I really like playing fantasy games as a pure mage, and I find myself kind of disappointed by the Elderscrolls games in this regard, because they have just never gotten it quite right. Morrowind obviously was absolutely ridiculous when it came to screwing over mages. Skyrim is doing it too though, in a lot of really annoying ways.

There are several reasons why magic in Skyrim just sort of svcks.

Destruction is really not viable late in the game, especially on higher difficulties. There simply is not enough magicka in the world to kill things with these spells. Rather than becoming more efficient when you get to higher end destruction spells it gets less and less efficient. Sure, impact is nastily powerful, being able to stagger enemies on demand is very potent, but it really doesn't help once every other encounter consists of 3+ enemies that all require more magicka to kill than your character can have.

Illusion is next to worthless. Half the enemies in the game can't even be affected by illusion spells until you hit 100 in it. Since the spells are restricted by level of creature they can afffect, and only animals and humanoids ever get a bonus to that level even if you get the perk that lets you cast illusion spells on anything those things will most likely outlevel your spells. Bethesda got this absolutely backwards. Why create a spell school that can placate or enrage weak enemies that you can simply sweep out of your way anyways? What I need these spells to do is help me defeat the powerful foes - but the game is built so that the powerful enemies can't be affected at all.

Paralysis has the same issue. The reason Paralysis was good in Morrowind and Oblivion was because if you ran into an enemy that was much more powerful than you you could paralyze them to even the odds. Now the game simply states that powerful foes can't be paralyzed. Why would I want to paralyze a weak enemy though? I can just kill them anyways.

The whole magicka regen through perks and wearing robes thing... Not really useful, since in combat your regen bonuses shut down. Yea, that's right. When you're in combat you lose the benefit from your gear if it's enchanted with stuff that would make playing a magic wielder actually possible. For all practical purposes, the huge penulties you take on yourself by wearing robes instead of armor have no real benefit outside of some convenience in between fights. In a fight armor trumps robes even if you are a pure mage, since regen will be identical.

Enchantment is more useful to any warrior than a mage. Staves don't benefit from any weapon skill, and even if they did - what the heck, I feel like its morrowind all over again where your only hope of killing something with offisive spells was to use an item that was enchanted with offensive spells.

Alteration is just as annoying and bland as in the other games. Nobody wants to recast a shield spell every minute, especially if it knocks a gargantuan chunk of Magicka off your bar which is insufficient to fuel combat magicks in the first place. This is even more annoying now that you need to cast in combat to level the skill.

Restoration is kind of worthless too. You can go the whole game without ever using any other effect then Heal, which you have from level 1. You don't really need any of the other Restoration spells. The idea behind the new Absorbs is cool, but the implementation is clashing with the realities of the magic system. In a system where you never ever have enough magicka in the first place the whole idea of fueling defenses with even more magicka just becomes sort of ridiculous.


I would really like to see some tweaking of this stuff. This game would simply be more enjoyable if it wasn't such

I stopped reading when you said Illusion is next to worthless. It's one of the most powerful skills in the game, but I wouldn't expect you to know that or figure it out.

The whole system shodld be totally retought of and in a serious manner ... and also distinguish magic by natural effects like should be the dragon breath for example....

one word- Conjuration

illusion is only viable to lv45 and that if you get all its perks after 50 only 10% of the enemys in game are affected by it and since there are dragon shouts that can do what illusion can do but wihtout the level limit and works on all enemys it make illusion seem pointless to me

Well, i find that restoration is quite useful, especially since with mage's low health, one restore spell would probably fill the whole hp bar.
And alteration... i dont get why they removed open lock spells, though it only seems useful for shield spells. And the perks are more of defensive.
And yes, the fact that robes magicka regen doesnt work in combat is the STUPIDEST thing i've experienced in the game; what in flinging [censored] would i need the robes for then?!

Thats not to say im not enjoying the game, im assuming all will be fine once i get 0 mana cost spells

I playing on master difficulty only - on 7-9lvl destruction is very easy to play.

Ppl who play master on 20lvl with mage also say its easy.

____
Mage always and hit and run,regen mana,hit and run,run and heal. Especially if there is pillars,houses,or stairs to run around them and kite mobs.

A lot of people seem to insist that Conjuration and Alteration are the bee's knees. What's the deal with that?

I'm with the good ole sword and board, so I wouldn't know.

Illusion is pointless. Sure, it starts out kind of nice, as long as you're fighting nothing but bandits, but for one, large parts of the game have to schlocking through masses of undead, which are immune until you're mastered illusion, and then eventually you just hit the point where most enemies are immune on level alone.

Even while you are leveling illusion, the enemies that aren't immune to your illusions spells are all the really weak ones that you can easily clean up anyways. Why do these spells need a level cap in the fist place? Or how about they make the level cap a cumulative number between multiple casts? Like if I cast a Calm spell on a creature that's higher level than the spell and then I cast another Calm spell on the same creature the game will check if the two spells combined break the creatures level and so forth...

Generally speaking Skyrim disappoints in one major way: It gets harder and harder the more you level up, and that just leaves you feeling like your quest for power bears no fruit. Mages are hit the hardest by this.


Destruction gets weaker and weaker the further you go along, trust me. Once you go past level 20 and you start seeing the Tier 4 Bandits and Draugr pop up and Tier 3 become commonplace you'll see what I mean. Kiting mobs around is an OK strategy, sure, but a lot of dungeons are so tight and have you fighting so many opponents at the same time that it's just a million times easier to tank enemies with a summon than to try and avoid them while your armorless robes do nothing since magicka regen doesn't work in combat.

its because conjuration is scaled to your level so a summoning at level 50 would be extremy powerful then uses that with twin souls which give you 2 summons and it becomes fairly powerful

Yeah I bet you've never died either

What!? Morrowind had awesome magic. You, sir, are ridiculous.

Get this mod for your game: http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=611#content

This fixes the problem of destruction having low damage (compared to swords etc).

I haven't bothered with Illusion in this game for precisely the reasons you mentioned. I find that Conjuration + Destruction gets the job done. Perk into Alteration until the point where you get half magicka cost for spells of a certain level and that makes your mana consumption much more bearable.

Also, Armor in this game is irrelevant for mages, when played correctly. See, the thing is you're not supposed to be standing there getting hit and healing it up. Mages are glass cannons and in an FPS'ish game like Skyrim, you NEED to use your WASD movement skills, your ALT sprint and dragon shouts like Sprint or Unrelenting Force to kite your enemies effectively while killing them. Tanking damage is NOT how you're supposed to go about it.

Also, keep an eye out for mods that fix the magicka thing. I'm looking for one which enables magicka regen in combat, and that will make life a lot easier than it is currently. Construction Kit can't come out fast enough.

on same difficulty and same lvl i died on my archer like 500 times,i dont die vs giants cas i can kill them keeping distance, but i died about 20-30 times trying killing Bandit Chief without using restoration and melee.

But when i switched to mage i killed Bandit Chief without problems.

That mod does look nice, but honestly, Bethesda should get on fixing that stuff.

I really love Elderscrolls games, but I thought that after Morrowind we were past having to download a dozen mods before mages became playable.



And yea, Destruction will seem really powerful at low levels, especially if you get Impact early on. The issue is that the hitpoints of enemies don't go up in 10s like your Magicka does, it goes up on 100s...

I agee with the OP. My mage is benched, it just feels too weak compared to other characters I've made.

What are you trying to prove, exactly, and to whom?

I playing as a pure conjurer and not only is it fun but its also challenging. Its the type of build you have to think before you act and I think that makes things much more interesting than hack n slash n repeat. No offense.

I understand the problem with destruction magic, but people are making it out to be worse than it is. It's mostly a problem for people playing at master/expert. I'm only level 21 playing at adept difficulty, and my desctruction spells are still very effective, and I'm only using adept spell so I still have two more powerful spells to go.

The problem is that destruction magic is pretty much locked in terms of damage. I think destruction is balanced out to be useful at adept difficulties and lower, which is the difficulty lv. most players will be playing on, but when you amp up the difficulty to master and expert dustruction just can't keep up. With swords, bows and so on there are many tricks you can do to be more powerful, not so with destruction, your damage limit is already set by the devs (pretty much).

So to sum up: Yes, Destruction is nerfed, but at adept difficulty or lower It's still a viable option. Ofcourse I'm only at lv. 21, but this is how I think it is. Either way I do hope bethesta patches this, but I'm not exactly holding by breath on that to happen.

Pure archer without melee and resto is much more gimped then mage.

I die alot on my new archer without using melee and restoration, but i dont die on my archer/warrior with restoration, and i almost never dont die on my mage on low lvls.

I mean mage is gimped but not that gimped cas he can kite and heal.

It's how you play the game. I'm more or less a pure mage and to be honest have struggled myself. But the more I play the more I learn what i'm doing wrong.

I had been using destruction but totally neglecting the other schools of magic. Now i've started using ward and armour spells the game is getting easier. Also conjuration is good to distract enemies.My biggest problem now is i haven't been spending perks on the other schools of magic instead wasting them on things like smithing and both the armor skills when instead I should have spent it on alteration and restoration to boost my defences.

I'm only level 20 so still have time to correct my levelling mistakes

im playing pure mage with Destruction being my dps. in the high 30's and having little problems. i keep fort. dest. potions handy tho.

I have a lvl 42 mage 92 destruction and I can assure you that is very powerfull. The trick is using clothes/active powers, all you can find with magic regeneration on you, in order to recover your magicka as fast as it can be. You also need to place all your bonus on magicka after you lvled. That way you can use adept/expert spells without almost runing out of magicka, and if you have problems with bosses for example, I can always use the special day ability of High Elves "highborn" wich is crazy regenerating magicka. I can restore my almost 500 magicka in 2-3 seconds.

im really wishing i'd taken the high elf over the breton but with the apprentice birth stone active it is nice for me to have magic resistance. High Elves looks tops tho.

*edit* also i think a huge problem with everyone hating on dest. in skyrim is because of how broken it was in oblivion (mage tanks/etc.) with skyrim you have to use your head a bit more and really plot out your attack. i spend little to no time drained of mana save large fights but im an alchemist so i ALWAYS have potions handy and go right back to blowing things up.

*second edit* also wall spells, runes, and clokes make every thing easier.

Im playing on master difficulty since level 2 .

Im level 41 now and have no problem at all with destruction.

I dont get why people have problems with destruction... Frost trolls which are considered one of the strongest opponents die with 4 dual cast thunderbolts.. Is my game bugged and they die so easily or are people whining biatches who want to one shot everything like melee does with the broken build?