I have read everything you just wrote. Yes you are right that a mage can not just take destruction, and only destruction and be viable. No one was saying that.

Using alchemy to improve the damage your spells do is fine and dandy, but you shouldn't be chugging them on EVERY FIGHT.

What I am trying so very hard to do, is to get people to understand this one little thing. Destruction magic, a school of magic who's only purpose is to deal damage, thats IT, isn't the most damage dealing magic. Its as if heavy armor was less protecting than light armor, which is absurd (assuming both were equal in perks). It just should not be. Destruction should do more damage than twin dremoras at 100 destruction because the dremoras do damage, distract enemies, and act as tanks. Destruction magic does damage, end of story. Destruction magic should do more damage than 100 illusion, but no, I can frenzy the "boss" of the room so to speak, and he'll clear it out for me, leaving himself heavily wounded in the process, and thus, easy pickings. I just want destruction magic to be as effective as the other schools considering how much magicka the spells cost.

Diebysword, read this part of the post. Note the bold, italicized, and underlined part:


Now, let's jump to the endgame, and no enchantments(single skill only.)

One handed Mastery Weapon Stats(All Perks): Daedric Sword x2 (100 damage per hit, 300 damage per power strike, power strikes now take 75% of previous stamina and stamina meter is much larger. Assume 500 stamina(most points into stamina) Assume 10 power strikes before depleted: Total damage before depletion: 3000 damage, then damage drops to 100 damage per second)

Destruction Mastery Spell Stats(All perks): Lightning Storm Dual Casting (112.5 damage per second, 59 magicka per second. Assume 500 magicka(most points into magicka), lasts for about 10 seconds, for 1125 damage. Magicka regenerates at 3% per second, base, resulting in 28.125 damage per second once magicka is depleted.)

If you might provide some examples of what takes 10 shots to kill with destruction on even Master difficulty my good man?

I must be doing something wrong.

Well thank god for mods, I no longer have to cheat with enchanting. Taking out the entire magicka bar? Yeah, just as intended as the oghma infinium exploit.

Forsworn briar-hearts. Though I promise you won't get one master destruction spell off before they kill you. And in all honesty, its probably 8 or 7 shots really. But then your OOM and his hagraven wives, the 4 archers, and the other forsworn are going to put their mourning on hold while they do horrible things to your body. Now if you're inside a cave, you only have to worry about his hagraven wives.

Draugr Deathlords come to mind. Oh and 14 dualcast thunderbolts for a "Draugr Death Overlord" at master.

Read the link in my signature. It has math, ye be warned.

erm... did you take into account that enemy armor reduces melee damage but not spell damage?

I thought this was an open world do as I please game? Sounds like you want me to play your game, by your rules. When do I get to play my game as I please, by my rules? As a Destruction mage? Not a battle-mage, not a Conjuration/Alchemy mage but a Destruction mage? hhhmmmmmh, when?

P.S.

And not a "take advantage of the system" Destruction mage!!

I'm getting kind of tired of people calling enchanting an exploit, its getting pretty hard to take you people seriously instead of just complainers. But I'll forget you keep calling it an exploit for a moment and pretend that you have enough destruction enchantment to justifiably call yourself a destruction mage. If you can only cast 4 incinerate then you are quite certainly not a destruction mage.

So to your scenario of having 3 deathlords in the room, which is not a big deal for me, very easy to deal with. Destruction is not a defensive magic school there should be no expectations of it defending, thats what armor/illusion/alteration is for. Personally I would pacify them all, followed by frenzy and cast about 5 fireballs at their feet with lightning cloak up.

Done. Not even 1/3 my mana bar is gone.

Next?

Enemies don't have enough armor for melee damage resistance to become noticable, unless they are blocking the shot, but honestly, you probably won't be able to tell even then.

If regular melee swings took stamina, we may very well be singing a different tune in here, and enemy damage resistance could be a bigger concern, but as it stands now, its not even a factor. (plus lets not forget the perk for using maces)

Hoki, no one is calling enchanting an exploit. Making your magicka bar irrelevant however, is an exploit. The confines of being a mage have always been watch your magic bar, and don't get hit. For following this, you were rewarded with high damage. Now you don't get high damage, and you must still contend with the 2 limitations. Removing one limitation however, doesn't increase your damage, just your longevity.

Get used to it, because it actually is. Someone shouldn't be required to exploit enchanting just to perform on master.

Conjurers, bow, 2h, 1h certainly don't have to.

Didnt notice that fine pice of calculations that is some paragrafps before the FINAL conclusion nice one my bad here.

First the calculations are not ok because we are comparing DPS ( dmage per second not a hit) you can swing one sword per second so the dmg per second is only 100 hp, 150 hp per power hit.
Second hes compairing 500 stamina to 500 mana, that is incorrect in principle because meele needs health or its gonna get one shooted close range. This one line makes the comparision void.
Third problem is the dmg value of that sword. It might have got upgraded with smithing gear because the base value by uesp wiki is only 14 for deadric so even with 100% arsman to base value + 200% to upgrade value it might be tricky to get. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Weapons

Even with this flaws in the end we get 100 dmg meele < 112.5 dmg destro.

Its about the DPS, not the damage of a single vaccuum attack This takes into account resource and time and power attacks.

100 vs 28. 3k burst burn vs 1k burst burn.

There is very very few people left who actually think destro does more dps than DW, and those people are factually wrong.

No damage dealing skill, should be reliant on another skill in order to deal damage. End of Line.

1H doesn't need enchanting to scale, nor does it need smiting. Skill goes up, damage goes up, oh wait, that's right, it doesn't work that way for destruction spells, only. every. other. damage. skill.

Face it man, destruction is broken, can you mickey-mouse ways into making it viable? Sure.

Fact of the matter, is playing a destruction mage is not fun.

Playing a 2h weapon user is.

Playing an archer is.

Playing a dual wielder is.

Playing a sword and boarder is.

I actually started to dislike Skyrim almost as much as I hated Oblivion because my first character was a destro-mage, ive since re-rolled an archer(an archetype i generally hate on principle, but there no other range dps skills) and am having alot of fun playing the game. I wont go back to a mage until modders have fixed the game, just like they had to do with Oblivion. And thats not even getting into the BS of no spell creations and the lack of utility spells.

There was no smithing used in that calculation. That is the weapon damage once you factor in perks and the damage increase from your weapon skill once you reach 100 skill. There is a separate calculation that includes smithing, one that includes enchanting, and one that includes both enchanting and smithing. It's not 150 hp per power hit because you can use BOTH weapons to power attack at once, doing more damage than a regular power attack with only one weapon. Once again, read his whole post very carefully, it is correct, and it explains everything.

Lets make it simple. Every damage skill out DPS's Destruction, and they don't require powerleveling of enchantment to be viable. Infact, no other skill has such a over-reliance on exploiting another skill to be "viable".



Thats all that needs to be said.

No it wouldn't. Tbolt deals 200 damage with 2 second cast time and has huge mana cost, making 4x enchants for 25% mana reduction must have. 1h mace daedric mace with 100 smithing deals 110 damage and that's 260 with 4x 40% damage enchants. With dual weapons you get huge attack speed bonus and 50% bonus on power attacks, so when you charge with critical charge perk you will have a guaranteed critical hit for 500+ damage with 75% armor penetration.

Destruction svcks, deal with it.

Add in that physical attacks mesh with more skills it ends up being absurd. Team its not all about destruction fail to notice how well a bow/sword/dagger mesh with sneak, how they benefit from all the craft skills etc. Sure destruction mage can have a summon out or a illusion but it does nothing to improve his destruction damage. For physical attacks, the supplementary skills are useful on their own and do something to improve the attacks.

And while enchanting is may not be an exploit stacking magic reduction is an exploit IMO. Given how easy it is to swap gear even in the middle of a fight, it becomes clear how bad stacking these enchants become because all spells will end up being 0 magicka and given that every level up you have a decision to make, oh where do I put my 10 points it would be silly to think that bypassing that entire mechanic was intended.

http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=611
http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1236
http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1216

You are wrong. Base value of deadric sword is 14. Add to that Arsman 100% and you get 28 dmg. The weapon was obviously smither with a perk in deadric that gives 100% to upgrade value from smtihing 5/5 and 100% to upgrade value from deadric smithing. Dunno if there was any pot or smithing gear used because I dont know the upgrade values and the math to it so I will believe its 100 dmg.

What we get:
Were using a crafting tree to boost the weapon not only the dmg tree for that weapon like with destro. Comparision isnt fair - first fail.
Power attacks swing one blade then the other that 2 sec attack, one swing takes one second. Dual attacks gets 50% bonus thats why I say power attack per second is 150 hp - second fail.

Conclusion:
If we take in by normal attack values 100 meele dmg < 112.5 destro dmg
If we take it by power attack then 150 meele dmg > 112.5 desto dmg

Still this is:
* disregarding the unfairnes of using 2 skill tree to boost meele dmg vs 1 skill tree.
* disregarding the disintegrate perk shock attacks have ( enemies with health lower than 15-20% insta die)
* disregarding the spell chain lighting that deals dmg to 3 opponents at once.

Destro does not do more DPS than DW. Infact it is probably the biggest DPS gap in the game. This is a recorded fact, and anyone who has tried both also knows this.

What are you still going on about?

I dont negate the fact DW does more DPS if combined with other trees like smithing alechemy enchanting.
What Im saying is base meele only using meele tree perk is less DPS that base destro using destro tree.

I've been saying this from the get go. My mage is a beast on master at 40+.

No it isn't, base destro has this thing called magicka that runs out. He's taking that into account, as he takes stamina into account.

its 3k burst and 100 dps vs 1k burst and 28 dps.


With and without bs/enchanting - Destro does the least dps.

You aren't paying attention. He's making the calculations without the unfairness of using 2 skil ltrees, without ANY finishing moves with melee OR magic. There are too few situations to use your AoE magic attack to really take advantage of it, and even then you are confined by magicka costs. Dual wielding power attacks would do 300 damage, not 150 because you are using both weapons to execute the power attack, not one. You DO know that if you hold the left and right mouse/trigger down you use both weapons for a power attack, right?