Enjoy doing 50 damage at level 70

I can cast spells that do well over 50 damage at level 20, I'm not entirely sure why you'd not be able to do more than 50 damage at level 70.

lol my assassin could bearly kill anything!? wtf?

I find that dual-cast Destruction magic utterly destroys things with the Impact perk.

Step 1. Get Firebolt spell.
Step 2. Equip stuff to lower the cost of Destruction magic, as well as increase your Magicka regen rate.
Step 3. Dual-cast Firebolt on everything.

Impact makes most dual-cast spells stagger enemies, and it means that you can completely incapacitate a single enemy for as long as you have Magicka to cast Firebolt. Draugr Scourges, Bears, Trolls, even dragons. You're only limited by Magicka.

because there arent level 70 version of spells you get at level 20. So we have to keep repeating this? "spells do not scale"

And to the poster above me, that has been said hundreds of times already in this thread. Those posters were not above level 30-40 and I doubt you are either.

this balance criticism doesnt make sense for normal gameplays. What ppl are reffering to as 'endgame' material of rogue or warrior scaled to max in armor and weapon damage needs a lot of time and perk investment to at least mid 20s. Any person to do this thing should invest every perk he has earned to crafting skill.

the post that disgusted everyone about how chain crafting potion to make better smithing to make better potion and such creating uber armor and put uber weapon damage enchantments on it obviously needs its smithing and alchemy, enchanting skills leveled to 100. on top of those you actually need raw materials which the person who did the experiment obviously got by just typing in console commands.

Any player who wish to actually PLAY the game knows if you do this you're screwed. Until you get that final uber gears and enchantments you are weakiling without levelling offensive skills such as weapon skills or destruction and such. increasing 3 crafting skills to the max is going to level you up like crazy making enemies infinitely stronger than you. I invested most of my perks into actual perks that help me in fight directly(my shield and sword warrior. has some perks in smithing) and still have some hard time tackling 2~3 enemies at once if they are somewhat equal level of me. if i put all my perks in crafting skills I would pretty be just owned by some enemies. I probably would never find grand soul gems which I would need so many to follow that insane road to uber gear cause I won't be able to survive in dungeons that give me those soul gems. I won't be able to follow any faction quests at all. Although I too think enchanting is a must(i'm having pretty hard time playing on expert difficulty without any enchanting), this whole blalancing issue is nonsense cause if you actually play the game doing quests and not just crafting hours and hours on the actual stage where you can 'unbalance' the game comes quite late. Probably after 40 level I think.

we're not talking about difficulty. We're talking about destruction (and conjuration) spells not scaling.

Weapons can be made stronger with enchants, smithing, poisons, and gear (+one handed damage on a ring, for example).
Spells cannot.

+%dmg for destruction, +% damage for conjuration summons enchanting would be nice, or simply allow spell that you already have to "power" up to be allowed to eat more mana and thus do more damage (hold it for longer=yay I don't have to shoot a damn guy with 50 fireballs to kill him instead I can channel one to use half my mana instead!)

Magic scales so badly in the higher difficulties that you find yourself wasting all your magicka taking barely any health off common enemies then spend the next few minutes running away because recharge is so slow

I have not really played a two-handed build yet, and my only experience was tooling around with he conjured Battleaxe. However, dual-wielding is pretty insane. One would think that the hit detection would prefer a two-handed weapon, but that rarely seems the case and it seems like it has the same range as a one-handed weapon. One-handed weapons by nature deal slightly less damage per hit, but when you're dual-wielding, your power attacks are so much stronger, and if you have the +35% swing speed, you can alternate left and right swings very quickly and literally blow through any defense when you can't power attack through them. I'm not exaggerating when I say that it was cake on Master level after forging my Ebony set, and so I started over yet again playing a Conjuration dual-wieler. It's been even easier, although I am currently only playing on Expert and level 12.

The supposed "downside" is that you can't block. But it doesn't matter. Your swing speed can literally stagger any humanoid 1v1 and you kill so quickly that you don't need to block. The Mage NPCs spells are also much stronger than yours.


And replies like this by people who don't actually have any first hand experience are funny. There is no "Mage Friendly" gear. You can reduce the cost of spells to 0% for a specific school and also have a larger mana pool, as well as get your resists up to 85%. So? A melee character can get a similar/higher defense and their regular melee attacks cost 0 stamina already and a single power attack does more damage than anything a Mage can do in one shot.


So what you're saying is, a Destrcution Mage is REQUIRED to invest at least two points that are "a given" that they might not have actually wanted? Besides that, people really overstate how useful Impact is. On moving targets the bolt spells are not that hot until they are med - close range. At that distance, you may as well just use your dash shout and power attack them. Dual Casting is also horribly inefficient compared to just double casting a spell before that perk and rarely worth using until you have a huge mana pool or cost reduction gear.



Because your spells never increase in damage after 100 in Destruction and the +50% perk/Dual Cast perk. You can reach that at low - mid levels where your spells seem "really strong", yet they never get better after that.


Yet, if you've read the very first post you would see that my "Destruction" character was dealing more damage at level 20 with his fists. It has nothing to do with "endgame" and everything to do with just how low output Destrcution really is for the cost (melee swing for free unless they power attack) and on top of that it never gets any better. You don't even need ANY kind of enchants/uber gear to see just how far of a gap there really is. In fact, all you need to do is start a level 1 caster and pickup the conjured sword spell and use them in both hands. That's even stronger than what a "regular" melee character can start out with, but that's also what it ends up being like for a typical melee character in the mid to higher levels via perks and better gear, while the Destrcution caster is stuck in the past.

With all this talk of everyone saying how overpowered they are, I don't see the harm in a few more spell effects and some spellmaking!

Nobody is saying they're overpowered after level 40

I dunno at Level 12 on Expert I feel very weak. Any normal enemy isn't really a problem. But as soon as it's an "upgraded" enemy like a Bandit Chief or Restless Draugr I end up using all of a magicka and not killing them, leaving me to run around in circles. So far every level I add to my magicka, and still run out. I tend to use a lot of Restoration/Alteration. I like the wards, turn undead and oakflesh/stoneflesh. Then I fall back on destruction, which doesn't seem that strong. I admit, I haven't got the dualcasting/impact/ + damage perks from the tree, maybe I need those to be doing any kind of damage. But I really wanted to go for a more subtle kind of mage, so destruction hasn't been my focus. But still, if I run into a single Restless Draugr I use turn undead, then continue to use all of my magicka attacking it, and it still isnt dead...

Turning down the difficulty doesnt seem to make tougher monsters any easier for me either.

There also seems to be a lack the more imaginative spells as well.

i think fire needs to have a slightly longer DOT and that shock should have its base damage decreased but do extra damage depending on how much magicka it burns.

What I underlined is EXACTLY what I did and what was happening to me (and I was only playing on Adept level at the time...). I also made the mistake of picking Breton, because I didn't realize how low magicka you started out with and how small the gains were per level. Also, the powers don't really get used that much and 80% of the enemies are pure physical, so the 25% resist doesn't really matter (it helps sometimes of course, just not most of the time). When I started over as my melee character, I knew I was going to need *some* mana for Restoration, so I picked High Elf. They start with five more levels of mana for virtually no downside and that allowed me to put those points towards health and stamina. My current "Mage" is also a High Elf, but I have yet to drop anything into mana because I have enough to cast 2x swords and my familiar and my mana recharges fast enough that if I ever need to run away and heal it's there. I actually started that character playing as Destro again just to see if the larger mana pool mattered in the early levels. It doesn't really, although it also seems like the Flamethrower works better if you "tap" the spell, not hold down on the trigger/mouse key.

The lack of imagination for the spells is a huge misstep as well.

-No damage over time spells (this was huge in the other games)
-No point blank, high risk/very high reward spell (this is what you would use when enemies rush you)
-No gravity type spells - and yet enemy frost spells seem to slow you down to 20% walk speed while yours do not work that way.,
-No poison spells
-No multi element spells
-No stat buff spells (at least not that I've seen, and I never maxed Restore)
-No Drain spells (this was a MAJOR component to playing a Necro type character)
-No speed enhancing spells

And of course no Levitation or Waterwalking. Those don't bother me, but I know they are still spells that some people really enjoyed for either use or flavor. Mages can still beat the game on Master level if they choose a specific way to play. But that's the problem. Of course, they have an "easier" time on Adept/Expert, but the other archtypes have a MUCH easier time.


Cool ideas, although that would make Shock even more situational than it already is. I would also like the Frost spells to actually slow your enemies down (not just the frost version of the "flamethrower"), but they barely change the speed of anythihng. If the Fire spells had a slightly extended dot though, it would make Fire pretty much the ONLY spell you would really use except vs those that are resistant, because all you need to do is land that first hit for the immolation, and then everything else after does more damage until they die.

Another oddity that I've noticed is how your skills level in relation to how you use them. For whatever reason, Destruction levels EXTREMELY slowly compared to other schools. My first Mage didn't hit 52+ in Destro until around level 18 and I had the Mage stone active. My current character, who only ever uses Conjuration to summon his weapons and occasionally a low level familiar has the Warrior stone active and at level 11 my Conjuration is 52. I don't know if Conjuration has a strange "xp over time" effect or what, but often I'll summon my weapons and then 30 - 45 seconds later I randomly gain a half a bar from Conjuration. It doesn't matter if I've hit anything or not either.

I have found two items so far in the game that each add 20% to my damage but can't be disenchanted. I also found some potions that add 25% to damage. So apparently you could at some point craft and enchant danage and it was pulled. This is great news for modders. Makes their modding a lot easier to give mages the extra umph late game.

The thing is, you can't go maxing out destruction and expecting to own everything like in oblivion, i kinda found out recently.

Although im not really sure its destruction magic's fault; my gripe was with a sabretooth lion or whatever; i couldnt kill it after using all my mana. Same with dragons. ESPECIALLY ANNOYING with dragons. But its quite a breeze with most other mobs; melee and archer mobs are fun to bully with magic *idiot bandit miles away trying to hit me with arrow while i put my cross hair over him and press the attack button with a spell*


Conjuration increases at 6xp per use in compared to 1.2xp for destruction in oblivion, so i think they pretty much ported it over. And yea, i wouldnt mind so much with weaker spells if they'd make magicka regen faster -.- against bosses and dragons, putting on some crap robes and hood didnt really help me much.

realised i'd made 3 posts

Lots of posts about "you should have used conjuration, illusion, alteration, blah"
And to even come CLOSE to using them practically, i would have to invest perks to reduce the god awful mana cost by 50%. Otherwise *castcastcast* darn no mana time to run around forever waiting for it to regenerate! (magicka regen is bloody decreased during combat)
Meanwhile, for a warrior *powerattackpowerattack* darn out of stamina, no matter i can still attack even though im so darn fatigued.

My first and current character has zero perks in one handed, and yet i pack quite a punch when i resort to melee (when i run out of mana) compared to the dozens of perks spent in magic. Hell, at least 5 perks would be required for you to feasibly cast the spells in the first place; the novice perk.

enchants and gear solve the mana problem. the real problem is damage after level 40

The damage is a problem well before 40. I was only level 20 when I hit a brick wall. It didn't matter that I literally spent every level dumping points into mana, I would still only be able to get certain enemies to 1/3 health after spending ALL of it. I'm sure being a High Elf or wearing lots of armor that has +30 mana on it would have helped with that, but why do I want to be forced to wear crappy 0 AR robes with mana when my character was supposed to be in plate? Eventually I would have been able to just add all of that mana/cost reduction to the plate, but early on you can't. It would have also drastically slowed down the leveling of Heavy Armor, and I wouldn't be able to make it weightless until I am almost done with the game anyway.

Two points into Heavy Armor does more damage than Destruction at skill level 60 with +50% damage. It appears that when they said you gain a damage bonus from your AR of whatever gauntlet you're wearing to your unarmed attacks, they literally meant you get the exact AR for damage. So each fist was doing +42 damage from just generic swings and a lot more when doing the flurry power attack.

I powered on through the 40's without noticing my damage being too badly nerfed. Disintigration is an amazing ability especially late game. Meridian flame can really let you eliminate the worry about undead because of the massive buff to fire damage coming from them burning for 30 seconds (at least if you can catch them). The Flame atronarch helps for the same reason.

Your companions are useless for helping buff damage. No debuff weapons, they can't use poisons, The magic users almost never synergize with my spell casting. On the other hand as a melee person you have lots of options to boost your own damage and that of your companions.

Hope if we say enough on these forums about it they will expand abon it in the future DLC. I have seen several things in game that make me believe several magic features were cut for launch and we will see them in the future.

It's pretty disappointing, I agree with most here about that.

I'm wondering if there are some bugs that are preventing everything from scaling properly though. First off, as far as I can tell, + magic regen (one of the primary enchantments on all mage items) doesn't seem to work in combat at all. If this is a design choice it makes no sense, my feeling is that it is a bug. Second, there are several threads on these boards where it is proven that the destruction perks on not properly modifying damage on any spells past apprentice level. You can easily verify this yourself by looking at the tooltips for the spells...right now I can cast my apprentice nukes for about 1/10th of the mana of my expert ones and they do about half the damage. This obviously needs a fix, but its really scandalous that this big of a bug made it into the finished game.

In addition to the bugs, I think there are just a couple of other things that need looking into:
1.Casting costs of high level destruction spells: as a level 38 altmer mage who has put all of his level up points into magicka and has enchanted all of his gear for +magicka, dual casting expert level spells will deplete my mana pool in two dual casts. I'm not sure how this can ever be a viable build, when you consider that the damage output from these spells is probably comparable with bows for my level, but I am left sitting around in battle waiting on snail's pace regen to cast again (without popping ~ 3+ potions, you won't be able to dual cast another expert spell for the rest of that fight).
2. Spells should scale with gear, somehow.
3. I think everything got balanced around the destruction perk that staggers whenever you dual cast. This is an extremely powerful ability, and is overpowered when you use it with low casting-cost spells, as you can just stagger-lock literally any enemy in the game. This perk should have only worked for expert level spells (where mana cost would have balanced it) or something like that...instead I think they realized how powerful dual casting became in a vacuum because of this skill and nerfed the spells themselves accordingly.

It really doesn't seem like they tested pure mage playstyle much at all. If they had, I think they would have caught onto most of these issues. Pretty disappointing, considering how polished the rest of the mage systems are (spell effects, look of the gear, dual casting, etc.).

Everything you said.

You have to make some sacrifices for defense, whether that is using illusion and conjuration to take some pressure off or taking along a companion with you or developing armor and weapon skills for when your magicka is low. This is evidence of a good system, not a bad one.

So my "sacrifice" as you put it is being forced to play with spells from other schools that I rarely use, or don't want to use? How hard is it for some of you to understand that the CHOICE of how you want to play has been removed? Those that keep replying with "Magic is fine l2p" nonsense are missing the point. You are forced to play a specific way in this game and you are also required to heavily invest in the various trees to make them worthwhile. Melee only need to invest in the tree for their weapon of choice as well as smithing/armor. They are free to branch out in whatever other area they want because they have so many leftover perks.

Do you know what's stronger than a "Mage" that diversifies and spends all of their time sifting through multiple spells to slowly get through fights? A "Warrior" with enough mana to cast a Dremora Lord. Instead of having to make each fight some epic "strategic" struggle, or 5 minutes of stunlocking, they simply run up and power attack. Where is the sacrifice that must be made? Or hell, let's make it even worse and say they've also leveled up Alteration enough to have significantly higher AR + resists and the ability to paralyze.

What if I would rather kill by slinging spells? Oh, I can't...because sacrifices must be made.