The discussion is based on some "dishonest" assumptions.

Which include the fact that you can't improve magic anyhow through enchanting (not true, just not in the way you do with melee damage), and that meleeing a troll with a greatsword is the same thing as casting spells on him.

Sadly, damage isn't everything you need to account for when balancing abilities. And this is what makes the "you can use all your tools, not just Destruction spells" argument sound.

You can't directly compare the damage of a melee swing and a spell and call it a day. A spell hits from range, often with additional effect. It can deal sustained damage. It can stagged. It can slow. It can enable kiting. It often requires less time than cocking and releasing an arrow. Also, warriors don't get more swings over time, and stamina doesn't increase at the same rate as magicka. The cost and frequency at which you can use spells IS an increase in effectiveness.
A smart Destruction mage will start damaging its target well before a two-hander wielding barbarian engages in melee. He will have tools to stagger his target before it gets to him, he has tools to disengage if things go hairy. He can slow the target. He can freeze it.
He can kill it before it gets to him, while the warrior is forced to trade blows. He can damage multiple targets at the same time, something only a two-hander expert can and at worse conditions. He can single out targets and crowd control the rest.

And I'm not even mentioning evocations or conjuration. Now, imagine if said mage was dealing the same damage per second the warrior is, on top of all of that. The advantage of range, of exploiting elemental weaknesses, of staggering/slowing/freezing/stopping enemies, on top of the same damage.

Now, of course, you may say "I have no interests in those tools, I want to be a pure damage mage". Ok, fine, but if Bethesda gave you what you want, a smarter mage than you will use all his tool AND enjoy the increased damage, and that would be overpowered.
The only way to balance out a mage dealing as much damage per second as a damage oriented warrior would be that of locking said damage abilities at the end of multiple perk trees that don't allow the Destruction mage to get anything else and anyone else to take said perks. It's impossible.


It's really not a complex argument, guys. A sword is a sword, and does only one thing. Damage. Magic has dozens of different advantages over that, on top of unmatched flexibility. You can't ask for the same damage with a straight face.

And the REALLY fun part about wards is that if they break while you're casting them (which is basically as soon as you press the button to cast them), then you get staggered.

Yeah, don't even bother using them against a dragon. You'll get staggered to death and die.

You do know a warrior can use conjuration too...right?

Currently all damage skills do considerably more damage than destro and higher efficiency at higher levels. They can all take conjuration.

Oblivion had this same problem really but it seems to me that most people are attributing this problem to Skyrim. Spell creation wouldn't fix anything, in OB I could only create destruction spells up to the cap and usually with insane magicka costs that didn't do much by themselves. Combine destruction with alteration or enchanting (for extra damage bonuses), its working just fine for me and I'm level 43, I've barely even scratched conjuration.

Even more fun? Enemies don't seem to take spell damage when their staggered from you shattering their wards. Or is firebolt just that slow?

But but but he wants to be a pure warrior!

Or are you suggesting that using all tools in your arsenal makes you stronger?


And you're ignoring the crux of the argument. Shooting fireballs that deal area of effect damage from 60 yards of distance while staggering targets and sending them flying probably shouldn't do as much damage as swinging a two hander in melee.

I wish magic would scale, i'm on xbox so I can't get mods.

Enchanting gives no extra damage bonuses.

No, he'll be fine. Your fury spell will easily get resisted by the 85% magic resist he can put on his armor.

Yes indeed. The only damage bonuses possible for destruction is the perk and using alchemy, whereas warriors can use enchanting, alchemy, smithing, and a much larger array and strength of perks.

Saying a pure Destruction mage should be perfectly viable is like saying a warrior who's only focus is on two handed is viable. To be truly effective at lvl 50 the warriors are going to need high skills in some form of armor and smithing/enchating. Not only do they need the skills to be high, they need to actually use them. A mage isn't going to reach lvl 50 if they only use destruction anyway.

You speak the truth sir

Right sorry, not what I meant. It gives you more fire for your money, works just as well.

All this talk about Conjuration being really usefull and powerfull is awesome no i want to play as a Mage. Conjuration is usually not done very well and it's one of my favourite aspects of a Mage .

What customers want is what a game developer should focus on. Balance is one of these things, even in single player games.
In Dragon Age 1, mages were incredibly brokenly overpowered. People complained.
In Dragon Age 2, mages were brought in line to be more reasonable compared to the other two classes(numerous mistakes were made in DA2 IMO, but the classes were fairly well balanced).
Both DA games have difficulty sliders that can be adjusted.

Simply put, this is not wasted development hours if it's something that your paying customers want from your game.

The issue with that logic is that a warrior need only use one damage skill (two handed, in your example), whereas a mage would need to use a second damage skill (conjuration) to be able to try to compete, which is exactly the issue we're having.

I don't think people are saying that you should be able to play with only destruction and not cast a single spell from any other school and still succeed, but destruction, being a damage skill, should be able to perfectly fill the role of the primary (or ONLY) damage skill. Warriors can easily get by using only one weapon skill, so why must mages use two?

Persuasion check, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu8DJnR9zNw

I think the game ends at level 50 as far as Bethesda is concerned. That would explain why mages suddenly hit a wall when unscaled destruction gets too weak and illusion doesn't work at all anymore. I'm not sure about destruction damage scaling (cost already decreases per level) but it's clear mages need better "endgame" spells.

Do correct me if I'm wrong, though!

I think a fix like tying scaling with magicka levels, or simply scaling all destruction spell damage with one's destruction skill, in addition to adding a +x destruction damage effect to enchanting (it already exists in alchemy). This would allow a mage to make destruction clothing/armor that helped their damage out, in addition to their spells being stronger due to their scaling based on skill level.

I've just deleted about a billion and one slices of nerd rage from this thread. Any more personal swipes, bickering, insults, etc. and I'm fetching the banhammer and it won't be pretty.

You made me miss 90210.

I hope you're proud of yourselves.

I love you too, Princess.

There aren't +x% destruction damage mods? :S Haven't played a mage beyond 15 or so myself, so I'm somewhat ignorant.

That's crazy.

I read the first 4 pages.

Mages say, for a mage you should only need destru to kill things and bring the example of warriors. So those cool warriors only use "weapon type" or do they use weapon, armor, smithing and enchanting?

I can answer you: The warriors use smithing to make their items, enchanting to put in kickass enchants. They also specialize in one armor class and weapon type. That are 4 skills related to combat (Okay, only 2. 2 others are indirectly related). As a mage you say I only want to use destru. See the fault? As a mage, you also should use more than destru. Try smithing and enchanting like warrior, or use more spell schools.

Alright, I've seen enough of this debate.

I'm a warrior, but I'm not afraid to use magic once in a while. I've seen how magic can be underpowered, but at the same time. You guys are bit**ing about spells not doing as much damage to higher level creatures that likely have resistances to certain magics, and some of you are continuing to use low level spells. A level 50 mage has come on here multiple times stating Destro does fine damage when using high level spells strategically.

The big issues I have is, how many of you are playing on the hardest difficulty? I dont understand the people who immiedantly crank the game up to the highest difficulty and then whine about it being too hard. Your not proving anything to anyone, your not getting anything for it except a fake acheivment or trophy. You dont need to have it on high, turn the difficulty. the. [censored]. down.

I admit, I was going to have my second character be magic focused, my first real attempt at it in any of the modern Elder Scrolls games, hearing about the issues, I know it's going to be tough. I was pretty dissapointed to hear about hand to hand being nerfed, as I was going to do one of those characters too.

Something you guys dont seem to be grasping, is this. You guys keep saying "It's worked in every other game! We could do it in the last game!"

Hold onto your hats guys, i'm about to blow your mind, but did you think, that maybe when bethesda made this game, they thought,

THIS GAME HAS CHANGED THE FORMULA.. YOU NOW CANT PLAY LIKE THAT, YOU NEED TO USE MULTIPLE SKILLS TO BE GOOD AT THIS GAME, OR YOU WILL DIE LOTS. ADAPT.

Maybe not, maybe they did screw up, but maybe you might need to start thinking that this was their plan. Hopefully they can fix it up so it's more fair to destro purists and maybe a DLC will have spell making in it.

There are potions, but I haven't found any alchemy ingredients with that effect on them yet if they exist at all. And warriors don't need +damage potions to do extreme amounts of damage. Since it IS an effect in the game though, should be fairly easy to turn it into an enchantment or make a mod that makes destruction scale up with skill level. Mods all around!....except for console players. Hopefully Betheseda patches it for those of us who can't play Skyrim on PC.

I don't see anybody saying they want to use only destruction... Apparently you cannot enchant +% magic dmg on stuff (unlike +%one-handed, +%bow etc) so there's clearly a lack of parity when it comes to enchanting. Yeah, mages can enchant +magicka or +regen, but their complaint is that their spells don't really do anything, not that they can't cast enough of them.

At least that's how I understood it