I would have explained the complaints differently.

You did a great job of explaining how monsters lvl with you but the damage dealt by your destruction magic doesn't change after your 2nd perk raises the bonus to 50%. That is the technical side.The reason people troll posts explaining the technical side is not that they don't understand the problem, it's that they want to point out that there are other solutions e.g. support with other magics, potions, enchantments etc

But that is totally missing the problem. My problem isn't that I can't work out ways around my destruction mage being nerfed, I can.

It's that I have a character that is steadily becoming less powerful as I progress in the game. It's totally and utterly game breaking. Suspension of disbelief is out of the window. I am having the underlying game mechanics and number crunching rubbed into my face, all the issues with level scalling rudely shoved under my nose.

If your not experiencing this problem with your warrior/acher/thief/non destruction mage, just stop and think how that feels. Every level up is not greeted with a cheer, it's greeted with a groan. How under powered will I be now. How am I going to level my character now and apply my perks to offset this problem, all thoughts of roleplaying out of the window, not it's a brutal set of choices about how to redress the game mechanics. My character no longer feels like a character but a set of stats.

In short the problems with destuction are totally game breaking for RPG.

By the time I am thinking about strategies to overcome the problem, my game enjoyment has already been substantially degraded. It was a horrible oversight IMO, failure to think through the impacts of the level scalling.

Let me try to explain why warriors svck clearly.....sorry, only teasing.

I've not rolled up a mage yet. But I'm not sure your idyllic view of the warrior class is completely correct. At default setting, my basic sword and shield fighter (no smithing I must add) owned all mobs, bosses were more tricky, but not too hard. I pushed up the difficulty. Master makes mobs interesting but Bosses become virtually impossible. I currently play at expert. I've had to cross skills and learn to use a bow and to sneak. I can one shot single mobs with the bow, but against a Boss or a gruop of enemies its alot more tricky and tactical, involving a mixture of sneaking to get a backstab in on the Boss and using my companion to be a damage soak while I try to stay out of the swing of the Boss's sword (who can often stitch a number of seriously staggering and crippling power attacks together) and get some power blows in.

What I'm trying to say, si that if you play pure basic sword and shield fighter (admittedly without smithing), it's not a walk in the park either. Stamina vanishes pretty damn fast once you've put up a couple of blocks. Most Bandit Bosses come clothed in Heavy armour that makes non-power blows wash off them. So you pretty much end up swigging bottles of stamina potions - instead of mana.

So whilst I've not played a mage, my feeling is, hard difficulty is...well, hard. And it's hard for all "classic"builds that don't cross skill.

Maybe when I try and playa destruction mage, I'll change my mind, but right now, I'm not sure I see what the problem is. My biggest gripe is that the difficulty difference between mobs and Bosses is sooo huge. Meaning to have an interesting fight with the mobs you need a harder difficulty setting, but that makes Bosses almost impossible...anyway that's totally off topic and for a different thread

if you are a spell slinger (basicly if you use destruction) do NOT go for +x% magicka regen gear/enchants, you get much better return in mana pool by simply going heavily into -x%destruction cost (destruction skill) gear and enchants aswell as +xmana.

because every time you cant/channel/chain spells your mana regen STOPS entirely.
mana regen is more of a hybrid melee-caster or illusion/conjuration build stat


I miss, and would love to get spell crafting back, but THAT doesnt mean that casters are bad or anrt fun or that destruction is bad at all.


true but dont even try to compare a temporary/high cost lower dmg enchant on a weapon with constantly slinging from range with debuffs etc.
also unless you go around with 3 weapons with 3 enchants for each element... yeah the pratical use of such a thing is praticaly void... especially with ebtter enchants to resort to...

I agree with the OP on this one. The whole magic system in Skyrim has been screwed up. I'm sure they did it because of "Balance" but now they have made it so that isn't not a viable option any more. I'm struggling in Skyrim as a pure mage who only uses a blade for in close wet work.

Bethesda is forcing people down the path of "Bash and Smash". It's a shame really, the magic system has alot of promise but unless it gets fixed it's not a viable option hardly.

By the way, please don't bother telling me that the modding community will fix it. As an XBox player I can't use them and personally I think we shouldn't have to rely on the modding community to fix the game, it should be right out of the box.

In what way?


I do not insist it is just fine, I am trying to get to the root of the issue, some people have no problem with the way it works, while others do.




Do you have anything constructive to add to this topic besides lolz defense force and broken?
This is borderline trolling and flame bait.

Every single offensive skill increases in damage with skill level, AND there are perks to increase it even more. Except destruction magic.

Destruction damage only increases with a two level perk, by 25% and later 50%.

The best spell you can cast is the master level fire spell if you're just going by total damage. Which is 225 points.

The facts have been laid out 100 times on this forum on this and most game forums why destruction is gimped, you keep ignoring them, thats borderline trolling/flaming......

Every skill in the game increases with lvl except destruction, making the 1 offensive weapon for mages gimped, especually as you get the most powerfull spells early with nothing else, making levling pointless and boring............... How hard is that to understand. Mana regen is also too slow even with mana regen enchancements.

Enemies do not stop scaling at 40. Eventually, your Destruction damage will top out, and that will be that.

Also, to those pointing out that it's faulty to compare it to melee weapons--fine, let's compare it to archery, then. They're both ranged, both require two hands to use effectively, and both have limited ammo. The comparison still stands: Archery keeps scaling, Destruction doesn't.

I am not saying that Destruction should outdamage everything. I am aware that Destruction spells have more effects than just damage. But they all stay the same after you learn the best spells. Imagine if, as an archer, once you got the best bow in the game, your damage can never increase again. You can't improve your weapon with smithing, and even having 100 Archery skill won't boost it. A fighter or archer's damage does not max out until they have the best weapon available, 100 weapon skill, and all available perks; until then, it will steadily improve. Mages do not have that luxury.

And yeah, Destruction can damage magicka and stamina... but at the end of the day, I've still got to kill things. Is it seriously so unreasonable that Destruction damage should increase in some way as Destruction skill increases? Again, I'm not asking for it to scale through the roof--that's what Smithing and melee is for!--I just want to, y'know, get better at Destruction as my skill goes up.

Maybe, but he would be wrong.
Magic damage does not increase with level, it does the same damage at level 100 as at level 1.

One-handed damage does scale with level.

You and everyone else complaining about magic do not seem to realize that Destruction is the most powerful thing in the game. I am level 45 and only have 87 destruction and nothing can touch me, I have to play on master difficulty. I am using enchantments to reduce my Spell costs and increase my total magic. There is an early perk that makes your dual wielded ranged fire spells stagger any opponent EVERYTIME it hits. And if you say "Well I shouldn't have to use enchantments or other magic schools to be a good mage" then your an idiot, because thats like saying you shouldn't have to use armor if your a warrior.

But the spell damage doesn't scale with skill... Unless you think I'm a total idiot and can't understand simple terms, you should trust me on this until you can verify yourself... and not repeating the same things.

And the mages don't have access to % increased spell damage as a warrior can, by using an enchantment with % tow hand damage. You're basically stuck with a static number and you can only reduce the mana cost.

I dont get it why some people insist on that there are no problems, considering the amount of complaints about destruction magic being bad at high lvl, there are cleary some truth to it. People dont whine because they want to be OP, they want to not be underpowered.

I might chose to reroll and stop playing my lvl26 mage entirely since its simply not any fun when you cant hurt bosses at all, you use up all ur mana and barely do like 5% of their health, and then have to switch to a weapon, which turns out to do far more damage even if you dont have perks for it. There are clearly some flaws that need to be fixed. I hope bethesda will do that. But if not, luckily we pc-users gets mods.

The stagger perk is REQUIRED for a high level mage to stand any chance to anything, yes it's overpowered when fighting a single enemy. It's also extremely tedious to stunlock a guy with thousands of HP points dealing 225 damage with every single 2 second charge doublecast.

LMAO more bs and someone who cannot read... No destruction is easily the weakest it doesn't scale, not rocket science.

Will someone else start another destruction magic thread? We need at least another 10 page explanation of why it is broken and how you feel the need to cry about it. / whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

its not BS....
the only people who actually believe destruction is bad... are the people who dont know how to use it


can people please try to be friendly and respec other people's opinions?

the stagger perk, is not a requirment, it doesnt make or break the desctruction tree... its just EXTREMLY usefull because it reduces your vulnerability to melee attackers a bit, but even better, it helps your train and hold mobs going for you, around your aoe/traps.

because they are bethesda nut huggers.

Yes, of course, the root of the problem is the lack of Spellmaking.

Remember the awesome variety of the fireball and bigger fireball with paralysis? Remember the tactical usage of these spells?
I sure as hell don't.

No, that's not the problem, not even close.

If throwing different colored balls are less generic than giving us a multitude of forms (flawed or not), then pong seem to be a much more interesting game.


And spellmaking was totally not a broken feature

I think the unbalance is clear when a enemy mage around my level can drop me with two spells, and when I use the same spell on him, it only scratches his HP.

I'd say spell effect should go up with skill or let us improve our spells, the shout upgrade system is cool, lvl 1-3 Spark would work fine

This. When your only source of damage never increases, sure, you can still win fights, but it's really tedious, and you're either going to have to exploit Enchanting for all it's worth or chug potions until the end of time.

And the thing is, a mage has to use Enchanting to its absolute fullest in order to stay in the game; a warrior, thief, or archer will not have to do that. And if a warrior, thief, or archer does use Enchanting to its fullest, they'll put a pure mage to shame three or four times over.

What a grand and intoxicating innocence!

Fact remains we went from the most customisable and useful magic system ever devised to generic.
The magic in this game is a disgrace, for a TES game.
Dragon Age 1 has more varied and useful magic.

Actually, the maximum ranged damage spell does 135 damage.

The most damage you can possibly do is 225 with an AoE that starts from your body and spreads outwards. The enemy that is right next to you takes 225 damage and then the damage dissipates pretty quickly outward from there. This spell takes a good bit of time to charge as well.

LMAo the old everyone complaining doesnt know how to cast speels routine? How does it not scaling have anything to do with not knowing howe to use it? The forums are flooded with complaints from people who have been playing rpg;s much longer then you, skyrim is not complicated, destruction is not done properly at all............ Its simple. Damage gets worse, not enough mana. FACT. every other skill does scale making destruction pointless and mages broken,.

I believe destruction is bad because the design is poor. I know how to abuse the system with 0 cost spells and Impact perk. The game at this point is not very fun to play.

Do you understand this?

I can only hope so...

Yeah, and thats why we have a almost equal split of people who think its fine as those who think its broken.
I have not kept ignoring anything, only going off what I know and have read here.


I think tonight I am just going to have to see my self with out taking perks to see if damage scales with level or not because I can't seem to get a straight answer. I see some people else where (reddit/here) who say it does and that mage is fine, and others who say different.


If that is the case than I can see the problem, and I am either failing to understand some of the posts properly, or people are reporting that magic does indeed increase with skill level. Not player level, but skill level.


Here is my point, some people are having great luck with it, while others are nor.
Getting to the bottom of the why from both sides is the issue. Now it may be due to play stile but I can;t sit and watch how everyone plays to figure it out.

I suppose I will have to do it my self, when I get ready to play a mage.

This will be my last post in this thread, as I appear to lack the necessary reading comp to understand some things here correctly or I am not understanding others.

If the issue is this, and it may be thenI see the point, however I think it it may be something else.

Destruction at 15, Fireball does 50 and costs 50.
Destruction at 100 does 50 and costs 25.

I can see the problem with that, however I could have sworn that I seen somewhere that the damage increased with level and not taking perks wither.

I thought it was along the lines of ,
Destruction at 15 fireball does 50 and costs 50.
Destruction at 100 does 75 and costs 25.