enemy casters do far more damage than the player is capable of, have you even played a mage? the magicka regen also is extremely slow in combat even with regen gear. you are saying here that you play a warrior, so you shouldnt be commenting on how balanced it is, buster

the reason being the same reason as when people complained about the same things in morrowind and oblivion forums...
they are ignorant and arrogant to learn.

A warrior would kill those mobs 3 times faster

If it's true that one handed and two handed levels damage and destruction doesn't, that's a problem. However, people have posted videos of their high level mage completely destroying things faster than my warrior ever could.

Jesus, on the College questline I couldn't even touch Moroki or whatever his name was. Not being a mage completely screwed me over, and it was basically hide and cast a weak firebolt at him. Thank god for my follower, a mage.


No way, you can't sit there and hit multiple enemies at once while taking no damage. My warrior would have been dead fast.

This video is proof that the people saying destruction svcks don't have, or won't show.

He said it in multiple posts though I do not find it as effective as he claims when I have done it, but maybe I am missing something.

Basically do things like lay down a wall of fire or 2, thunderbolt/stun the guy when he is in your wall of fire, hell if you are feeling brave put up a cloak spell and get close enough to burn them. That way you have multiple dots on them and are hitting them with straight up damage. The 100+damage a second+ your thunderbolts or whatever bring them down about twice as fast as thunderbolts alone. No where near as fast as a warrior or rogue IMO, and I still go through all my mana if the enemy is anything but a basic mob without the 0 mana exploits, but I haven't had time to fine tune my mana reduction to the 90% off I want.

Here are my issues,.

1. Lack of scaling- they could reduce the base damage a bit even but lack of scaling gives an unsatisfactory feel as you level in that you become weaker vs the game instead of stronger.
2. Lack of spell making. Why because I knew and was right that bethesda would f it up. Do you like flames? Well tough crap it svcks past level 20, but hey if you could make your self a adept version of it it might be sweet. All I want is a single effect spell making system, any new effects like a rune heal spell can have lame visuals I don't care.
3. Mana to DPS ratio scaling. Okay it is just moronic how they scaled the mana costs. A 25 damage spell costs like 20 mana a 90 damage spell costs like 300 mana(I have not opened my game so the numbers are off a bit,but relatively accurate for the purpose I am shooting for) This kind of forces mana reduction exploits, which is lame because it bypasses the entire leveling/resource mechanic. Add in item swapping and never need any mana. Certain enchants/gear should be beneficial not basically required.(this goes for all class types, not just mages)
4. Lack of effects, lack of separation of effects. This is for all schools, but in regards to destruction I want straight magic damage, I want the slow/stamina drain as a separate spell, I want magicka drain as a separate effect, I want the on fire effect as a separate effect etc.

he obviously has not played a mage, he thinks the Enchantm,ents for mana regen make a big difference, it is barely noticeable, and that has nothing to do with the grossly underpowered damage. On top of this mages have weak defense, thet are suupposed to be able to deal more damage to compensate for being very weak.

without exploit?

NO

I love this kind of pointless whining. Why do people insist on trying to act like the only way melee/archers deal damage is through attacks that drain stamina? LOL. There's a reason for the speed increasing perk in the one-handed tree, and here's a big hint: it doesn't work with anything that drains stamina. A melee normall swing also might do less damage than a power attack does, but they can still kill something with auto attacks faster than a Mage can with spells.

Some people need to play more than a single character type before posting, because there's a whole lot of uninformed "experts" on this subject. It's laughable how utterly clueless half or more of these posters are.


Thank god all I needed to do was summon the very first familar for a distraction and simply ran up behind and power attacked three times, and then auto attacked 1-2 more and he dropped. On Master difficulty.

That's why i merged the two..Spellsword..all the damage of a warrior..all the power of a Desto. mage..if I run out of mana; switch to my sword..and vice-versa with magic..just gotta have my trusty potions when I run out of both and im good..works well against Dragons; trolls and gaints..

No one complained about this in OB or morrowind...... There is nothing to leanr, Destruction is weak and doesnt scale, the facts show this, has nothing to do with learning, LOL. you're the one who needs to learn. read the thread its been explained numerous time , educate yourself before posting.

is this another of your random and wrong claims you make?
noone ever complained? just like oblivion had spell damage scaing?

I was there m8... oblivion DID NOT have damage scalling in spells and THERE were people, alot of people, complaining, not just about that obviously, but pretty close to this.
this, just like then they were ignorant of spell making and too arrogant to learn, it was just easier to whine and complain rather than learning, then came the noob mods, that made stuff completly and utterly pointless and all the sillies gone quiet.
these are facts, observed, by me, dont tell me otherwise its just folly

And you dont realise how much work that requries? The simple fact that you have to do ALL that to win against a single target speaks volumes about our point. Thank you for making it for us

barely anyone complained as it DID scale to your level, and they did more damage and mana did not drain as fast, nor take as long to regen. AND there was spellmaking. The forums barely had any mention of underpowered magic like with skyrim its the #1 topic on forums about skyrim. There were more spells for higher levels, they scaled and there was spell making... Not even the same at all. Skyrims magic is a joke right now.

and then on top of 42 damage, since the best way to get daedric items is smithing, you can likely add about 15-20 extra damage right off the bat with the grindstone and do approximately 60 damage a hit no matter what even when out of stamina, plus power attack damage, plus potentially dual wielding, and then atop of that you can enchant your armor to have plus one handed damage % and easily be doing 100 or more damage a hit no matter what, all the time. fireball in comparison takes a long time to charge, costs massive magicka, and has like a third of the potential DPS of a power attacking melee character

How is stamina drain and mana drain different ? Mages cast frost spells when fighting melee and they cast lightning spells when facing mages. You get hit for a lot by elemental attacks and so do mages. Stacking cost reducing enchants on gear is cheap and just one aspect of the broken enchanting system. You played mage ? I played war on master ... for 15 levels only, but it was rofl stomp. A bit of smithing, 1h weapon, block, resto = unstoppable wrecking ball. I remember being surprised how fast stuff died ... with mage I have to be 10x more careful, fights take longer and if I make a mistake I get 2 shot. If mages are perfectly balanced in skyrim ... the other archetypes are not.

Hmm, I am not used to seeing this type of discussion on this forums, so I'll bite... discussing things only on gameplay alone (the mage's one) and leave the warrior experience out of this.

1. We have enemies power/hitpoints scaling with your level. As I advance in levels I know I'll have a tougher time (see number two)

2. We have static numbers for spell damage.

3. We have pretty high mana cost for these spells, even if you take the tier perks. This coupled with the second fact, it gets more aggravating - as you have to increase your number of casts.

4. Mana regen found in abundance on robes doesn't seem to work in combat, or as someone said it in this thread gets cut by a large percentage.

5. Impact perk completely destroys the fun, after the novelty wears of. Keeping an enemy staggered 100% of the time, even of you have to hit him 6 times it's not very good for the overall experience.

6. Using Enchanting magic school, not exploiting - you get 0 mana cost for any given Destruction spell... even if it's Expert or Master. Why invest in mana as a mage? Why put on a robe with mana regen (that is not working in combat) when you can put a full plate armor on, or whatever you think is cool?!

7. Almost all the different magic tiers have different spell mechanics: continuous 'flamethrower', cloak spell ,runes, walls, AOE, single target spells. Why do we throw the cool mechanic wise spells later in the game and have to rely only on the highest tiers spells? The are not variations of the same spell.

8. Most of the enemy mages have a a ward up 90% of the time. In a tough fight with several enemies, I rely more on my companion or on a summon than on my own damage dealing spells.


Maybe I forgot some things, but overall I think this game doesn't have a very good design, at least in the progression part. The mechanics are nice... the gfx are cool. And I know a couple of things about game design and what is fun game experience

When I mentioned the fact that staffs worked to bridge the gap, I was obviously speaking under the assumption that most people favorite their spells and could swap to their staff as required. Obviously Skyrim doesn't have "atuo-attacks" but whether its' a default attack action, left click, auto its' all the same when you're talking about Magic vs Physical in game balance since that "basic" sustained damage action is something Magic users usually don't have in their kits.


Um no?

Guild Wars and many other games worked very hard to balance around the fact that a physical damage dealers auto or basic attack was always a consistent damage output on top of skillsets or abilities. Dragon Age 2 was specifically designed with regards to mage auto-attacks because of the complaints and unfluid feel of mages in Origins where you spent long periods of time on cool-down with no impact. So it's slightly ludicrous to just spout off that many games don't frequently combat this very problem of balance between burst, sustained damage, and the power of a physical damage dealers left-click/basic/auto attack. Every game isn't stacked against mages per se (sometimes Mages are the overpowered ones), but the balance between different combat types is always a struggle with regards specifically to the fact that Mages kits are built around their use of spells, mana cost, cool-downs they don't have a reliable consistent default action to truly supplement their kit.

work???!!!... wth....
its fun... at least to me... if you dont like to crowd control/kite you can always invest in different tactics than me... like heavy armor + resto? that way you dont have to kite so much? dunno... but its not "work" I enjoy fights where I can overwhelm my surroundings with elemental fury while kiting and paralysing angry mobs trying to squish me. =<

sure in my warrior I dont have to use multiple keybinds all the time in shorts amounts of time, and only need to worry about moving in to attack or out to defend and my flanks, but ye... I guess its more work... but hell, if anything I'm proud it takes more work, and more skill to play a mage properly, as I enjoy a chalenge,
becides warriors may be less vulnerable and more simple, but they have less tools and fun effects and stuff


.... you simply dont have the facts m8....
itsn ot subjected to avaluation, this is a fact, spells dmg DID NOT scale with level in oblivion period, if you cant even admit to being wrong in this blatantly easy to check fact... whats the point of me cotinuing this conversation?

Guild wars is an mmo, irrelevant..................

No, every oehr RPG is perfectly viable to play as a mage, get real. no other games gimp and has such a poorly designed ssytem for mages. Every other game its is viable to be a pure caster, many games have specific pre-defined classes for them.

Origins? LMAO, that game was perfect for mages......I played a pure mage with no issues.

That video emphasizes Destruction's only strength and that's AoE. Yeah, because most of the game has you running into the middle of a town with a lot of people shooting AoE that actually does something for a change? MOST fights consist of 2-3 enemies at a time and MOST fights are in cramped dungeons where you cannot run around and kite. And FYI yes, a Warrior would take out those enemies faster, do you know how? It's called drinking stamina potions to end up with the same "unlimited mana" that this Mage is exploiting. It doesn't matter if the Warrior would take damage or not...HE CAN and he won't die and he will kill faster. Do you seriously think crafting higher levled weapons is an exploit, but using Alchemy + Enchanting in the same manner for 0 cost spells is not? Give me a break.

That guy is also playing on Adept level, and it's showing just how awful his damage output really is. Because it's horrible.

Actually there were a lot of complaints, but the complaints were more along the lines of magic svcks at its base I have to abuse the spell making and enchanting system to make it work. People eventually got used to spell stacking weaknesses and stopped complaining that it was necessary. But hey in oblivion with its craptastic level scaling it svcked being anybody without using exploits.

Most enemies don't scale much past 40 anyways; destruction spells are more than sufficient to get you through the entire game no matter what level you are.

Now you're right that you can't stack crafting to make destruction moronically overpowered like you can with melee and archery, but that's kind of beyond the scope of balancing the actual game. Once you've leveled past 40 you've pretty much beaten the game and the rest is just you messing around trying to one-shot things for youtube videos.

I think it would be fun to give destruction some kind of similar scaling so Mages have a better reason to continue building their character beyond the end of the game, but this isn't a ZOMG DESTRUCTION BROKEN ISSUE. People are making way too big a deal out of this.

No they are not.....................Playign a pure mage is utterly broken right now. Damage is not enough, mana goes to fast and doesnt regen fast enough, not rocket science.

I don't think Skyrim has NOT a linear curve of scaling like OB has... (meaning a fixed plus to skills, hp, magicka, stam like all scaled enemies in OB)

Um, then why is that guy in the video killing everyone in Solitude just fine?

My health as a warrior doesn't regen fast enough, I use potions or Restoration. Plus you can use so many things as a mage to drop the mana cost to almost nothing.