A lot of you are missing the point.

I play a pure Mage on Master difficulty which is, unfortunately, about the most difficult I can make the game. The game is easy. Many of the skills and perks are extremely strong and the AI is extremely stupid. About the only risk in the entire game is a stream or AOE attack in tight quarters where they cannot easily be avoided. Everything else, from Dragons to Draugh to Giants can be kited and dodged by anyone with a modicum of skill.

With Conjuration most of the game becomes downright trivial. Soul Trap and a corpse puts you at Expert Conjuration for a few hundred gold and a little time. A bit more gold and you've got both Summon Flame Atronach and Summon Frost Atronach, so those aforementioned scenarios that might become difficult are once again trivial as either of those will make short work of anything up to at least level 30. All this is easily accomplished by the time you return to Whiterun with minimal effort, in other words at the beginning of the game.

The game is easy, even as a pure Mage. However Destruction is still terrible.

Destruction spells are weak and do not scale. If you focus on it and pick up the perks it does for about the first 30 levels because you can pick up new spells, grow your Magicka pool and pick up better equipment. That's the point where it stops, and even up to this point it is inferior to everything other than unarmed. Yes, the other magic schools have some powerful spells, but I can just as easily use those while shooting arrows as I can while shooting Firebolts, they are not relevant the discussion of Destruction. After 30 it becomes pathetic, the character becomes weaker while other skills become more powerful.

The problem at it's core is two things.

First, the spells cannot be upgraded, other than a couple perks there is nothing the player can do to improve them and these perks are inferior to those available in other skills. What would help this, and what should have been done, is if the entire Destruction tree had perks devoted to improving all of Destruction rather than a single line of spells. The result of this decision is that each line has basically four perks, and two of the spell lines are all but useless. Meanwhile Archery, for example, has virtually it's entire tree improving it, whereas in Destruction a Mage using Fireball has a good chunk of his tree being completely worthless.

Second, there is a serious lack of potions and enchantments to improve the damage and help it scale. While other skills allow the use of poisons and other potions, Destruction is severely limited. While other skills allow enchantments on both the armor and the weapon itself, potentially greatly improving their attack, the Mage can only enchant their clothing and need better enchantments to improve their damage. If there were a third point, it would be the lack of spellcrafting, but while I cannot understand why Bethesda refuses to reimplement what was a truly innovative offering in Morrowind, it's not strictly necessary to bring Destruction up to par.

All that said, I don't really care. The game is so ridiculously easy it's irrelevant. I'm relying on modifications to bring the difficulty up and introduce spells, potions and enchantments to help magic become what it should be. I've never played a Bethesda game that I enjoyed without modifications, Skyrim is no exception but it's probably closest so they deserve credit for that.

I was going for a necromancer style character, and I didn't put more than 3 points into destro perks so far because I realized this...you do a crapload of damage with the mystic binding perk, high level conjuration and maybe just 1 point into 1h weaps for the 20% damage bonus.

Not true.

Destro is weaker than all the other damage skills, and gets weaker as you progress at higher levels.

I agree with the OP, mage is easy mode. At level four I killed three frost trolls with dual flame. I was able to tank and kill a sabertooth tiger by using flame in my left and healing on my right. Im able to do all this before level 6, on adept difficulty. At this point in the game i do as much damage as my DW'ing warrior did at the same level, but without dying or chugging health potions. Oh and I haven't been using companions or summons either.

This.

I think the point made here is lost on many... it isn't about what kills fastest or what is OMGHAXORZ!!! powerful, but about what is fun... and I for one enjoy the toolbox the mage gives me and for that reason will play my mage whenever it suits me, some number crunching is nice, if only to know my limits but it is fun to solve problems though that method, and if you aren't having fun, try something different.

Destruction is fine for me in open areas where you can take advantage of your greater range, but in dungeons I found my destruction based mage switching to melee weapons too much to make destruction really worth it.

Thank you for dictating what is "fun". I did not realize that people cannot have "fun" by wearing plate armor and casting destruction spells with occasionally using melee attacks. Hmm, glad you let me know what is up.

Level 20 is low level in this game. Giants and mammoths are also not really difficult for archers or mages who can easily use kiting and terrain to never get hit.

Get to level 30-40 and face level scaled enemies that will actually occasionally hit you and that won't just die through attrition and exploiting bad pathing AI.

The more I read the more I'm convinced this is a very real problem. What were they thinking adding +damage% effects but nothing for magic? What were they thinking adding a variety of spell types but not bothering to make them get stronger as you level, making certain types useless later?

I wonder if they will do anything about it or if it will be left to mods.

You're level four. The problem is not at level four. The game scales and you're on Adept difficulty. Everything is weak. Come back when everything has 20x the health and you're still doing the exact same damage on your Mage but your DW is doing 40x the damage.

What's apparent here, is a lot of people haven't played any kind of a mage past level 15 on casual mode and think they have seen the full extent of the game's scaling factors with destruction or restoration on undead for that matter :flamethrower:

didn't say they couldn't, if you enjoy it, do it, if not, do something else, the whole problem I'm hearing is "while it's possible, it's inferior" which is ultimately not relevant to the goal of having fun, if you want to play in a way the game makes a little harder, move the difficulty slider down a bit and play the game the way you want to, all these people saying that mage on master isn't viable seem to miss the point of it isn't about power gaming, skyrim isn't multiplayer and competitive, it's single player so play it for yourself, not to make the most min/maxed character that smashes everything in sight in one hit, unless you enjoy that in which case go right ahead.

Again your talking about using LIGHTNING on a Machine which is RESISTANT to lightning damage. If you enchant a lightning to a weapon and hit one of those robots it does 0 damage. That is your Clue for not using that spell on them. Part of being a mage is being smart. An knowing what type of element to use on what type of creature.

No, you miss the point. A character like that is NOT fun at all, because it doesn't work. You're forced to play in a very specific way as a caster in this game. The freedom that once existed no longer does and Destruction just utterly svcks. Some people find fun using that school in pretty much every other game, but to do so in this game is a chore and an uphill battle entirely. It makes no sense to start out "sort of ok" and then your power caps out 1/3 of the way through the game and then it's all downhill from there.




Uh, no? The machines are super resistant to FIRE and FROST. Lightning is what you use to take them out.

I think the basic point is getting drowned out a little here by semantic arguments.

All of these "strategies" being listed can be used by a character that deals his damage in ANY way. Bows, daggers, 1H, 2H, etc. Destruction magic is basically another skill tree to "hit" enemies with...and it's terribly weak.

Nobody is saying it's not possible to play any magic based character. Only that the option to play the magic user that relies on destruction spells as his primary source of damage is broken. Saying "use all these other things instead" would be like telling somebody that wants to be a "ranger" but finds out that bows are too weak they should "just use a sword instead".

Destruction magic should be able to deal out damage at roughly the same level as the other "weapons". That's really all there is to it. All of the other strategy suggestions are valid, but can be used in conjunction with any other weapon of choice too. Destruction magic is simply a crippled weapon of choice.

The funny thing is that destruction is the ONLY school that does not scale as you play. You can drop a whole dungeon very, very fast as a destruction mage with a specific load out up till about 45. Post 45 and you are screwed.

Every Mobs resists are so great you just chip health while conjuration's scaling allows pets to take large chunks.

As a 52 Mage of destruction I had to revert to only using 2 destruction spells and stick to CC/debuffs while my companion/pets did the real fighting.

I also have a lvl 20 Necromancer. He is all about CC and allowing mobs to kill each other. I love killing 6 mobs then use my blessing to raise all 6. The best was when I had 6 guards fighting 5 bandits and a dragon showed up and killed them all allowing me to have my own platoon for a bit. Its just super cool and reflects how the magic system should work (too bad it not even a spell!)

TES was about creating your own playstyle. Its missing. There is a fun system in place but its drops you into groves instead of leaving the play field open.

ok, this I can agree with, the fact that destruction is poorly balanced in comparison to the other damage skills

I wouldn't go that far. You can't kite or avoid ranged attacks with terrain using melee weapons. Kiting is almost essential to playing as a Mage if you arn't letting something else tank hits for you.

The problems with Mages I think after getting two of them to level 30 are..

1. +Magicka regeneration bonuses do not work in combat. This makes them completely pointless.
2. There should be enchantments that increase spell damage. There are potions that do this already.
3. Spell magnitude should increase slowly as skills increase. Perhaps a 2% increase in magnitude per skill level up.



Can you play a pure mage in Skyrim? Sure. But you don't get many positives with the playstyle. Mages have great crowd control with Illusion and can use Conjuration to make meat shields. Thinking about it some more I would say Destruction just needs beefing up and Enchanting needs toning down a lot.

This. The ONLY way to play this game is the way that YOU want to play it and it always has been! There is no (you're not doing it right) issue here. There is no reason why someone who wants to play a primary destruction mage can't rely on - the school FOR caster damage??? If you want to focus on becoming a rediculously strong destruction caster, then there is no reason that you should not be able to do so provided that you take all of the necessary attributes in skills/equipment. The biggest issue as mentioned on several occasions is scaling for destruction spells. It is non-existent. That needed to be addressed yesterday! I only hope that they hurry up with the ck so that the community can get some work-arounds...

As others have stated, every branch should be able to stand on its own given its specialization. Of course other specializations will be used and enhance your experience as a pure mage but you should not have to rely on conjuration foe example for your output. Some people don't like playing with dead things.

Though I wanted to play (Started out playing) a destro mage, I'm glad I mixed it up a little along the way. I'm finding it doable presently, but I am still low level at the moment. I'd be pretty frustrated if I had aimed solely for a destro build, just to find out in the later levels he's no stronger than a wet noodle in battle.

I came to the forums to learn why the heck my Flame Atronach does more spell damage than me.

And why I'm better off conjuring forth a daedric bow, at 0 bow perks, than actually casting destruction spells.

I will now simply restart the game as an archer, because I can't get the 7-8 perks I've invested in destruction back, and kiting gets tedious.

I first realized that something was wrong when I brought a vanilla companion with crap equipment and she could slay dragons with ease, and now I realize why my conjured bow works so much better than my fire spells, and why even a non-conjured bow beats most my spells:

Destruction IS broken -- and not in the good way.

The only question on my mind now is, when the hell is construction-set releaesing

And screwed if you play on console. :laugh:

The same was true with oblivion. the only difference then was you had access to "weakness to element" that stacked. Now, its worse than the worse of oblivion and morrowind combined.

The new restoration damage spells against undead are probably screwed too.

Exactly! I also find it curious that they did not include spellcrafting but ADDED armor and weapon crafting to an already powerfull set of abilities???

Wow thats great to hear that you know about the entirety of the mage experience because you made that level 6 mage. Good work with that.