You keep calling enchanting an exploit. Who's ignoring who again? The ones who continue to call it an exploit/cheat I'm finding it very hard to take seriously. Poohead is already beyond that point he is obviously antagonistic calling me a cheater so I'm done with him. He can cry till the cows come home.

As per suggesting that you want 1 hit kills, please help me out here.

I come up against one of those undead with the horned helmets on, which are supposed to be one of the more challenging encounters by design. I shoot it 4 - 7 times, it dies. Is this not enough? The lesser creatures in the dungeon die in 1 or 2 hits. Is it not acceptable for a monster thats is be design supposed to be harder to kill, take longer than the trash that dies when you look at it harshly?

I've seen the video where a guy 1-shots a dragon. No, I can't do that, granted. But then I've seen videos where archery takes just about as long or longer to kill a dragon as destruction does. And I can kill a dragon extremely quickly. Maybe dual-wield kills them much faster. But from what I've seen dual-wield is in its own little realm of overpowered damage even compared to bows and two handers. Destruction looks perfectly fine compared to others.

My take on all of this is that dual-wield is overpowered if anything and needs to be nerfed/modded to not trivialize the game. Two-handed, archery, and destruction seem perfectly fine to me. I mean, if you're willing to enchant and use mana pots from time to time.

Its when people speak badly of destruction, and the only argument that they can make is that enchanting is cheating, or that destruction pales in comparison to dual-wield single target damage (which everything does, not just destruction) I am not left thinking that destruction need a damage improvement. I do a ton of damage so I really cannot relate to the people saying it needs to do more. I'm on master diff and its still really not that challenging. I do not use conjuration either.

Now don't get me wrong, have I not from the very first post in this thread stated that the magic system in this game is weird? It is heavily dependent on enchanting, nobody will argue against that. Should it be less enchanting dependent? Absolutely.

Will mods fix that for console players? Not a bit. Do the current mods really add anything? I don't think so. I think what needs to happen is that a mod change the whole system or at least offset most of the enchanting dependency. The vast majority of magicka consumption reduction should come from perks, and enchanting mana reduction items need to be both more powerful and most importantly HARD CAPPED.

Something like 85% magicka usage reduction from the novice/apprentice/adept/expert/master perks, and for the rest boost the fortify enchantments by a large amount but have them capped at say, 10%.
Then make them additive. Ex: 80% + 15% instead of 85% * 10%
So if you had a 1000 mana master tier spell someone not perked shouldn't be able to use it, but they can in perked it costs 150 mana, and at least they could cast it without enchantments, but if they wanted to chain cast it they'd have to do something like 2x 5% enchantments it would only cost them 38 mana.

Additionally add mana regen enchantments that work in combat. The decision between mana consumption reduction, maximum mana pool, and in-combat mana regen needs to be a valid decision. Right now there is no contest, fortify magic school wins by leaps and bounds.

I'm not a fan of the current magic system. But, you can make it work. I'm a long time fan of and thus I know, they aren't going to change this with an official patch. So this dream mod of mine matters not to console gamers, and they are the vast majority for Skyrim.

For those players that cannot mod, I can only refer them to my original post.

Happy Thanksgiving!

But we've already proven with MATH that using a stock daedric sword, not enchanted, not upgraded by smithing, and without +% damage modifiers on your gear with 100 one handed skill and all associated 1 handed perks will 100% of the time have higher damage per second than a 100 maxed perk destruction mage, naked or not. You have been proven wrong in this. The post that showed this was already listed. Seriously, we aren't joking about this. A mage can hit HARDER yes, but even if he removes his magic bar from the equation, he still hits SLOWER than the dual wielding warrior, and the warrior comes out in the lead by a looooooong run. This really doesn't become apparent until level 30+ where the enemies start to get VERY high health levels, while your magic doesn't get to hit any harder. Melee was already with NO smithing, and NO enchanting, doing ridiculous damage, so it doesn't really affect them much at all. Mages get hit hardest by this, and that is what we want to fix.

You will fight enemies later on that will take your ENTIRE magicka bar + some. This is not a joke. And they will have friends with them. Until you experience this for yourself, you can't comprehend the problem fully. Well you could if you understood math, but we've already know that you don't.

Dont want to drag this further, lets call it a draw you believe your story and I gonna believe mine

This: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1279078-2419-armor-6399-damage-using-smithing-alchemy-enchanting-only-33-perks-329k-backstabs-post-3/page__view__findpost__p__19432824

you waste your time, people who whine about destruction are willfully noobies, they dont want to learn, they want one shotting imba spells tbh...
tried to teach whiners to chain cast spells rather than spam one spell and expect it to outdmg everything, tried to teach them how to get items and enchant stuff to have a nice mana pool/cost reduction... but nawww they always just says the same...

so I just give them links to noob mods so they get happy.

Because, in my opinion, others as well, it is being used as an exploit to get around the weak Destruction issue. Should I say cheap tactic instead?

Was I asked a question? I don't recall being asked a question. What was there to ignore if I wasn't asked a question?


Glad we agree.


That's also part of my annoyance. Who thought reducing it's rate in combat was good idea? Yeah, lets strip the mage of his tools right when he needs them the most and boost it when he doesn't need it. I seem to have lost the trail of logic in there somewhere. Isn't the point of these things to help us in battle? Maybe they should remove all positive effects from all wearable items during combat.

I'll ignore the extremely childish remarks, and name calling.


What you out-lined in your original post was cheating/explioting in my opinion, and in most other peoples opinions. To call it cheating isn't antagonistic, it's actually a pretty grounded and rational response. I'm sorry if you took it as an insult, thats not what I intended. I'm honestly don't consider it an insult, since we even have a forum section called "Skyrim Cheats" and it has posts like your original post, discussing ways to exploit the game. Do those people get insulted for posting there? No.

All we are saying is, we shouldn't be forced to use such obvious exploits in order to have viable destruction on Master. We shouldn't be forced to skip half of the perks; or to make cloth, magicka regen, and magicka stats useless by stacking nearly 100% magicka cost reduction on Daedric/Dragon gear.

Which is why my character svcks. You described my char to a T, and nvm high level, he has trouble at lv 13


Well there we have it! We're just all doing it wrong guise! In order to properly play a destruction mage all you need to do is level sneak, illusion, conjuration, and use our damage spells as a last resort!

LoL, you guys.

Clearly they messed up and +% destruction damage didn't make it into the enchantment list.

So many problems in the game stem from this.

Had this bug issue not been present:

Why use cloth instead of armor - because there is +% spell damage on it
With enchanting we can get 0% spell cost - yes but only by sacrificing +%damage
We have to use alchemy to be doing dece damage - No you can enchant / find robes with the bonus

You guys are stuck in a dumb circular argument. Of course we shouldn't need to chug potions to do damage like melee characters! Bethesda somehow managed to lose the +% destruction damage enchanting. I can just feel it in my bones that they will add this and all will be well

Also enchantments should get a bonus from being on cloth and wham, a better reason not to rock armor.

As long as you enchanted gear dosnt hit 100%++ mana reduction its not exploiting. Mana reduction dont stack to destruction perk mana reduction or the skill based reduction.

So being 100 in skill gives you 20% less mana cost ([base lvl thunderbolt / 100 skill no perk thunderbolt - 1] * 100).
Perk in mastery gives 50% yet the total mana cost reduction isnt 70% (30% spell cost) its actualy 50%+[(100%-50%)*20%]=50%+[50%*20]= 60% (40% spell cost)
Now add to that the arch-mage robes and you get +15% reduction in destruction thats total 60%+[(100%-60%)*15%]=60%+6%=66% less mana on spells (34% spell cost).

So using mastery level perks is a must actualy without 100% mana reduction enchants.

[img]http://angrywhitedude.com/wp-content/uploads2/2010/05/are-you-wizard.jpg[/img]

Holy crow. I feel like you're completely right and this would resolve most of these issues.

Yeah I do that sometimes

aaaand apparently I stun-locked the thread

Is there anything else we can really say?

No I guess I won the internet

indeed, people are so butthurt to the term "exploit". this thread is getting better and better.

Why doesnt mana regen work in battle.

It works, its just non-battle mana regen is 3% while combat regen is 33% of that value so only 1%

All I want to say is that Alchemy is a huge pain in the ass and I want nothing to do with it. It's not even a Mage skill anymore, so I shouldn't need it to be a good caster.

This has nothing to do with belief, it has to do with reality
Mages are woefully underpowered compared to the other two archetypes, not because of an opinion but because reproducable tests have shown them to be.

I mean, you can believe the world is flat all you want. Proof still says otherwise.

Why do you think your proof is better than my proof ? Believes is the answer.
You believe your right, while I believe I am right. There will be no end to this discusion, so let ppl choose the side they like tyhe most and let them believe they are right.

1st off...why is everybody arguing? it's a single player game? There No OP noob tubes, MKB assault rifles (or panzer 4), or AWM's to deal with...is it some need to call other players wimpy and bad at the game because their poor lil mage can't compete? As a battlemage I have noticed that the spells available to me are nowhere near as powerful as the weapons i have. My Epic Sharpened axe does way more DPS than any magic can do, so instead of a 50/50 spell and Mele DPS I'm getting most of my damage out of my axe. Really, I just want to see magic be able to do the Same DPS as mele because right now I feel like it's the read headed step child to the old slash and bash, where it takes magic blast after magic blast to kill somebody, but just a few large hits from some sharpened instrument.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=2275 - a decent magick enhancing mod.
For console users do what I did (I use PC) become a vampire and take the necromage perk. It may spoil RP (Draining the blood from a fair maidens neck) but it makes ALL magic including potions and enchantments affecting the PC and the undead in general 25% more powerful and lasting. I am not sure but I beleive it also makes destruction spells more powerful (certain) and if used against the undead they gain another 25% bonus. Deadly.

Post limit.