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.

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.

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.

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.

Think of it this way: a fighter uses a weapon skill to deal damage, right? So One-Handed, Two-Handed, or Archery. You'll probably have enough perks to dabble in a second skill, whatever, cool. It's fun to play a warrior and it should be. Now, let's say you're using One-Handed. As your skill goes up--whether or not you put perks into the One-Handed tree--your damage with one-handed weapons increases. So your damage constantly goes up whether or not you get new weapons. Of course, you will get new weapons, because you're not an idiot, and they provide a nice leap in damage output every now and again.

Cool!

A mage uses Destruction to deal damage. The equivalent of getting a new weapon for them is getting a new spell. But here's the problem: spell damage does not increase as the Destruction skill does. At all. Not one point. So eventually, after you've gotten all of the available spells, and you're level 40 or higher, your damage will never increase again. Ever. You can't enchant your gear to give you, say, +20% fire damage from spells. You can't rely on your increasing Destruction skill to increase spell damage. Once you have the best Destruction spells in the game, that's it. That's as good as it'll ever get. But enemies will keep getting stronger, and keep having more health.

I know it's easy to say, "Use all of your spell schools!" And that's right, you should. Just like a warrior should use Block, an Armor skill, and probably Smithing to be the best he can be. But a warrior can still rely on his weapon for damage no matter how high his level gets. Destruction is a mage's weapon, but eventually, it can no longer be relied on to do damage.

This is a problem because, without exploiting Alchemy and Enchanting, spells cost magicka. And yes, power attacks and blocking cost stamina, but you can still do something when your stamina runs out. A warrior with no stamina can still use regular attacks while his stamina regenerates. If a mage has no magicka, he has absolutely no recourse. He can run, or he can die. No amount of Conjuration or Illusion spells will help with that, because they cost magicka, too.

Do the complaints make a little more sense now? All we're asking for--literally the only thing--is for Destruction spell damage to get better as Destruction skill gets better. We don't want to be able to use crappy level 1 spells the whole game, but we do want to be able to use the best Destruction spells to deal decent damage after level 40.

I understand where you are coming from, but I feel like people are creating an unbalanced character (Destruction only) and then complaining that the character is unbalanced. I'm playing straight up Mage, but using all the mage skill trees available to create a balanced character. I'm having a blast.

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

May I ask you a question? What happens when a warrior reaches 100% in their one-handed skill, and has the best weapon in the game? (And yet continues to level?)

Do they get stronger?

My intuitive answer is NO.

What you're neglecting to mention is that the magica costs of spells lower when you reach higher levels of destruction skill too. So while your anology about spell damage never changing is true, the number of castings you can perform does actually increase.

I'd also be surprised if the gradiant by which enemies increase in strength as you level is as large as you think it is. In a game where at most you can get 10 hp more per level, I'd think that you wouldn't need to cast that many more destruction spells to kill something. Of course I do not know the background mechanics and admit that my mage isn't level 40+ yet. However, you haven't convinced me yet that what you're talking about is game breaking or required based on your post.

Does anyone have the actual stats of what a someone at level 1 would do with a 1H versus level 100 with the same weapon? I'm just curious. I think a big part of the problem is not a direct comparison betweem melee and Dest but with melee that has taken advantage of how easy it is to make god like weapons with Smithing. I think that's what is creating the annoyance from Dest users.

May I ask you a question? What happens when a warrior reaches 100% in their one-handed skill, and has the best weapon in the game? (And yet continues to level?)

Do they get stronger?

My intuitive answer is NO.

What you're neglecting to mention is that the magica costs of spells lower when you reach higher levels of destruction skill too. So while your anology about spell damage never changing is true, the number of castings you can perform does actually increase.

I'd also be surprised if the gradiant by which enemies increase in strength as you level is as large as you think it is. In a game where at most you can get 10 hp more per level, I'd think that you wouldn't need to cast that many more destruction spells to kill something. Of course I do not know the background mechanics and admit that my mage isn't level 40+ yet. However, you haven't convinced me yet that what you're talking about is game breaking or required based on your post.

I think its you who has a hard time understanding...
and mages do scale, the only difference is that warriors scale by increasing damage, and mages scale by being able to cast more spells (and more powerfull).

Look, I know you all like wearing dresses....but maybe you should man up and play a class that wears pants.

ya, wait till you hit about lvl 20 and cant kill anything worth a damn without kiting it for an hour

lol being able to cast more spells does not solve anything, that just means we have to spend 10 mins spell spamming thunderbolt to take down one enemy before working on the next, while a warrior just two shots them. Its broken, get it through your head man.

You use smithing to reach Legendary status for the sword... you use potions for increased smithing % that furthermore, increases the damage of the sword. You then resort to Enchanting to add which damage type you want to the sword. You add enchantment for % increased damage for 1h or 2h hand sword you sued to all the armor pieces or jewelry that can take that enchantment.

No, let's see mages... oh right... you can't use Smithing or Enchanting to increase the damage... or anything else beside the perks with 50% damage increase to one element. Damage perks that are available to the warrirors in their weapon tree, too.

I completely agree with your post, well done. I just wanted to add something to this part though.

When a warrior has no stamina, he can do normal attacks at normal damage. Even with a warhammer (slowest weapon) he can deal over 100 damage with every hit (without crazy enchantments), with no stamina left. You can hit once every second or so, meaning that you can still do 100 (ish) DPS with zero stamina.

A Destruction mage, on the other hand, can do ZERO damage with zero magicka. At his absolute best, the most damage he can cast is around 225 (150-base power Fire Storm spell, with +50% Fire damage perks) - but this has a 3-second-plus charge-up. This means that he does 225 damage over 3 seconds, or 75 DPS. This is the most he can do, even with a full magicka bar. At zero magicka, he can do a maximum of precisely zero damage.

Just a little addition.

May I ask you a question? What happens when a warrior reaches 100% in their one-handed skill, and has the best weapon in the game? (And yet continues to level?)

Do they get stronger?

My intuitive answer is NO.

What you're neglecting to mention is that the magica costs of spells lower when you reach higher levels of destruction skill too. So while your anology about spell damage never changing is true, the number of castings you can perform does actually increase.

I'd also be surprised if the gradiant by which enemies increase in strength as you level is as large as you think it is. In a game where at most you can get 10 hp more per level, I'd think that you wouldn't need to cast that many more destruction spells to kill something. Of course I do not know the background mechanics and admit that my mage isn't level 40+ yet. However, you haven't convinced me yet that what you're talking about is game breaking or required based on your post.

I play on master lvl 51 pure destruction-alteration-restoration mage, and I kill stuff WHILE kiting them pretty fast, much faster than my warrior if its multiple mobs, and fairly slower if its just one but Im glad to have it that way especially considering all the other pros of being destro.

having that said lvl 1-20 was hard for me, I wasnt a high elf and had torubles finding a -destro cost item to disenchant, so mana was a problem then, but with luck and investment, even early on you can get a nice sustainable mana pool and gear to support your spells.

You seem to be forgetting the AoE nature of your Fire Storm? If you're doing 75dps to 5 enemies, that's 375dps. I don't think melee weapons have AoE attack (I'm not sure if Skyrim has the concept of a "cleave" type attack where your sword hits people in an 'arc' in front of you, or a circle around you?).

That's not to say the complaints in this thread are invalid, I just thought it should be mentioned that you can't compare the dps of a single-target attack to an AoE attack very meaningfully, especially if you completely ignore the multi-target aspect of the AoE attack.

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.

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.