LOL!!! Especially since the op QUALIFIES this in his argument! It's like willful ignorance. I didn't want to believe it but this nation really IS turning into a nation of idiots... No critical thinking skills whatsoever.

Teach us, master...

I call BS on your post, I know you are not two shotting stuff at level 51 on ur mage because the simple numbers dont add up at that level. In the time it takes a mage at 51 to kill one enemy a warrior has taken down three. Thats what i mean by more casting does not solve the problem. and without the enchant mana exploit you wont be doing much casting either

This. There are no +magic damage items.

Also, why do people insist that we're talking about using Destruction only? All we're saying is that Destruction is a mage's only controllable source of damage, and it doesn't keep up with enemy health scaling past level 40 because the damage doesn't scale with Destruction skill. That's all. Yes, mages can do other things, but a battle doesn't end until one side runs out of health, and Destruction is the only reliable way pure mages have to make that happen. Conjuration is great, don't get me wrong, but you can't exactly target your summons, and bound weapons aren't going to keep up unless you level a weapon skill.

To repeat: nobody is talking about being a Destruction-only mage. We're saying that Destruction is the mage's equivalent of a weapon skill and that it does not keep up with enemy health past level 40. That's all.

I really have seen it all now.
If people can defend this, its no wonder people can defend a flat earth or von Daniken's theories.

People are seemingly capable of defending anything because its not about logic or arguments is it?
Its about willful ignorance and sheer bloody-mindedness.

To be fair with few exceptions this is the same discussion for most fantasy based games. Since magic outside of the actual spells doesn't have the consistent frequent attacks melee provides, not even mentioning the fact most games provide melee users with their own skills, perks, etc to supplement in between their swings. Personally I think that's where you have to write it up as just a difference in style, since by nature magic is always more burst with less sustained damage. Obviously it depends on the game and combat system in particular but that's the general rule, and while there's always the argument: "Mages have magic, Warriors have skills, but Warriors also have auto attacks!" there's really no equalizer for this unless you just really want a mage who has strong magicky auto attacks. At which point the difference between classes becomes mostly superficial.

In regards to Skyrim though, doesn't the way staffs work sort of fix this though? I haven't gotten very far with my own magicky guy yet so I can't speak for the endgame balance with all the talents but... I thought, for example, if you're a destruction guy with a destruction staff the auto-attacks from the staff become much more potent. Or is this not really the case? I figured once I started finding good magick staffs that it would help bridge the gap between created by strong melee auto-attacks because as a magick user you're able to use weapons that directly scale from your own magick prowess just like the melee users do with perks/weapon upgrades.

Also it's worth mentioning Magic gets a large number of additional effects outside of just "dealing damage", while admittedly snaring or debuffing an enemy or nonmandatory utility spells aren't a direct substitute for just beating someones face in, that again is a difference in design or playstyle and not necessarily a weakness. (Since at that point you could essentially argue even stealth or archery is a weak substitute for two-hand skill if your only basis for a skills usefulness is how fast it kills stuff when you run straight into a group of enemies)

haha there are no auto attacks its not world of warcraft. You have to manually make every attack. Same goes with a staff. It has to be charged just like a spell before letting it fly

My point is that there is a cap for warrior damage too, use your imagination and assume that by "best weapon in the game" it includes all buffs. My point is there is also a cap for weapon damage too. A cap that leveling will start to make less optimal.

You also haven't addressed the point that leveling in this game doesn't actually increase something's strength significantly, nor have you shown us that this is game breaking. Yes we are aware that there is an optimal point where magic does the most bang for it's buck, but you haven't demonstrated that leveling beyond that point is game breaking in any way. It might mean at most, one two more casts of a spell? I'm sorry but that isn't really game breaking.

Not to mention there may be (with DLC) more spells made available for higher end content.

You can't enchant your own staff, with a more powerful version of a spell. What you find on a staff, is what you get. Unlike the regular weapons where you can increase their status to Legendary and Enchant the hell outof them.

Also, if you use the staff you can't dual cast... and can't use the Impact perk, which is a must in a tough battle so you can keep the enemy staggered for the whole two minutes that will take you to kill him

Not 1 single game has this issue, sorry, how many RPG's you play? Dragon Age, Neverwinter nights, hell even oblivion had proper damage scaling for spells.

why be "ubber strong"? wouldnt that make the game LESS fun to play by being less challenging?

I prefer a web of pros and cons to work and synergize with that having what many people here seem to "demanding" for destruction: a imba high dmg nuke... honestly, I have no problem sacrificing damage and getting:
-aoe
-range-
-damage debuff
-stamina and mana drains
-ignore armor
-exploit target vulnerabilities-etc

it makes playing my mage feel completly spectacular and unique to be chaining spells with difrent effects all over the place, to my mage or sniper, to be sniping people with high dmg sneak shots or nimble shield bash+blows.

and like I said, you are NOT suposed to spam one spell at your target..... cant you understand that? ONE spell by itself is just average, but when combined with others they both become stronger...
for exemple against single target you can try:
-place a frost rune, have bound fireball/incinerate and thunderbolt (you can also prefrebly bind frost wall)
-open up with thunderbolt, chain with fireball, when he crosses your frost rune (to drain his stamina) you can cast another rune (preferebly wall) and chain dual-handed fireball/incinerate with thunderbolts while kiting around your trap/wall.

this will increae your damage by ALOT compared to just spamming thunderbolt, fire makes your target vulnerable, frost make him weaker and lightning mainly for the attack seepd base damage AND execution effect (perk)

In theory yes, but two things:

1) There IS an AoE melee attack, available through perks in the 2-handed tree. This perk allows you to do a sideways power attack that hits all enemies in front of you, for normal power attack damage. (EDIT: which can be over 500 with good, unexploited gear)

2) The Firestorm spell only does max (225) damage at extremely close range. The damage steadily decreases as distance from the caster increases. It's pretty unlikely you'll have more than 1 person in max-damage-range, since mages' defences are so low that they'd probably be dead before getting to that range. In effect, the 75 DPS is actually an extremely optimistic best-case scenario. In any case, the warrior can hit fast enough that he easily causes more damage, to single or multiple enemies. And that's ignoring Elemental Fury.

...Yeah, this isn't a very helpful way to respond. I do tend to agree with what you say colddog, and I know it's frustrating to repeatedly try to explain something that seems obvious to someone who doesn't want to listen, but probably best to keep trying instead of being rude.

Better weapons does more damage, higher skill and perks do more damage, smiting let you improve weapons to do more damage, you have enchants who help you do more damage, my level 20 character have bracers with +20% archery damage.

In Oblivion skill increase reduced mana cost then casting spells, this worked well as you could buy loads of spells and make your own, in addition level limited how powerful spells you could cast so you could not have a spell who did huge damage and all your mana.

In Skyrim it appears to be an lack of high damage spells and you can not make your own, it does not mater if your mana cost is so low that you can cast forever if your dps is so low the enemy will overrun and kill you.

Simple solution modify the master level spells so they do much more damage. Waiting for the CK.

Yeah, I'd agree with this. I don't mind that I keep facing difficult enemies as I level up that require more from me in terms of tactics and abilities for me to kill, it keeps the game interesting and fun. There are still tons of wolves, low level bandits/monsters/draugrs that I feel very powerful against. It just feels slightly cheap that I had to basically powerlevel enchanting and stack cost reductions so my destruction spells effectively cost 0 magicka in order to feel that powerful. I'd rather all my regen stats worked in combat, they got rid of cost reductions in Enchanting and replaced them with the alchemical equivalents "x is more x% more powerful."

Sorry, I presumed you didn't take that into account

My point is that the warrior cap is higher than the mage's one. All this while having superior defenses. You can't explain otherwise the people playing warriors killing dragons with 1hit, while the mages have to spam their most powerful single target spells. Am I wrong here ?

OP your wasting your time , anyone with a brain doesnt need this explaining , it's so obvious .

I call BS on your post... honestly dont know what to say...
no I dont usse the no cost exploit at all... I do have a fairly high reduction couples with a pretty large mana pool...
you simply do not understand and clearly are not interested in trying, how destruction and casting works...
you keep saying that being able to cast more spells dont change anything... that alone is enough to see how clueless you are really...

if your mind is already made up, and all you gonna do is call people who have difrent experiences than you a liar, its best we end this conversation right now.



yes ofc... because people who disagree with you, and have a different experience than you, can ONLY possibly be either lying or not thinking straight is it?
it can NEVER be because you dont know what you are doing right?



I'm sorry what?
oblivion had NO damage scalling either.
the only thing you can argue for (and I miss it too) is it had spell crafting

It seems it DOES work. It's just that in combat magicka regen is cut down by 70% or something.

Right, sometimes I get frustrated. And maybe it's a tad rude.

But really, if you have no experience using magic or especially using the magic you are commenting on, I still think you shouldn't be posting about it. I mean, the guy comes in, reads your post, specifically tries to discredit it using bunk information.

That is one of my primary frustrations in general. People are attempting to debunk things with just straight false information like the following:

Magic DOES scale with the destruction skill.
Firestorm puts out 375 DPS.
Regular level 50 enemies on master difficulty take 1-2 shots with ranged magic.
I found an enchantment in the game that gave me +25% destruction damage.


It's insane. And one thing you didn't mention is that firestorm takes like 3 seconds to cast. That lowers dps and survivability considerably.

But a warrior can still swing a 20 pound axe over his head repeatedly even though he's totally shattered? A warrior can't sprint with no stamina but can wield a weapon that weighs a ton. That logic is totally backwards and whoever okayed it in the design stage is a moron

This is not exploiting... it's in the game. You are not using a glitch, you're using the game rules. And if you level up your smithing and enchanting, you're effectively making the game harder, as the enemies keep scaling to your level.

And you didn't tell us how to properly play a Destruction mage and how to 2-shot everything. Please enlighten us

The mana decreasing enchants are stupid. It's like : We give you enchants that will boost your burst (flat magicka), enchants that will boost your regen (magicka regen) and then we give you enchants that make magicka management nonexistent, because you can make spells cost 0 mana. I refuse to believe that that is not an exploit. As for the fix ... they should do something more permanent, not just buff master level spells.

Agreed - all those things frustrate me too, especially the "Magic DOES scale with Destruction" fallacy. I mean, how many times does it need explaining. I did explain Firestorm's charge time though - hence the 75 DPS figure. 225 spell damage, with 3-second charge - 225/3 = 75 DPS.

Oblivion had a lot mroe powerfull spells, spell makng and yes it DID scale with your level.......

The fortify destruction enchantment reduces spell cost.
It does not increase destruction damage.
Such an enchantment does not exist in Skyrim.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Generic_Magic_Apparel