I'm hoping when the creation kit comes out we can easily change the timers on these.. but I find that 30 50 100 base timers is too long on a shout that I might as well not use and just shoot arrows at things instead. With the shared cooldown I'm much better off using the detect life shout to help me find targets or Krii on dragons to reduce their armor.

I'd like these shouts to be useful but even with 40% reduction from in game effects, it's too long to use them even though they look cool, and they seem fairly weak even with inner fire buff and level 2 of the fire shout.

15 20 40 second timer seems more reasonable.

Whirlwind sprint I wish would go down to a 10-15s timer for rank 1.. I end up standing there waiting on the cooldown too much.

You are already in most aspects too powerful already in this game. We dont need our shouts to be enchanced.

I never used a shout for damage, they have other uses. Etheeral, Unrelenting force, Whirlwind, I say are the most used ones.
I dont need a fire breath when I can do 5 times that damage anyway.

The Shouts are fine.

I think cooldowns are too long for some skills. Also I am level 50 and currently the shouts do NO DAMAGE at all. I use ice from just to freeze enemies then beat them until they die. The damage for most of the shouts is low. I guess they expected that by the level of 50, I had maxed most shouts. Prolly have like 10% of shouts and dungeons explored.

You just reinforced my claim as it is. You don't use the damage shouts because the other shouts are much better.

Fire and Frost breath should be useful too, but I find their cooldown and low power to make them not useful.

The real problem is the shared cooldown, by using fire breath or frost breath not only are you doing a low damage skill on a 30-100s cooldown, but you're preventing other more useful shouts from being used. So either these have to be very powerful shouts, or they need to be on a short cooldown, or they need to not share cooldown with other more useful shouts. Take your pick.

Frost Breath is pretty pathetic but Fire Breath is somewhat useful, I only use it to damge bandits and other human enemies.

I tend to one-shot people with this... and they're weak...

...ok

As a pure warrior, those shouts, weak as they may be, are extremely useful in situations where an enemy is out of range. Given time and patience, i can take even dragons out of the air with them.

Also, at low levels their damage is absolutely INSANE. Up until level 10 or so, you can oneshot low-level bosses with them.

They just dont scale with level.


I don't agree with a mod that necessarily makes them more powerful, but it would be nice to have one that reduces their recharge time based on your level. You're supposed to be getting better at using them, after all.

ur kidding? I have all three words for fire breath and meditated on the fire shout to make it more powerful, it kicks the ass of most human enemies and comes in really handy when fighting frost giants and so forth.. And even if they were weak against most opponents, ever shout has its strengths and weaknesses and thats how it should be. Fire breath for frost creatures, frost for fire creatures become etherial to take damage but you can't deal damage yourself.. They all have their pros and cons..

Sure, the shouts are fine in your opinion, but all OP is really asking is that the creation kit allows for modders to modify the cooldown of dragon shouts. There's no harm in allowing a mod kit to let him play the game his way, as that really doesn't affect anyone but himself. I agree that modifying the cooldown of shouts should be an option in the kit and actually believe it to be a likely possibility.

I'm with OP, shouts should be a matter of choice in each situation, and, by now, even mark for death's dot hits for more than fire/frost breath, having a shorter CD and reducing armor.

yeah, theyre really pathetic compared to some of the other shouts; i swear i could do more damage with the basic flames spell than level 3 firebreath. they need a timer reduction or a damage boost; right now FUS RO DAH does about the same damage just throwing people into walls, not even counting the beat down i administer to their ragdolled bodies. i dont think the basic shout who's purpose is mostly to hurl things off cliffs should both be stronger and have less cooldown than theprimary damaging shouts.

Yeah these two are rarely effective for me neither.
Frost Breath creates a nice throwback making the enemy pause for a second or two and allows me to create some distance (Archer) between us.
But damage wise they're absolute [censored]e. I play on Master, been using both from lvl 25 to lvl 37 now, they've rarely been good.
At first they were fine, the weaker enemies got their asses kicked, but now, it isn't effective at all.
Maybe the damage shouldn't be upped to make it too good, I mean they are AOE spells after all that require no magicka and are available for every type of character.
Though the cooldown needs to be lowered drastically.
Cause if the damage is gonna be [censored] and the only usefulness of Frost Breath is the enemy knockback then at least cut it's cooldown in half.

I mean, if the damage isn't good then why have a long cooldown?
It'd be like in Dekaron to have a crapload cooldown for Self Heal. Hyper Heal and Fast Healing are then more effective and have way lower cooldowns seeing as how Hyper Heal heals in AOE and Fast Healing ups the HP recovery rate by like 500 or something.
Just doesn't make much sense to me. Hell most of the shouts feel very weak.
The Detect Life one was useful at first but now that I have the spell I dont' want to wait that long for the cooldown to settle in.

Overall, I'm kinda disappointed in the dragon shouts. They're suppose to be a language for the Dragons right? Ulfred killled someont by shouting right? The greybears(no d) who can't keep a balanced tone with their voice cannot speak as they'd accidentally shout.
And this is what they are? It's pathetic.

On that note, does that shout Fury something which makes weapons attack faster apply to bows as well? Cause I don't want to waste a dragon soul on a shout I have no use for.


[edit]

And I do not have any shout at lvl 3 except for... Some random shout... Throw Voice? I have Frost Breath at lvl2 though.
Anyway, if anyone wanna come with the argument "But you don't have them at lvl 3, they're really good at lvl 3!" then keep in mind that those walls are as easy to find as a needle in a haystack.
Maybe they will be stronger at lvl 3 but why should I have to ruin the suprise of finding a dragon wall and look up their locations on the internet?
So until then I'm going to have to dungeon crawl and look out for dragon wall markers on the compass.

i think they're fine, im lvl 30 and i have 2 words to each. frost is not ment to do a ton of damage, its ment to target stamina and slow the enemy, Fire is damage, and at 2 words with "yol" as my meditated word, i find it does a ton of damage, all the cooldowns are reasonable, cant be shouting every 3-4 sec. as above poster said, Shouts are fine

When you can 1 shot any enemy in the game aside from mammoths and dragons (even Giants) with a single arrow from stealth, you won't find firebreath to be particularly useful and will find it detrimental because it prevents you from using elemental fury, life aura detect, marked for death, and whirlwind sprint for up to 100 seconds.

I'd *like* it to be more useful than the basic flame spell I get at the beginning of the game when I encounter things like spider webs, or oil pools, or flammable gas in the air.

If fire breath was on a 10s cooldown, I'd use it when I saw things like flammable gas or oil pools, or spider webs.. with a 30s cooldown? No thanks, I'll use my basic flame skill, even though I'm a dragonborn and can supposedly breathe fire.

It would be MUCH MORE IMMERSIVE for me to use the shout, rather than use magic, as a pure thief.

Life aura detect shout is useful if you want to play a non magic user, I've been playing a pure thief, aside from enchanted gear (and only enchanted armor) I don't like to use any magic. I use potions to heal, and would PREFER to use dragon shouts for "magical" effects like fire, detecting life, etc.

Elemental Fury does in fact increase bow attack speed, it reduces the time needed to draw back each arrow, I think by 50%. It's very powerful when fighting dragons (one of the only creatures that take me more than 1 arrow to bring down at this point (level 48)). I can use it and then riddle the dragon with 3-4 arrows before it can take off if I catch one napping.(IE, bring it down to about 1/4 health if not kill it outright)

For me the level 3 of the shout even if it's more powerful damage, is not going to be worth the 100s cooldown as there's no way it's going to match my bow damage. But I do think it'd be useful to have "YOL!" on low cooldown for situational things where lighting something on fire could be useful.

But not if it's going to put other shouts on 30s cooldown.

1. I get that, but the shout is still magical, so why waste time with a shout when one could just use the spell for 2 seconds? That way you don't have to wait down the ridiculously long cooldown and it won't change your character very much.

2. Sounds good, guess I'm hunt me a dragon to unlock the shout.

Sounds a lot like the Destruction-underpowered complaints (which I agree with). Why is it that magical damage is the only form of damage that doesn't scale?

OH! One Caveat.. it doesn't work with enchanted weapons. You need an unenchanted (can be smith improved) bow to use with it. Actually that limitation helps with my immersion... using an unenchanted (but poisoned) bow with elemental fury shout.

I consider dragon shouts a form of magic that you being dragonborn, have access too despite no training in conventional magic. Therefore it's perfectly in character to use shouts but not so much in character to bring up your hands and cast.

Besides I can use the shout while having my bow out and ready to go

What is meditate? How do you do that?

Same, fire breath takes bandits/some human enemies out in like..one go. I mean I only play on the standard difficulty but still.

its part of the main quest

Damage shouts are underpowered as far as I can tell. They do not scale well at all, level and game difficulty wise. Utility shouts are much better. I would personally like to some balancing done to them.

If you think they're powerful, say what level you are. I'm level 48 and they're pretty much impotent. 2 word firebreath with yol meditated doesn't even take off 1/8 of a Falmer's health. Bow shot while not even sneaking 1 shots. The same mob.

Am I the only one that found 90% of the shouts to be kinda crap?

I just use the basic one, tbh....And the one that turns you into a ghost if I need to run from a fight or wanna jump off a mountain.

Useful shouts I've found so far:

* Fus Ro Dah (pushing people of cliffs is....entertaining)
* Elemental Fury (2x Scimitars with elemental fury is still the best weapons I have on my rogue at lvl 36 (and I have daedric artifacts, chillrend, other high end weps)
* Whirlwind (travelling without horse)
* Etheral (cliff jumping, baiting powerful attacks)
* Ice Form (CC!)


Anything else is pretty much novelty use on expert at least so I imagine theyre even worse off on master.