Master level destruction spells seem useless

Post » Mon May 21, 2012 12:24 am

I haven't obtained them yet, bu just by looking at them in the guide and using the scrolls, they seem useless except the lighting one.

Firestorm costs around 400 magicka with the perk and most people won't even have that much in the first place. It only does 100 damage! I can use the wall spells for 2 seconds to do similar damage and 1/10 the magicka cost. Actually I can dual cast for one second! This is useless unless it does way more damage if the target is close to the caster. Does anyone know how much it does at point blank range? It should do at least 400 base instead of 100 to be useful.

Blizzard is pretty bad too for the mana cost. I only used the scroll once and I'm not sure if you have to channel it and if casting in both hands doubles damage. Still seems much better to just cast the wall spells or the expert level bolts.

The lighting one seems ok if it actually does what I think it does. Basically a channeled spell were you got to keep cursor over the target? 150 damage a second with dual cast seems ok. This just shows how useless firestorm is lol.
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Sierra Ritsuka
 
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Post » Sun May 20, 2012 4:57 pm

you need both hands to cast every master spell
so no 2 casts, no dualcast

so they are all plain bad
you cannot move while casting, you cast very long, you need more mana to cast them, and they do far less dmg than expert or adept spells

only good thing is, you can use blizzard for some fun indoors :P
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Niisha
 
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Post » Sun May 20, 2012 4:33 pm

400 magicka WITH the perk? For only 100 damage?

That better be 100 damage per second for several seconds.
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Neko Jenny
 
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Post » Sun May 20, 2012 10:23 pm

400 magicka WITH the perk? For only 100 damage?

That better be 100 damage per second for several seconds.

Nope it's just 100 damage lol. Since its a fire spell it will burn but I don't know how much burn damage. Also it says enemies closer to caster take more damage. Anyone know the numbers?

The fact you can't dual cast makes the expert level bolts and the wall spells even better lol.
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amhain
 
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Post » Sun May 20, 2012 6:25 pm

My incinerate lists 90 damage and it's not even half that mana. That has got to be a bug.
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Milagros Osorio
 
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Post » Sun May 20, 2012 9:17 pm

Nope it's just 100 damage lol. Since its a fire spell it will burn but I don't know how much burn damage. Also it says enemies closer to caster take more damage. Anyone know the numbers?

The fact you can't dual cast makes the expert level bolts and the wall spells even better lol.
It's 150 damage if you have the +50% 2 point perk, which i assume you would if you're using fire. It takes a hefty chunk from the enemies health but that's negated by the silly long cast animation.

Blizzard is pathetic damage, although its fire and forget as it ticks away for it's duration after it's cast.

Lightning storm would have been much better if usable on the move, whoever decided rooting for all master spells was a good idea needs shot.

Master spells also mean you cannot use the pets from Conjuration as you can't avoid hitting them and they turn round and attack you almost every time :P
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Killah Bee
 
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Post » Sun May 20, 2012 10:46 pm

You are not taking imto account the multiple modifiers. Ie, skill level modifier, perk modifier, etc.

It's 100 BASE damage, but a LOT more in use.
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Fam Mughal
 
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Post » Mon May 21, 2012 5:37 am

I haven't gotten any of the spells yet, but all I know is that I used a Scroll of Blizzard once and it obliterated a dragon and everything else around. Seemed pretty good to me.
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Rachel Eloise Getoutofmyface
 
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Post » Sun May 20, 2012 10:11 pm

You are not taking imto account the multiple modifiers. Ie, skill level modifier, perk modifier, etc.

It's 100 BASE damage, but a LOT more in use.
Isn't incinerate 90 base? But can be dualcast once perked.
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Emilie M
 
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Post » Sun May 20, 2012 5:54 pm

Isn't incinerate 90 base? But can be dualcast once perked.
Nah, it's 60 base and 90 perked. Still does much more DPS than Firestorm though.
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Lizbeth Ruiz
 
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Post » Sun May 20, 2012 10:03 pm

I guess it depends on how the distance modifier for Firestorm. If it does double damage at close range, I can see some use for it.

Edit: I say that forgetting about the reported cast time.
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Eileen Müller
 
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Post » Sun May 20, 2012 7:50 pm

It would be nice to hear from bethesda to see if they are planning on patching destruction magick and buffing it for later spells. They have gone dark.. Has anyone reported this to them yet? I see complaints (and they are justified) but not one person has said they reported it to beth. Maybe if enough of us do they will fix it and/or respond
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Chris Jones
 
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Post » Sun May 20, 2012 7:57 pm

Destruction magic in this game is very underpowered. This is for quite a few reasons, but I think the main reason is that magic costs less to use with better skill and armor enchantments, but doesn't actually grow in damage. Weapons start out free to swing in normal attacks and melee weapons get cheaper power attacks from a perk. They also scale tremendously in damage from skill and armor enchantments. Weapons can also themselves be enchanted or upgraded. This ends up creating a huge gap in the power between magic and weapons.
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Nathan Hunter
 
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Post » Mon May 21, 2012 6:53 am

You are not taking imto account the multiple modifiers. Ie, skill level modifier, perk modifier, etc.

It's 100 BASE damage, but a LOT more in use.

there are 3 ways to increase the dmg of a spell in skyrim

1. 50% dmg bonus from 2 perk points

2. use both hads = two casts (doesn't work for master spells)

3. dual casting bonus perk (doesn't work for master spells)

so it's 150 dmg max per cast

dualcasting a fireball, does around 100 dmg, and is also Aoe, is cast faster, with lower costs, on the move and doesn't hit your conjuration if aimed good
fireball is an adept spell!

incinerate does around 200 dmg when dualcast, casst faster, lower costs, on the move
compared to the masterspell lighting stom wich does 113 dmg per second, after a long channel
it's more dps with less cost on the move again


Most destruction spells will stagger an opponent when dual cast. <--- this doesn't work with master spells either, wich is a major disadvantage too
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Rachyroo
 
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Post » Sun May 20, 2012 5:45 pm

you would think there would be some staffs ( what ever the plural is) that held better damage
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^~LIL B0NE5~^
 
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Post » Mon May 21, 2012 8:08 am

Pete Hines has said twice on twitter that they are reading the boards and working hard to fix bugs. I hope they consider this to be a bug or at least worth fixing :\
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Solène We
 
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Post » Mon May 21, 2012 2:18 am

Destruction magic in this game is very underpowered. This is for quite a few reasons, but I think the main reason is that magic costs less to use with better skill and armor enchantments, but doesn't actually grow in damage. Weapons start out free to swing in normal attacks and melee weapons get cheaper power attacks from a perk. They also scale tremendously in damage from skill and armor enchantments. Weapons can also themselves be enchanted or upgraded. This ends up creating a huge gap in the power between magic and weapons.
Loss of the spell maker, loss of weakness spells, that did people expect? default magic was pretty weak in Oblivion and broken a magnitude more than Skyrim in Morrowind.
However with weakness effects it was possible to create powerful destruction spells in Oblivion. With many fortify intelligence potions and some willpower potions in Morrowind you could create spells who did more than 10.000 in damage.
This was removed in Oblivion, but magic overall got better and with smart use of weakness you could still do more damage than the other classes.
No come Skyrim with no spell maker, I protested and said it would remove pure mages as effective build, it saddens me that I was right.

It appears that weapon users got the cool stuff with combining enchanting and alchemy you are able to get self stacking bonuses on smiting letting you make insanely powerful weapon and armor.
2K damage weapons is insane, yes they fit in WOW with 25.000.000 hp bosses however if dragons has like 4.000 hp at max level and difficulty
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Tamika Jett
 
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Post » Mon May 21, 2012 7:04 am

Loss of the spell maker, loss of weakness spells, that did people expect? default magic was pretty weak in Oblivion and broken a magnitude more than Skyrim in Morrowind.
However with weakness effects it was possible to create powerful destruction spells in Oblivion. With many fortify intelligence potions and some willpower potions in Morrowind you could create spells who did more than 10.000 in damage.
This was removed in Oblivion, but magic overall got better and with smart use of weakness you could still do more damage than the other classes.
No come Skyrim with no spell maker, I protested and said it would remove pure mages as effective build, it saddens me that I was right.

i expected one thing, that master spells work like all other spells, that alone would be enough to let the mage feel stronger
but i doubt that they will fix it -,-
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Mrs Pooh
 
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Post » Sun May 20, 2012 11:25 pm

I think you guys are mistaken, this is not a bug, its a feature!!

Master spells do have a so called benefit over lower skill spells, it's got a larger AoE making it alot more effective against more targets. Downside is that you will probably kill your follower and turn your summon against you, but hey that's cool isn't it?

BTW, Beth fails @ balancing, eg: Melee can do over 2,000 damage if specced right, Max level destruction magic... a paultry 150 damage..., hmmm let's so who wins in a fight...
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Isaiah Burdeau
 
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Post » Sun May 20, 2012 11:11 pm

Another problem (if it is a problem in your view) that can be easily solved once the mod toolkit is released.
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scorpion972
 
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Post » Mon May 21, 2012 9:00 am

let's so who wins in a fight...
Okay, so you build the melee guy. I'll bring my mage. We can meet in Winterhold. Sound good?
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kyle pinchen
 
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Post » Mon May 21, 2012 2:40 am

I wanted to add that I'm just disappointed with the overall pure magicka user. No spellmaker made my really sad, but I thought the base spells would make up for it (which it doesn't). I miss combining two types of elemental dmg into a single spell, or adding a soul trap effect before the dmg-dealer. The first character I made was a high-elf magicka wielder, but was saddened after I read the master spells that I stopped playing right after completion of the main quest chain and created an assassin.

What I was hoping was that Bethesda SHARED the flexibility of magicka with the past games with Skyrim, but instead MOVED it from magicka to melee and armor. The guide also justifies removing the capability of sharing enchants with all apparel slots because "it doesn't fit" or "doesn't make sense," but how does a necklace "logically" improve my pick-pocketing skill? I think Bethesda just tried to hard in building a "cheese-free" Skyrim, but all it did was hurt pure magicka users, and buff melee users.
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cassy
 
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Post » Sun May 20, 2012 8:12 pm

Okay, so you build the melee guy. I'll bring my mage. We can meet in Winterhold. Sound good?

I would really love to see the math... but this wouldn't make sense really... because a player has soo many options that a "head-to-head" match just wouldn't make sense.

Any character could just quaff a invis potion and summon a dragon to deal/soften up the mage/melee/ninja player, adding arrows, an deadra, a zombie, a companion, a backstab for x30 to the mix.
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Tanika O'Connell
 
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Post » Sun May 20, 2012 8:57 pm

This is why Enchanting is a mage skill. Level your Enchanting enough and you can equip 100% Cost Reduction to Destruction and spam high level spells at almost no cost, how is that not powerful?

So if an overcharged Expert Fire spell does around 200 dmg but costs very little magicka I think that would be fine. My plan has been (Level 27 now) to keep Destruction only a little ahead of Enchanting and Conjuration (for necromancy and occasional Bound weapon). This way I can constantly upgrade new -% spell cost enchantments on multiple items. Then I favorite those items and equip them mid battle once I am ready to start casting destro spells. Once magicka is low I re-equip my magicka recharge apparel and wait for the next round of fire blasts.

I guess I will have to see how my playstyle holds up @ Lv. 50, but I'm confident it will still be viable as well as challenging.
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Ben sutton
 
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Post » Sun May 20, 2012 7:10 pm

Any character could just quaff a invis potion and summon a dragon to deal/soften up the mage/melee/ninja player, adding arrows, an deadra, a zombie, a companion, a backstab for x30 to the mix.

I think it would go something more like: dual-cast fireball with impact -> melee is stunlocked -> gg
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Nana Samboy
 
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