40 Sneak, most of the lower perks +35% sneak. The silent light armor perk. I backstab one random bandit for 6x damage and it took him down a quarter health. Wow, don't spend it all in one place. Then every enemy in the cave instantly knows where I am and bull rushes me. As a Warrior I can just go in axe swinging and be infinitely more effective, laughably easy compared to all the preparation needed to set up even one stealth attack that won't kill anyone anyways. I'm also on the hardest difficulty where stealth and magic just don't scale. Then I reloaded, set the difficulty to adept and lo and behold the scenario played out the exact same way. I don't know what stealth video's you've been watching but odds are they had the best gear and were playing on the lowest setting and with a super high skill to make themselves look badass. At that point though as mentioned any class will be badass.

lol, x6 damage ain't really a stealth dude. It's like a warrior trying to sneak. It's like casting novice destruction spells and say magic svcks.

Bandit outside of Riverwood at the start of the game in leather armor being hit by an enchanted axe and sword I found that were very powerful in a stand out fight. Good enough to take a dragur lord on at level 3 (with potions, kiting, other stuff ect). Dual sneak attack with 6x damage. Nothing. Sense of scale, might want to keep it in your arguments.

Melee > Magic > Stealth

This game has suffered Mass Effect Sequel Syndrome. Where the developers assume we're all a bunch of meat heads who wants to swing axe's around and drink beer, so in the interest of not wanting the lowest common denominator to feel left out they nerf the other methods of play so that the classical warrior archetype is way more effective. And to highlight their new combat system. If they even put half the work into magic and stealth that they did on the melee the game would be astounding. Even the dungeons show a bias towards melee/frontal assault style play. Hell even persuasion is screwed up beyond all belief. I can't find any easy way to level it up and it's so random it may as well be removed as a factor. They did a lot of good things, but made some critical mistakes in the simplification process. Namely they went beyond streamlining to dumbing down.

There's just no love for anything other than the meat head archetype in games this last decade. I wouldn't have a problem with it if it weren't so proliferous and making other roles inferior for the sake of it.

Edit
Often the ridiculous pretense of "balance" is foisted upon the loyal fans. It doesn't make any sense though given the fact that there's no competitive environment. Other than the rules of the fantasy world each character type should be allowed to become as badass as the setting allows without it becoming a cake walk. (two types of balancing for two different situations/games). I wouldn't care that warrior's are overpowered if Thieves and Mages got as much as warriors. Then it just becomes a matter of designing the NPC's to be a fair challenge. IE not supremely over powered efficient build a human might make. My point is this game is definitely the most meat head entry in the series (It's still good, but any designer knows you need to know your weak areas).

I don't know what you guys are talking about. I'm playing a pure mage Dunmer and it's awesomely powerful. At low levels, warriors such as Draugr would just swing their axes and miss while I backpedal/circle-strafe and hit them with the flamethrower spell. If they hit me, I'd backpedal and heal up. If I run out of magicka, I'd run away and wait for it to charge back (which is sped up by Necromancer robes you can get right off the bat.) Now I can one-shot Draugr and bandits with Fireball at level 16, and I think I'm two-shotting soldiers with it. The warrior AI is [censored] against magic. My biggest challenge has been fighting other mages or magical creatures, but they can be beaten if you start using lightning spells before they do.

Perhaps I just had too much experience playing the Pyro in TF2, though.

40 Sneak, most of the lower perks +35% sneak. The silent light armor perk. I backstab one random bandit for 6x damage and it took him down a quarter health. Wow, don't spend it all in one place. Then every enemy in the cave instantly knows where I am and bull rushes me. As a Warrior I can just go in axe swinging and be infinitely more effective, laughably easy compared to all the preparation needed to set up even one stealth attack that won't kill anyone anyways. I'm also on the hardest difficulty where stealth and magic just don't scale. Then I reloaded, set the difficulty to adept and lo and behold the scenario played out the exact same way. I don't know what stealth video's you've been watching but odds are they had the best gear and were playing on the lowest setting and with a super high skill to make themselves look badass. At that point though as mentioned any class will be badass.

I disagree.

I find it unstoppable even on master when your pumping out Daedra in one hand and slaying the enemy with Master destruction spells in the other.

If you are referring to the Dwoemer ruin that has you looking for an item for a Winterhold quest, that is the same place where I realized just how subpar Destruction really was. It's like there were some "tough" things like Cave Bears and Sabertooth Tigers, but for the most part the game wasn't all that difficult. As soon as I went in there though (level 20), the difficulty skyrocketed in a very obscene way. I'm not sure if that ruin scales somewhat with your level either, but I died over and over again in there against those Reaper type enemies, while the spehere guardians took forever to kill...unless I simply punched them. Your situation is exactly what I went through as well. It was almost like some of those "regular" enemies were as tough as the dragons!

I went through that at about level thirteen. I noticed that shock spells were the way to go, if that helps at all. I didn't find fire or frost to be as useful. I'm not even sure they were weak to shock itself, as much as I managed to hit more often while running and jumping to avoid getting hit. Eventually I just switched to dual bound swords, and found out that the bound swords absolutely massacred everything there even though I'd never increased my 1h skill.

If you are referring to the Dwoemer ruin that has you looking for an item for a Winterhold quest, that is the same place where I realized just how subpar Destruction really was. It's like there were some "tough" things like Cave Bears and Sabertooth Tigers, but for the most part the game wasn't all that difficult. As soon as I went in there though (level 20), the difficulty skyrocketed in a very obscene way. I'm not sure if that ruin scales somewhat with your level either, but I died over and over again in there against those Reaper type enemies, while the spehere guardians took forever to kill...unless I simply punched them. Your situation is exactly what I went through as well. It was almost like some of those "regular" enemies were as tough as the dragons!

The biggest disparity between Melee vs Magic is that until you spend a massive amount of time on "end game" enchants, your spells still cost you mana, and you'll need to forsake health/stamina to get it. Melee on the other hand do not need stamina at all except for power attacks and can simply go 4:1 health/stamina. If you pick High Elf, you already start out with five levels worth of mana over everyone else, and you may as well since the racial powers may not even be there they are so situational, and once a day anyway.




Nope. The vendors sell items based on your level/skill level. You should be able to buy every spell in the game (eventually) from Whiterun alone. When I went to Winterhold, I was assuming I'd be able to finally upgrade and get some awesome spells. NOPE. The only thing they had was everything I'd already picked up previously. It's rather stupid that you can enchant items to increase melee damage, but the only thing Destruction has is lolmanaregen. That 72% in the screenshot is actually on the low end of what is possible. Now imagine that on two weapons, both of which affect the other.

You can fortify Destruction. If I remember well I destroyed a Fire Mage Robe two times, the first time it gave me a Mana Regen Enchant, the second time a Fortify Destruction. (IIRC)

On paper, spells like Chain Lightning and Blizzard would be awesome. Yet how many times do you ever actually fight 3+ enemies to make use of those spells? You typically fight 1-2 enemies at a time, and Destruction is just utterly weak for that.

atm i am mostly at destruction magic....
lvl 10-13 or somewhere there

with destruction magic like 64....

i just chain lighting everything to hell with a few shots....on normal dificulty... so bored i am thinking of rerolling a new char becasue i am so OP

If you can get destruction spells cost down to near 0%, would it really matter? Could just use them anyway and dominate? (I've not got that far so I don't know)

I'm not sure you're understanding the problem. Eventually yes, you would be able to down anything. Eventually. Your actual "power" peaks very early on and it's all downhill from there. Unless of course you rely on summons, then you're golden; and pigeonholed into a specific playstyle. Even Oblivion, as awful as it was had more choice involved when it came to character creation. Not so much in this game.

This game has suffered Mass Effect Sequel Syndrome. Where the developers assume we're all a bunch of meat heads who wants to swing axe's around and drink beer, so in the interest of not wanting the lowest common denominator to feel left out they nerf the other methods of play so that the classical warrior archetype is way more effective. And to highlight their new combat system. If they even put half the work into magic and stealth that they did on the melee the game would be astounding. Even the dungeons show a bias towards melee/frontal assault style play. Hell even persuasion is screwed up beyond all belief. I can't find any easy way to level it up and it's so random it may as well be removed as a factor. They did a lot of good things, but made some critical mistakes in the simplification process. Namely they went beyond streamlining to dumbing down.

There's just no love for anything other than the meat head archetype in games this last decade. I wouldn't have a problem with it if it weren't so proliferous and making other roles inferior for the sake of it.

If you are referring to the Dwoemer ruin that has you looking for an item for a Winterhold quest, that is the same place where I realized just how subpar Destruction really was. It's like there were some "tough" things like Cave Bears and Sabertooth Tigers, but for the most part the game wasn't all that difficult. As soon as I went in there though (level 20), the difficulty skyrocketed in a very obscene way. I'm not sure if that ruin scales somewhat with your level either, but I died over and over again in there against those Reaper type enemies, while the spehere guardians took forever to kill...unless I simply punched them. Your situation is exactly what I went through as well. It was almost like some of those "regular" enemies were as tough as the dragons!

The biggest disparity between Melee vs Magic is that until you spend a massive amount of time on "end game" enchants, your spells still cost you mana, and you'll need to forsake health/stamina to get it. Melee on the other hand do not need stamina at all except for power attacks and can simply go 4:1 health/stamina. If you pick High Elf, you already start out with five levels worth of mana over everyone else, and you may as well since the racial powers may not even be there they are so situational, and once a day anyway.




Nope. The vendors sell items based on your level/skill level. You should be able to buy every spell in the game (eventually) from Whiterun alone. When I went to Winterhold, I was assuming I'd be able to finally upgrade and get some awesome spells. NOPE. The only thing they had was everything I'd already picked up previously. It's rather stupid that you can enchant items to increase melee damage, but the only thing Destruction has is lolmanaregen. That 72% in the screenshot is actually on the low end of what is possible. Now imagine that on two weapons, both of which affect the other.