I agree, im playing mage and im at lvl 26. The higher lvl i get the more useless the magic becomes. It has gotten so hard now that i had to start using a 2h weapon and heavy armor.
Destruction damage spells are almost useless on boss fights. I deal more dps with my 2h weapon, even though i have all my damage perks in destruction and only 2 points in 2h.

They clearly need to do something with the damage spells, you run out of mana before you barely deal any damage at all. Even with a 50% increase fire damage poison my fire spells barely hurt in a boss fight.

Destruction is fine at low level enemies, but once you get past a certain level it becomes almost uselessly weak.

This will fall on deaf ears as the Bethesda defense force thinks everything beth does is perfect.......................... Its a fact destruction is gimped terribly.

One word:

Wabbajack!

But yea, from what I read, destro magic is kinda gimped; but it won't stop me from playing a mage soon.

Right, because if you don't play the way Flowz0r does, you are playing wrong. You must play on higher than normal before what you think counts.
You know, because increasing the difficulty of the game should not make the game more difficult?

I thought sure that I seen somewhere where a person used the console command to raise destruction from 15 to 100 and noted that the two spells he tested had a damage increase and cost decrease.
To me it seems like destruction scales with the level of the skill, but not the level of the player.

Now here comes my point, if you want to play a pure school mage, or only branch into one or two other schools or skills you really should not be much further than the mid 20's.

I think the issue is with player who raise other skills and the level they are at, in that point destruction would not scale after it is already 100.
Non combat skills raise your level, and that's the problem I see here. There is a point where destruction will no longer do more damage on its own (100 skill) and at that point if you start raising level though other skills that are non combat you are in essence doing this to your self.

Thats why leveling non combat skills to raise to high levels is a bad idea, trust me the same thing goes for warriors too. I raised blacksmith quite high along with other skills there where not related to combat and got punished for it. Thats why I started a new character.

I don't expect what I just said to be popular, but its my hypothesis on the situation.

no.. peopel are complaining about it for higher difficulties.. when higher difficulties means the game will be harder... im playing adept and the game is perfectly balanced and my destro spells [censored] any who defy me... only problem i had was 0 armor rateing but now with dragon scale armor im good

not only does the mage higher tier spells lack the damage compare to malee, an warrior still have the same ''speed'' of his attacks as he upgrades his weapon ,, an mage higher tier spells take serveral
sec to cast. and during that time,, no magic regen.. so the dps isent that much better, i notice somewere in the forum an dude saying destruction is fine. it only took him 7 dual fireballs to kill an blooddragon on adept.. ive seen videos of an warrior kill one of those in 2 hits on master..

really because I play adept and have the same issues as the people are saying. What level is your mage?

Spell damage definitely needs to scale up with the destruction skill. Mana regen also needs improving

The damage does not increase with skill. It only increases with perks (2 ranks per element: fire, frost, lightning) to a total of 50% increase. But with a low base damage and no way to increase it, at higher levels (wiht tougher enemies) you will be struggling like a madman in a force jacket This unless you keep abusing the Impact perk and keep hitting them for an entire minute. Yay for us!

I agree a little with the OP, i think you should be able to spend points, maybe perk pints, upgrading a spell's damage, for example if you love the flamethrower spell you should be able to spend perk pints to upgrade the damage. The only porblem is, 1 i have yet to play a mage so i will wait until i face these problems myself before deciding, 2 if you upgrade all the mahes spells damage how will that work for my lvl 43 warrior, facing mages now is hard enough, let alone if all their spells will increase in damage with their level. I think they didnt increase the spell damage with levelling as this stops people from making sole destruction mages that [censored] everything, something i have done in past TES games.

How it should be:

Raising Destruction to max level --> powerful skill.
Min-maxing Destruction --> insanely powerful skill.

How it is:

Raising Destruction to max level --> worthless skill.
Min-maxing Destruction --> just about competitive skill.

The enemy mages are already scaling to your level together with their spell damage. You're safe

31... and i heard mobs stop scaeling at 40.... so im good

and too the guy saying it took 7 dual fireballs to kill a dragon while a warrior killed one with 1-2 hits on master... lol dude i dont want a cake walk... that warrior must be so bored one shotting every thing... i like feeling like im in a fight for my life when i see a dragon and idc what lvl i am...

adept is the NORMAL setting, and on that setting i wreck [censored] up as destro and only use conj. to soul trap and summon things to tank for me... mage is fine how it is please bethesda dont buff it i dont want a cake walk

No destruction doesnt scale period, thats a problem, a mage after lvl 15 or 20 has the most powerfull spells and has no reason to lvl anymore its boring and really broken... Destruction doesnt scale and it should, its not rocket science, difficulty is moot. The skill itself is gimped and pointless, and its the most important offensive skill for mages.

Just as I say it a beth defense force member chimes in LOL.

Callmetongy - I totally agree with what your saying, if your playing Master difficulty, it's gonna be hard, end of.

What about the armor spells from resto?


Maybe something other than fire on it would have worked better?


I could have sworn it does.


Well it will be really simple to test, because I know I seen somewhere on this forum where they did a test with this using the command console.

Start a new character and get two spells, then use the command console to jump from low destruction to 100 in the skill.
Record the damage and cost before and after.
Add in other spells with the console if needed.

I would, but I am at work at the moment.

most people only look at ONE aspect
DAMAGE AMAGAWD.
and they forget everything else.... single target damage bows and swords are better, but you can still chain spells to do high dmg in a very shot time (burst) but then here are the REAL advantages of using destruction, some you already mentioned.
-Vulnerabilities (many targets have vulnerabilities (undead, vampires atronachs any type of elemental mob)
-ignore armor (not that mobs have that big amounts of armor, but those less comon mobs going around in heavy armor, it matters, those special mobs going around in heavy armor/shields it matters alot)
-aoe (what does more dmg a 100 damage arrow to a target or a 80 damage spell that hits two or more?
-drain stamina (frost spells drain targets of their stamina preventing power attack and potentially fatal attacks at best, high damage taken at worst)
-drain mana (thunder spells drain mana of targets, making casters forced into meleeing you with their daggers rather than zap you to death)
-damage debuff (fire puts a debuff on targets that increases the damage they take, this is particulary awesome if you STOP thinking about using only a one hit nuke, and LEARN that you have to chain spells)
-ranged (a melee attacker does no damage to you if he cant reach you, and you cant do any damage to a ranged attacker if you cant reach him)
-stagger (I mention this perk knowing that melee has this too, but melee cant range aoe stagger being awesome to kite/train mobs into your aoe chains)
I wont mention perks like lighting executes and stuff cuz that is about perks that are actually shared with other attack forms.

I think the list above justifies full well the fact that single target damage is lower, would it be nice if damage could scale? yes sure, but not with skill, it has always been this way, spells scale with skill reducing their cost and being able to cast them alot more, a gear enchant for 10-20% tops damage increase would be ok, but any higher than that and then there would be no point of using bows swords or anything else.... you CAN already do high damage, in either short bursts or aoe, not as much as bows swords, but more than enough.


ps: master difficulty, lvl 52 destruction-alteration-restoration mage, no conjuration or illusion
the only main complaint I have is that dual casting perk makes any spell who isnt donwranged about 50 skills bellow worse... costing way more mana for too small a damage boost, need to be fixed, damage would be 2.3-2.5 multiplier and mana cost should be 2.2-2.5
and 2 minor ones, I miss spell crafting, and I wouldnt mind some late levels +dmg itemization for the extra health to go down, not much needed tho, as I still do relative high comparing to my warrior.

i chime onn because i enjoy one shotting bandits and stun locking dragons with my op destro mage.. .you gusy cry cuz waaaah i wanna one shot things on masters waaaaaaaah... go make a warrior then...

this is all i gotta say... let me see a warrior do this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nzN0S9Fvtk

nuff said

I completely agree with the OP.

We also need better magicka regen IN COMBAT.

As the OP already pointed out, melee types can still attack when their stamina runs out, mages cannot attack if our magicka runs out so our magicka should regen faster than stamina does...

I really don't need to test it using the console. My mage has 76 or so in Destruction and the damage of the spells (without taking the perks I mentioned) is the same as when I had 25.

Oh come on, beth defense force.
Get real and stop slinging petty insults. I added my opinion and from what I know and have read destruction damage and cost scales with the skill. Someone else tried it using the console command.
IT would be really simple for anyone on pc to simply use the console commands on a new character and take screen caps to prove or disprove it. I know I read that a member here tried it and seen a increase in damage and drop in cost for the first spell given and a sell bought.

Besides the original "defense force" was bioware, or biorones.
Calling names and slinging mud is childish and proves and solves nothing.

Not 1 person wants to 1 shoot things learn to read. Destruction dopesnt scale everythign else does, on top of this warriors can use staffs and poisons.............

As for 1 you tube video? LMAo Ok, could be low level, cheating with console...... Sorry you tube = usseless.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nzN0S9Fvtk

Playing as a pure mage. Level 42. Ripping through Master difficulty.

I don't understand the complaints.