Agreed =/

Are the damage% perks even working i wonder? My follower kills a bear in 3-4 hits with her sword, yet i barely even leave a mark... Is Overchage even working too? I am playing on Master aswell... I guess they made it so its like Oblivion... Enemys end up having lolmygod hp... Either that, or perks are bugged~

Conjuration and illusion. Duel permanent zombies anyone? Or fury spells or paralysis or both. Sure you may do 40% less damage with destruction, doesn't matter when you have friends to do the damage and enemy's that can't move.

Personally I think melee is powerful yeah but boring, get a good weapon slap some enchant on it and whack away until everything is dead. Don't forget spells that work vs undead/animals like charm and turn-undead-aura-thingy.

I really don't see the problem, so you can't stand in front of enemies and hold down the lighting button past level 15, you may have to invest more into magic to be a proper mage then just destruction, you're a mage, act like one.

You know what's REALLY sad? My current bow does 52 damage per shot, and I only have two of five damage increasing ranks. It's also the second to last tier of bows. On top of that, you can add +25% to bow damage enchants to gear. I'm not sure if you can actually add it to every piece of gear, but if you can...come on, and that's not even counting the +20 - 25 damage per shot you can add with Fire/Frost/Shock enchantments to them. It's also so much easier to aim and actually land shots with a bow after you pick up the time dilation as well. I don't believe Bethesda really put much thought into what they were doing with the skills. Many of them just seem to be there to take up space to make it look like you actually have more (valid) choices than what there really are. Enchanting GROSSLY favors physical damage too. Casters get pretty much nothing but more mana or infinite mana in a school via reduced costs, but no real damage increases at all.

I also don't know why people insist on bringing up the fact that you have summons (or minions). Duh? They are also what is doing the majority of the work while you are actually the real pet here. Frenzy/Zombie minions do kill things, but so what? That's even more boring than what you're suggesting melee is, because you literally just stand there twiddling your thumbs waiting for others to do your work. Zzzzz....

Ok, this is just kicking someone while they are down. Look at what I just picked up.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/11/sillygp.jpg/

50 damage per second line that is aimable (you can stack it on top of itself) and has a pretty good reach. So where's the spell equivalent?

Magic just isn't good this game.

yeah =/

*sigh*

How well is Illusion in this game?

5000%? You're saying that you can get weapons to deal up to 1000 damage with a weapon that at the base deals 20? lol I think your math needs some rethinking. I've yet to see anyone one-hit kill a giant.

So .... you guys think that a character with one tree, Destruction, maxed out, should be as powerful as a character who has maxed out Smithing, Enchanting, an Armor, a Weapon and Block? That makes sense to you does it?

How about Destruction, Restoration, Alteration, Enchanting maxed out still not doing half the damage/efficiency as the one you just listed?

So basically...i'm screwed at higher levels on master for not going conjuration/illusion?

Illusion is incredibly powerful, due to the Frenzy spell. I use it all the time, and it saves me a lot of fights. Cast it to have enemies fight eachother. You then run in to fight the last man standing, although you do need certain Illusion perks for your spells to stay effective against higher opponents.

Also, with Calm you can take enemies out of combat. Fear makes them flee. Three different effects that have about the same outcome (crowd control).

I'm level 25 and I've had no problems with Destruction so far. I can literally kill anything by using double cast Firebolts over and over to chain stun things until they die. I can kill most Dragons before my Magicka pool runs empty. I'm playing on normal.

Damage should have increased with Destruction skill though and there should have been enchantments that increase spell damage.

Hmm.... Maybe i just need some new spells~

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaDLjI3qa28&NR=1

P.S: I dont think thats all of them either~ Also there is a hidden spell called Equilibrium which drains your health but restores your Magicka~

Umm,,, just no. In both Morrowind and Oblivion, any caster needs very little magicka in order to cast spells continually, or nearly continually. Trust me - I play pure casters. However, you have to understand how to create your spells properly, and many people make the huge mistaake of thinking that the size of the magicka pool is what matters. In those games, it's all about Fortify Magicka + Fortify Intelligence + spell effects, and constantly chaining spells so that you do not run out as long as you are casting. Size of magicka pool... hmm, you only need perhaps 50-100, just enough to start the chain.

That's not how it is at all. Enemies have more health, and strength, and magicka, and, I swear, they have better AI. I get detected much more often.

I play a stealthy mage.
No more going around one hit ko-ing everything with fire spells. Now you have to use multiple schools of magic to survive.

1. Drink a fortify Enchanting potion (assuming it stacks with the perks you've already taken).
2. Enchant a piece of gear (entire set) with Fortify Alchemy
3. Create a fortify Enchanting potion...

It depends on if there's a hard cap set in place or if the gains are linear.

Well "Destruction" is the primary offensive weapon of the mage... or at least it is supposed to be. Unfortunately, at level 18 I can still count the number of kills I've had with only it on both hands and that was snipping a few Falmer from long distance. I'm always resorting to melee and a mage shouldn't need to be primarily a melee character.

I've dropped the difficulty down and I'm still using melee in practically every fight.

Bethesda nerfed magic because of the shout system, they obviously figured the shouts supplemented magic. Unfortunately, I don't want to start the MQ until I finish the Mage questline so I am severely underpowered.


Bethesda needs to offer a patch for rebalancing of destruction spells. If a Khajiit can do 15 damage with claws at start, then novice spells should do 15/s too, not 8/s and the other levels should see a similar percentage increase.

Over-nerfed magic is a giant flaw in an otherwise beautiful gem of a game.

I cannot believe how many people are still stuck thinking magic is overpowered in this game. Just look to your left and you'll notice another forum section with this little gem posted in it:

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1266212-2469-armor-3199-damage-using-smithing-alchemy-enchanting-only-31-perks/

There is no equivalent for magic that I know of. Master spells plus the skill perks can never touch this damage and defense. Yes, what this person did was min-maxing, yes, you can play with a mage on master to the end, and yes, you can still have a lot of fun. However, there is no denying that the clear line of power is Melee > Bow >>>>>>> Magic due to +damage% perks, enchantments, and potions.

If anyone cares to argue with me remember that I'm not attacking the fun of magic, I'm only pointing out technical superiority in a mathematical system.

Wow. I knew there was a huge disparity, but that's just flat out insane. You could probably kill a dragon on Master difficulty with just 1-2 power attacks. It literally seems like Bethesda was asleep on the wheel with this one, or they screwed up a line of code somewhere, so the Destruction damage boost enchant either never got implemented, or it was just turned into the cost reduction instead of damange increase (like it should have been). It's bad enough that none of the spells are even interesting.

LOL. Seems like I just svck at this game. I can kill Bandits, but I can't kill Hagraven without climbing around so I could land spells and my atronach could attack her. Even the witches before were pretty tough. Without the atronach I would have to lure all of them to the camp where the soldiers could kill them. In OB I never had those problems. Even when the game was new to me. My observation is, that magic was indeed a bit nerfed compared to OB. Having only a set route to go (you MUST have Conjuration and destru. Taking not both of them and instead other magic schools means you are gimped.) to not svck seems not correct and is an indicator for nerfing magic.

It is like I said six months ago:
They have removed the magic from TES.

Skyrim's generic is the same as every other game out there and to top it all off poorly balanced on high difficulty and/ or levels.

I cannot believe how many effects we lost, and got nothing in return.
Waterwalking. Why?!!

There's not enough large flooded areas for that to even be relevant with the lay of the land. For crossing streams you can simply use the charge shout to get you 2/3 of the way across instantly. I can understand wanting it in just for variety, but it's actually a pretty trivial thing to be upset over in the grand scheme of things with everything else that's wrong.

No one ever accused Bethesda of being able to make games with fun gameplay though. For the TES games they only know how to make "pretty graphics" for you to travel through and lore. Most of the NPCs are dull and only a handful of the quests exciting. The actual gameplay is just horrible and they have never been balanced. Fallout 3 was probably their best overall game, even though it's not my favorite setting or style of play at all. Like every other game they have released, it will be up to the modders to fix it.

Are you guys using magical staves with your spells?

I'm only level 13 on my magician right now so I can't comment on the whole situation, but I can comment on a common theme: "You should use conjuration too!!!!"

Uh, no. I decided before hand that my character would use destruction as the primary means of attack. If destruction is not enough to effectively fight at higher levels, then the game is broken, plain and simple. I think it's a bit ridiculous to tell someone to use a totally different play style because one is broken. It would be like telling a stealth player to learn how to use two handed weapons if they can't effectively play with stealth attacks.

I'm hoping it's not as bad as I'm reading. I'm really liking my magician right now so it would be disappointing if they messed up that bad.

It's already disappointing to hear spells do not keep rising in power with your skill level. Isn't the whole point of a finite number of spells to avoid the ridiculous "higher level, clutter menu with higher level spells that make older ones useless" situation? Man I hope people are exaggerating.

Dont really care how much water there is.
It doesnt fit my Altmer mage to swim.
And Dragonshouts are not a supplement for magic.
My character is lvl 31 and hasnt started the main quest yet, nor should he be forced to.

These kinds of omisions are simply unforgivable.
Dispel, open, charm, waterwalk. Destruction reduced to elemental damage. Conjuration hollowed out to a mere shell of itself.
Compared to every other TES game, Skyrim's magic is bland, unoriginal, has little use and is just meh.

Saw this coming half a year ago when I said no spellmaking meant they took the magic out of TES.
Never dreamed we would lose so many effects as well and end up with.. plasmids.

This is the one and only major design gripe I have with Skyrim.
They made their name and fortune in a large part due to the original and customisable magic system and then they remove it in favour of.. what exactly?

Seriously unhappy.