I don't need to jump to any cast reduction. My magicka regen works just fine in combat. Yes I can run oom if I go berserk mode and spam away whatever, but I don't do that.

Yeah, enchanting and alchemy are the way to go if you want to play a pure mage and not rely on weapons. Mana regen potions and enchanted gear that lowers casting cost are all wonderful and help keep you alive longer. Also, always remember that you are squishy and therefore avoid melee as much as you can.

If you dont want to cheese it then only get one or two destruction mitigation enchantment(s), and get the perk that makes duel-cast spells stagger the opponents as it will give you extra time to regen mana in between casts

Why do so many people reply like this and act like it's "No big deal"? Nobody who is having problems cares that you can exploit your way to free spells, and you may as well just use the console commands if you're on the PC. The people having difficulties are going to be having difficulties for a looooong time unless they kill the fun factor and spend more time crafting crap and farming vendors than actually playing the game.

The best advice to someone who wants to play Destruction is: don't bother. Wait until someone makes a mod that is both balanced and fun. Bethesda is incapable of doing both.

And for the love of god, it's DUAL, NOT DUEL.

A combination of Destruction, Illusion, Conjuration and some Restoration may help you out there.
Destruction is pretty obivious.
Illusion gives you spells to deal with multiple enemys at once.
Conjuration gives you additional damage from your pet as well as a distraction from yourself.
Restoration as a nice perk that helps with your mana regeneration (most +mana regeneration things just work while not in combat, this one works during combat I was told) .
Also there is the Apprentice Stone, which also may help with your mana problems, but comes at a cost.

You may want to post such a Thread in the Tips and Spoilers Forum because here people can only give very vague answers since spoilers arent allowed.

So then... They intended for you place 2 enchants on items... AND with 100 enchant you can create a 25% reduction in spell cost to any school, on 4 different items. Not using any potions to inflate your skill, you wind up with exactly 100% reduction. They did not cap it.

And somehow you say this was not intended. Please provide a link to ANY developer who said this. Or a link where in the manual this is said.

Right there are none. Because you decided it isn't fair does not make it unintended.

I guess there IS the option that Bethesda are thoroughly stupid and incompetent. But I'd rather go with it being an unintended side-effect.

Yep. We hope that it is not intended. It reminds me of AoC crafting ... first time I saw it I was like ... wait a minute, this does not seem right ... soon after we got guardians who were one shotting ppl mid air before their charge landed. That was in game as well ... thus intended.

Not to mention you don't have to go for enchanting and do just fine, at least on the level OP is at.

Bethesda is smart. They know that players want to achieve god mode in the game and I suspect they make it posible. I want it to be possible but I want it to be more difficult

I remember playing Arena, the first TES game. I had an ebony Diakatana, heavy armor, and just cast a powerful reflect spell on myself. I was a god and I blew through the end game enemies and the final bad guy who was a mage who got all his spells reflected back at me

Bethesda if this is your plan all I ask you is to make it more difficult to achieve god mode

:D

It's not easy to manage Magicka but finally at Level 20, I bought the Adept Robes from the guy who teaches Illusion at the College of Winterhold. It's 100% Magicka Regeneration and most of the time my Magicka bar doesn't even show up on the screen when I'm casting spells. Those robes have taken away one worry. I'm not invincible but they've really helped with Magicka. I'm using staves more and have gotten Azura's Star too. If you can get the tools, it'll help.

:tes:

I honestly do not understand everyone's aversion to enchanting.

I don't think I have seen any warriors complaining about smithing making them uber. Which it does and is very easy to level. Also alchemy can make thieves and archers quite powerful as well.

I do understand the need for some more common sense caps on certain buffs. But why does everyone despise enchanting so much? if anything it is missing a key item... +damage to spells.

Warriors don't complain about smithing because it increases their damage AND survivability. They don't complain about enchanting, because it increases their damage and survivability as well. You can't increase destruction damage, only longevity, but there are some enemies who can beat you even in that department, so what then?

And even if you do make your spells cost 0 mana, wouldn't it be better to make conjuration cost no magic rather than destruction. You'll hurt enemies far more with summons than fireballs.

Imagine smithing being able to craft gear that gives you -100% stamina cost on power attacks.

Enchant a weapon to absorb fatigue, and you can spam power attack forever. Done.

Because developers always make flawless games and they anticipated every possible outcome and thoroughly playtest with the most creative players. Amirite?



Imagine being able to make weapons that are so strong that their average auto attack hits harder than the power attack of the best possible weapon that you can actually find.

Oh wait...

I think some players don't know what the word "exploit" means.

Overpowered maybe, exploit - no.

Smithing enchants weapons Nop ... we are back to the broken enchanting.

When someone uses something that was obviously not intended to function that way, and the player knows this, it's called an exploit. Those who say it's not are those who just try to justify using it when they know there's no way it was intended.

Eh, absorb fatigue itself isn't broken. Its crafting weapons that do 320 damage in one hit that's a bit broken. The whole enchanting thing isn't broken either, its just that they let you fortify abilities that let you craft better gear to craft better gear to...

If you could do that, a warrior using only power attacks would do, at a minimum, around 8 times the damage that an equivalent mage could do.

Just because something is in-game doesn't mean it is working as intended. Skyrim is a massive game, and there are bound to be problems that sneak in. For example, did you know that if you have even one stamina, you can execute a power attack? Did you know that a vegitable soup, a food item you can create at level one in riverwood, gives +1 stamina regeneration per level? Did you know that this form of stamina regen bypasses the stamina regen halt that takes place during a power attack?

Essentially, you can combine a basic food item and dual wielding and do roughly 9 times the damage that a spellcaster can do at endgame, given they have infinite magicka. That's the difference.

Of course, range IS a counteracting factor, as are AoE effects. However, when a warrior can kill anything before their target even has time to hit them back, such concerns begin to become somewhat pointless, wouldn't you agree?



The point, however, is that no matter how you go, eliminating stamina from the equasion, or eliminating magicka from the equasion, it exploits flaws in the engine to create a level of power that was not intended to exist. Asking a player to play that way simply to survive is, at best, laughable.

Because 100% almost anything means a broken game. Magic resist is capped at 85 for a reason. 100% chameleon was utterly broken in TES4. Beyond that, -100% cost completely eliminates the need for magicka. I guess it's preference at some point, but as it is it makes battlemages/dual tree mages extremely strong (free conjuration+destruction and plenty of perks to spare) while pure mages are much weaker due to no %dmg enchants.

I know people are sick of this debate, but I'll share my personal solution anyway: Hood could be enchanted only with +magicka, gloves with +%dmg, robe with -%cost, boots with +%regen. Or something similar to that. Maybe allow +magicka on everything since non-percentage based buffs are less abusable.

Eh? Why not just make them multiply against the new values, instead? If you did that, you could actually increase the lower leveled enchantments while keeping the higher level ones balanced.

For example, right now it's like this:

25%-25%-25%-25%=0% magicka cost

If it multiplied against the new value each time, it would go like this:

100*.75=75*.75=56.25*.75=42.19*.75=31.64% magicka usage.

Problem solved.


EDIT: While we're at it, why not do this with armor, magick resistance, even everything? Armor caps at 80%? Why?

Armor could have been made incredibly simply; just make each point of armor be the equivalent of that % more health. For example, if you use oakflesh for an extra 40 armor value, you get what would translate to 40 more health, except working as damage reduction. It would take 40 more damage than normal to kill you. With full daedric armor and 800 armor value, you would have roughly 9 times the starting armor value, resulting in the equivalent of about 90% resistance to damage. You could never become invincible, so no problems there, and there would be no hard armor cap to break your immersion. Plus it would be more useful at lower levels!

Magick resistance could work exactly the same way as magick efficiency above, also solving that problem! The only way to become invincible to magick would be to make an enchanted item that has 100% resistance to magick. If you can do that, you're already to the point of breaking the game, so it actually remains non-immersion breaking!


These things are so simple, i just dont get why bethesda didn't use them in the first place.

That makes a lot of sense with the multiplicative stacking.

Also if they would just add increase damage enchants then Destruction would be far more useful and it would reduce the need for so much mana usage.

At Master level Alteration, Mage Armor 3 and any type of actual armor becomes totally useless too. Why?

When you spend time creating a mechanic like Magicka or any forms of damage and then give the player the ability to nullify them. Why do they exist in the first place?

If this kind of 'balancing' is intended then we might as well cut to the chase and use tgm. What's the difference?