You'll never end this 'its bad! No its Not!' discussion until someone posts actual stats of a warrior at XX level with XX skill in one handed or two handed and a mage of xx level with xx destruction skill fighting the same mob.

And one where you show how much damage a spell does at level 1 and at level 100.

It's funny. When they first announced that spellmaking wasn't going to be in Skyrim, I was completely okay with it; after all, it was completely broken and kind of boring in the end.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what Smithing/Enchanting can do when used together now--mixing and matching effects until you have something so utterly unstoppable that nothing in the game stands a chance.

Though I do wonder it the lack of any way to use crafting to enhance spell damage is part of the problem. Melee and ranged weapons can both be enhanced via crafting new equipment; but you can't craft equipment that gives you a boost to spell damage, or "sharpen" your spells the way you can sharpen a sword. I'm absolutely not saying that spellmaking should come back, because holy crap that was broken.

It's not. You are so extremely inexperienced with destruction magic that you shouldn't even be here. Learn about it first before you post huge posts about it in a thread. If someone says it is scaling with the destruction skill, it is because they are an idiot.

people talk without having a clue...
a warrior without smithing is even more gimped than a mage without enchanting simply because you can still get a fair combination of spell cost reduction and mana pool with non crafter/nonupgraded gear, while a warrior needs that upgraded quality weapon and armor to survive and deal damage, I know... I have both at master diff at high lvls,
it is true that combining enchanting (leveling it now) will produce a insanely powerfull warrior, and even more if you go with alchemy.... but meh... exploits... dont like em.

becides the game is pretty much over before 60 and at 50 I would NOT ask for more than +10-20% dmg enchants on my gear, and even THAT would make me feel "guilty" simply cuz of all the awesome stuff I do with destruction already that my warrior cant even dream off...


raw single blow/target damage? if thats ALL you care about then yes destruction is weak, but the thing people just dont get is THAT IS NOT what destruction is limited too.

Let's go over something here.

Fire, Frost, and Shock spells all have extra effects, yes. And that's pretty cool. I like that. Frost drains stamina, Shock drains magicka, etc. Awesome. But you can get those same effects to a much greater degree by Enchanting weapons--or even by equipping quest reward weapons like the Nightingale Blade.

So let's cover this:

Mage without high Enchanting - Sitting duck.
Mage with high Enchanting - Can keep up with where the game expects him to be.

Warrior without high Enchanting - Can keep up with where the game expects him to be.
Warrior with high Enchanting - Can steamroll everything. And drain magicka and stamina better than a mage can. Maybe even absorb it.

Wrong as a warrior keeps scaling with lvl, destruction dos not, how hard is that to understand?

If increasing destruction skill does not damage, then that is a bug.


That said you people need to realise something.

THIS IS NOT WOW,

This is a single player game,

Saying omg Mages are OP/UP!!11!!.. doesnt mean anything as there is no competition.

Heads out of arses people, Skyrim is not WoW- it is nothing like wow, it isnt even a multiplayer game.

Its not sub based, Beth has your money allready and they can tell you to go jump for all they care.


Play the game how you want to play- you arnt goin to be sat for raids or left out of loot because you decided to go pure destruction. Should that decision make the game harder for you then so be it. Its your choice.

Destruction level 86. (with 2 damage increasing perks)
Flames: 12 damage per sec.
Firebolt: 37 damage per sec.
Fireball: 60 damage per sec.
Wall of flames: 50 damage per sec.

As we can see, magic damage does not scale with level.
The only thing affecting the damage are the perks.

Now, I hope thats the end of that.

This is really about balance of YOU vs THE WORLD.

The enemies continue to scale higher, while your destruction magic, in relative terms to that, gets weaker and weaker.

Indeed, you are right. The Enchanting breaks everything but in different ways - for warrior is their damage, for mages the spell cost. What you end up is 1-hit dragon kills for warriors and continuous spell spam for mages.

My point is that this type of gameplay is not fun. Fun should be definitive factor in judging a single player experience. That's why - the destruction spells should have increased damage (one way or another) in later stages of the game for all of their spells. A cloak spell is different than a rune spell, which in turn is different than a aoe spell. We should keep their functions in the game with increased damage.

The Impact perk should go... the % mana cost reduction should be capped, the mana regen should work in combat so you have a reason to use mage robes.

I am tired now

Not being able to hold your ground against a regular bandit when you should be overpowered as all hell after completing the main quest ruins the experience, this has nothing to do with player vs player balance, get that through your thick skulls, people.

Someone please ask mr PR BS Pete Hines on Twitter if this is getting fixed.

Well, after thinking about it for a while, and despite my initial post, I'm starting to think it's not a big deal. Why? Simple matter of playing styles.

Why should mage characters be "balanced" to other more warrior-based characters? Why should a ranged magic spell scale at a similar level to archery skills or sword skills? There's no MP to worry about, and so the argument basically boils down to: you wish to play the warrior and the mage the same way, albeit using different weapons. As it stands, you need to play a high powered mage rather differently to a high powered warrior. Is that such a big deal? I don't have too much trouble imagining that magic spells can only reach X amount of power, after that you're using different game tactics.

Sound reasonable?

You are all completely missing my first and main point, so I will make this clear. DESTRUCTION DOES NOT NEED TO SCALE IN THIS GAME BECAUSE IT IS ALREADY OVERPOWERED. IF YOU ARE JUST USING DESTRUCTION BY ITSELF IN BATTLE YOU SHOULD BE GETTING SMASHED. IN TES, WARRIORS DON'T USE WEAPONS WITHOUT ARMOR, JUST LIKE MAGES SHOULDN'T USE DESTRUCTION WITHOUT SUPPORT.

Interesting point, anyone tried bringing up the console to change level to 50 with a low skill and see if damage increases by level as well as by skill?

If no change with level but a change with skill it might make sense to just have the skill cap removed. Although that will mean all perks are obtainable in a single playthrough.

Another post that is totally irrelevant misses the boat entirely. A mage is always way different then a warrior regardless LOL. The issue is damage gets worse for mages to the point they are gimped and cannot play like mages.

The last part of the makes an enormous amount of sense. If you are playing at a harder level it should be harder to play.

It's reasonable to expect the two styles to play differently. In fact, I would want that to happen. A mage should have to play more intelligently than a warrior; in return, though, he should at least be able to match the warrior. In Skyrim, a mage has to play more intelligently and actively than a warrior in order to survive; the warrior will still be more effective than he is, though, and by a long shot.

I realize Skyrim isn't multiplayer, or competitive, but there's a point at which it just gets frustrating to know that your preferred playing style is essentially shooting yourself in the foot.

LMAO and you questioned peoples IQ... Who said mages dont use supprt? Restoration, alterartation, enchantment.. That doesnt help when your out of mana and your dual fire balls take 1% of a scaled enemeis health.......get a clue. Destruction is underpowered this is a fact, warriors and everything else scales, destruction doesn't... And there are not enough spells to top it off.

What does using other skills as support which we do, have to do with destruction being gimped? LOL, try and keep up.

Except for destruction...which was the whole point of his post.

Dude, are you brain dead? It has been beaten to death what the problem is. I don't care what you THINK you know, destruction damage does NOT scale with level. That is a fact. That means every level you gain, your damage stays the same and your enemies get more powerful. Is this concept that difficult for you? Seriously? Maybe you should try a more simple brute game like call of duty.

Ideally support that does the damage destro is lacking Problem is ppl expect mage in Skyrim to be like mage in other games ... high damage but squishy. In Skyrim you are squishy all right, but have to either use conjuration or exploit enchanting to have the damage.

No, it really isn't reasonable.

What ends up happening in reality is you just choose not to use destruction at all. You just begin to rely on other things like conjuration and followers. You know, you have all these points invested in destruction, but at level 52 at least, the enemies have scaled in such a way that the time cost/benefit is too low to justify a cast of a destruction spell. That's not to mention if you don't have enchanting maxed and exploited the mana cost/benefit is also too high.


Another way to look at it is that if I had chosen all the archery perks and enchanted for that, I would spend no mana, do 4 times the damage, have 50% staggers and 15% paralyze. In comparison to that, why the hell go into destruction at all if I can have a ranged playstyle that absolutely blows destruction out of the water?


Anyway, they obviously need to have some sort of scaling, not just because the damage gets extremely weak at high level for the best spells in the game, but also because it removes variety out of the system. Rune and stream spells are rendered completely useless at the end of the game because of lack of scaling which removes some of the variety the system could otherwise easily possess.

As this is a SP game, Beth can buff Mages and it won't bother you or anyone else.
Great that we have dicussed this.

Cool!


I have myself picked up a pair of gloves with +25% destruction damage. So your whole thread and the whole destruction community is just full of flaws.
Destruction is fine and you can enchant gear to get more damage.

Also, One handed, as an example, does not increase damage with every skill up, more like every TEN skill ups.
The only way to get really good damage from your one handed or two handed, is NOT the skill, cause it hardly increases the damage. its through the perks.

You mages think that the skill for melee increases damage by tons, it does not. Hardly anything. Its the perks in the skill trees that increases it.
And to get the best perks, you need high skill.

Damage for melee also stands very still early on.

Also, there are some extremly good staffs out there, incase you did not know this.
With enchanting you can increase them further.
And, with just mediocre enchanting you can cast spells for more or less no mana cost at all.
For melee, to actually do the damage it costs a ton of stamina. More then 2 opponents that are not killed in a few hits and half the fight is fought with an empty stamina bar.

Melee have high burst, when they are in the face. Destructoin have a steady, good damage, all the time. AND, you have range.

You guys needs to stop looking at pure numbers, and also start to level melee characters to understand what you are talking about.
90% of the destruction mages out there refuse to even try a melee character.
And getting one to lvl 3 and coming here to say its fine is redicilous.
Mages are overpowered in the beginning of the game, and are the only class that can start skyrim on master difficulty and laugh at it.

After 30 melee classes dont do more damage either, its not mysteriously going up somehow.
Once you have your last perks in one handed or w handed, maxed out smithing and enchanting, thats it.

As for enchanting. I am a dual wield heavy armor wielding orc. I have not invested much into enchanting, but into smithing.
BUT, I can make staffs that fire fireballs if I want to. And the damage on them scale with your skill in destruction. And for me, with 15 in destruction, they already kick [censored].
I can just imagine what it would do for you.

Enchanting is not strictly for melee you know.
Its just that you are riding on your high horses and refuse to use anything but destruction, and because you are unable to insta kill every thing that comes at you, its not powerful enough.

Also, melee must take 2-5 other skills to be successful. Atleast armor, melee weapon, smithing.
Thats the minimum 3 skills to be rather succesful in combat. Then we need restoration and or alchemy to survive.
So, we need atleast 4 skills.

You are trying to tell us that you cant power game the game with 1 skill, possibly 2 since you reluctantly take restoration, despite everyone else must take it to live.
So all in all, you want to be archmage ala most powerful in skyrim with 2 skills out of the 25 that exist, and then you complain that you are not powerful enough.

Get over it and start to play the game, or just move to the next.