. It's insane.

2. Alchemy.
Alchemy increases the damage of Destruction 160%. To put that into perspective, the spell Incinerate will deal 90 damage (when perked). Combine that with the highest Alchemy potion, and that 90 damage becomes 234....

Lastly..... The Impact perk. ESSENTIAL.
I can't stress how important this perk is. When you dual cast a spell (which doesn't cost any magicka at all and can be done repeatedly for infinite), enemies stagger. ALL enemies. Even Dragons. What that means is that you completely hijack their usual movement and they are unable to move or escape as you bombard them with spell after spell as they helplessly flay about, unable to fly/run away. Their death is inevitable. And they didn't even get to TOUCH you. Seriously... It is almost TOO easy. I play on Master difficulty and can still take down an Elder dragon within 20 seconds using the Destruction (Enchanting/Alchemy) combo.









TL;DR

In conclusion, with three simple steps, you can make Destruction ludicrously powerful:
1. Enchanting to reduce the cost of spells to ZERO, making them infinitely available.
2. Alchemy to make the damage very high.
3. The Impact perk to override enemy movement, keeping them stationary while you bombard them with spells until they die.

That is retared. I shouldnt have to rely on enchantments just to make destruction powerful.

Old news.

We shouldn't have to max out enchanting/alchemy to make destruction useful.

Of course you do. You have to rely on Smithing to make One Handed powerful.

You also have to rely on an Armour skill to make melee viable.

This is a great way to make it work. But most people think destruction should be destructive by its own, and use crafting to make it better, not to make it viable.

Anyway, that's a good workaround to mages for sure.

The problem, I think, is not exactly maximum possible power, but rather:

1. A Warrior can upgrade and enchant his weapon and go to town, battling enemies without pause with his sword equipped.
2. A Mage needs to go out of his way constantly to keep supplied with potions, and spend a crapton of time in menus pausing the game, switching spells and drinking down elixirs.

I am perfectly fine with it. I used to play stuff like Baldur's Gate when I was 12, after all, where most of the time was spent pausing the action and selecting spells. But I reckon other, more action demanding players, might not have been aware of this when they signed on to play a mage and are now [censored]ing to have things changed so that they can just spend their day throwing only Fireballs without a care in the world. This is a... valid... demand considering the relative ease of other specs, but it would somewhat disappoint me.

People need to stop making "Mage Guides" and telling people destruction/restoration damage is balanced

... only to hide the point they are making is to use exploits and other skills like conjuration :laugh:
It doesn't make you a "better" player at all

horray!! another one saying

if a + b is fine, then a must be fine

You DON'T.

Other skills are required to make it powerful, not useful. By itself, it can kill low-moderate enemies. Combined with enchanting and destruction, it becomes ludicrously powerful. Which is exactly how the other skills operate. You can't become a super powerful warrior unless you use multiple skills. The same applies to Mages.

Yup. 'Tis good.
The only problem I have with this is the need to keeping chugging pots, where melee characters can just do their thing once per item to get powerful.
I'm doing fine without the alchemy boost though. Takes a little longer to kill dem Ancients, but it allows more time for me to bugger up, increasing the challenge. More time to have fun with different tactics too.

What the OP is saying here is that you can create an enchanted item with a 100% fortify destruction effect on it, this way casting destruction spells will be unlimited.
To be able to get a 100% effect you'll need a high Alchemy skill to create a poition that fortifies enchantment skill, this way enchantments will be stronger.

I play one handed and I have to go with one handed/block/armor AND smithing skill trees if I want to compete on master. It is logical that same thing applies to mages.

We have all the tools we need and it just takes a bit of time to learn how to use them. That's how real life is too. Nothing has been handed to us on a silver platter...we have to learn and work for it. Awesome game.

:tes:

And people need to actually read posts before they provide stupid and useless replies. Because as I clearly said, Destruction DOES require other skills to become super powerful.

Which is just how MELEE combat works. You need Smithing and an Armour skill to become super powerful in melee combat.

That same rule applies to magic.


Now kindly read what a person has said before commenting, or kindly GTFO.

Every thread about magic:

"Enchanting and Alchemy are awesome!"
"No they're not you're cheating!"
"Nuh uh it's not cheating if it's in the game!"
"Yuh huh it is cheating because I said so!"

The Alchemy aspect is actually the least important. You don't have to do the constant potion-drinking thing (I frequently don't bother).

The enchantments combined with the Impact perk are enough to take down even an Ancient dragon in under a minute. No having to go into menus to constantly boost up stuff.

all my warror, on master difficulty, needed was to max up a combat skill and buy good enchant gears then he is unstoppable and still had tons perks left to spent to have fun, why do destro mages being forced to pick up enchanting and alchemy?

They're not. My mage went to level 38 without touching Enchanting just fine on Master difficulty. I had to use summons and companions, but I was still unbeatable with the Impact perk and a nice fat magicka pool.

If Master is too hard then drop the difficulty down to Expert or Adept why don't you. The game is balanced for Adept anyways.

Playing a mage should be more cerebral anyway shouldn't it? these are the brainiacs of Tamriel, if you didn't have to go out of your way to be powerful, you'd just be another hack and slash warrior with a different kind of weapon but the same basic play style. Mages shouldn't be on the same mechanics as warriors.

indeed

cheating or not, i dont get why am i forced to go into certain route while i never hear other class has similar issues.

A player with all the the good mid level mage perks and a few good weapons. Ie, Impact, ward absorb + the shield "spellbreaker", recovery and the readily avalible mana potions can easily create a lot of mana to blast enemies away. I'm level 39 and play on master, I'm continuously usly destructive magic, so it can't be all that bad.

You are lying, sorry.

I play on Master, and I have tried many skill archetypes. When using Melee against a dragon, unless you have strong armour boosted up (or strong weapons), you can be 1-hit killed. It is impossible to defeat a Dragon naked using a basic sword on Master, for example.

Destruction on its own is powerfull and with either alchemy or enchanting it gets super powerfull. If you combine both alchemy and enchanting it gets stupidly overpowered :hubbahubba:

Its just that ppl who whine destro is weak just want to become demi-godss without doing anything on they`re own. Meele need to upgrade they`re weapon and armor to actualy survive and dish some damage and its still lower than a mage. Meele actualy needs enchanting gear, broken pots and broken stamina bug to overperform magic. Even with all this playng destro smart gonna make meele seam the harder game style.

You don't need enchanting.
Look here!!

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1289508-destruction-is-a-cake-walk/

Since when has a single skill ever been a viable route to combat success?
Sneak has always needed a weapon skill.
Up front melee has always needed armour skills or you get pasted.
Destruction has always been useless without either enchants for extra mana or alchemy for top ups.The only difference is that enchanting is now a skill and in some ways is less powerful than previously.
Soul Trap 1 sec, 100 Drain health 1 sec, 20 Damage health 1 sec, 100 weakness to Magicka 4 secs. Sound familiar?