Yeah, but the point is I'm not in a designated "dangerous" area. Not a problem in a dungeon because it's a very linear path and I'm expecting dangerous stuff. But if I'm just out in the open, trying to find a path up a mountain or whatever, it gets annoying to have a sabre cat randomly jump in my face from the other side of a rock that his AI got him stuck behind and... instant death.

It's not a big problem or anything, it's a sort of minor annoyance/frustration. I just wish I could cast detect life for longer (either as a buff, or an "active effect" that slowly drains magicka) instead of draining my 450 magicka in like 5 seconds and not being able to sprint while I'm using it. If I could do that I would be a happy panda.

Forgot about this! Will have to try it out see if it's more useful.

At least conjuration works for you, mine is bugged so bad... I have to spam cast it in order for the [censored] thing to appear, and once you cast it the sound can be heard by everyone... So when it fails to appear.... Yeah...................

When i do manage to actually conjure something, i always make sure to conjure it infront of me, and i use the right element for the enemy type so i dont have to worry about my spells pissing it off. Apart from that, Impact is very OP... It's hard to die on Master when you have that perk.

Be GLAD its challening.
If you want it easy. Try going melee and get 100 smithing and 100 enchanting. And just 1 shot everyighing in this game on Master.
Sounds fun? No, not at all.

Even destruction is too powerful for my taste.
You are forced to play on expert or Master for a challenge.
And destruction only becomes challening at 40+, and for me, thats when the fun is beginning.

Dragonskin is a racial trait of the Bretons... It absorbs 50% of the magicka from spells cast at you.

It's because Bethesda royally screwed up magic in this game, especially Destruction. In the first couple of days you would see people going on and on about how "Everything is fine, you just don't know how to play this ultra cerebral class!". Yeah, no. The Destruction tree is complete garbage, especially on any difficulty above Adept (which most probably play on). Melee/Archery does not have any of these difficulties. Superior survivability and superior damage. The "well magic has a range advantage" is meaningless in the majority of the dungeons that are close quarters and enemies rush you left and right and also half of the time rush right past your summons.

Lol, typical case in point where the person has no idea what they are talking about and are not playing on Expert or Master difficulty:


As if people playing on the higher difficulties did not already know this. The best "Mage" is one that uses the Conjuration tree including a bound bow and has also somehow mananged to hit Master Alteration for Dragonhide/Paralyze.

lvl 42 build: http://www.ign.com/builds/the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim?d=000000000000000000000000000000011111000110111000000000000000000000000000101011111350001110000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000005111023

I get one shot by Draugr Deathlord Archers THROUGH my Dragonskin spell. I'm level 47 on Adept, with 210 health, because I needed to sink every level's stat update into magicka just to cast some of the expert/master spells more than 3 times. That same enemy takes me at least 5 dual casted incinerates. On ADEPT! I couldn't imagine expert or master.

The only way to play upper level Mage apparently, is to dual wield Dremora Lords and stagger lock enemies for ages until you win, while exploiting enchanting to negate the need for the magicka bar you just spent every level upgrading in order to even make it that far.

That is what makes me roll my eyes everytime I read "Just get -%cost enchants lol!" replies. It's like "Ok, so how am I supposed to reach that point in the meantime? And then after you get those enchants, you're behind in health/stamina that you could have had and are sitting with useless mana".

You're getting two-shotted as a mage?!

Man I could only be so lucky. I get one-shotted.

The problem is Destruction damage is fixed and it's super low compared to the insanely high numbers you can achieve with bows and melee weapons. If you really exploit Alchemy, Smithing and Enchantment, you can backstab with a poisoned weapon and one-shot anything in the game. We're talking over 10,000 damage if you really want to exploit game mechanics. In fact, this is about the only way to make Destruction viable at the highest levels and the hardest difficulties: shoot a couple arrows with weakness to _____ poison on them, then blast a Destruction spell et voila!

I gave up on my Destruction mage and have restarted with an archer/mage completely ignoring Destruction magic in favor of Illusion and Alteration.

If you want to play a mage you will need to level restoration and or alteration too, then make sure to keep your highest-level wards up during combat and most mobs will have a hell of a hard time taking you down, you cannot rely solely on destruction. Always favourite a couple of healing spells and hotkey those to switch as needed.

I found playing a multi spell class mage too easy, and re rolled to play through with a thief, turns out that is easy as hell too, if you feel the need to restrict yourself within a class for rp purposes, learn to use all the tools a class offers.

However, nothing stops you from wearing light armour as a mage, and enchanting to support your spell class, you only take a hit to spell casting in heavy armour and with only a couple of basic light armour perks your survivability goes right up. The beauty of all the elder scrolls games is that you are not tied down to a specific skill set; while taking on too many skills will certainly reduce your effectiveness, you can certainly level more than a couple and remain effective. In oblivion you had 7 primary skills for any chosen class, work your characters around levelling that many skills and you will play perfectly well in Skyrim too.

To the OP:
If you're on the PC, try this mod -> http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=611

It makes destruction to scale better with level, which is exactly what we want as a destruction mage.

Stop playing on Expert, dummy. If you think mages are too weak, play on Adept. The difficulty slider exists in case you're having trouble being successfull with a specific build.

All this armour talk in a mage thread is blasphemy.

My mages do not wear armour!! Most "pure mages" don't.

You are asking people to become a battle-mage......which is not a pure mage!

Ok, I'm done being anol.

To the OP and any other that think Pure mages are weak.

YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG!

If you need help check out my guide in my sig, it shows you how to min/max a pure mage and not svck.

To the poster that lied about getting one shotted by an arrow even with dragonskin(80% damage reduction) on and 210 HPs. Total complete lie.

The arrow would have to do 210/.20 = 1050 points of damage from one arrow. I can't believe any arrow that a mob would shoot does that much damage on any difficulty level.

I have a level 48 mage. With just 6 pieces of equipment (no weapons, no potions, only my crafted apparel) I was able to wipe out everybody in the diplomatic immunity quest (the guards are level scaled). I use ALL the schools of magic. The only other thing I wish I had with me was my lockpicks.

Why does everyone act like a mage can't use a weapon and still be a mage? Gandalf seemed pretty proficient in melee with his staff.

My mage uses an axe for those times someone gets too close. Just taking the first 2 damage modifying perks for one handed has made him more formidable without straying to far away from being a "real" mage. I guess it's easier to come here and complain than trying to figure out make a balanced character yourself.



On a side note, I notice a lot of people making unbalanced characters and then complaining that they are unbalanced. And not just with Destruction based mages - "My level 50 alchemist svcks at combat" Well guess what? The best pharmacist in the world probably couldn't beat up the best boxer in the world. Seems realistic to me.

Which are?

...

Turn down the difficulty, maybe?

How about they fix destruction instead, maybe? Why should we gimp the game to get it to "work right"? It's called Destruction....not Minor Annoyance. It's like taking a fly swatter to Saber Cat.

Destruction is broken!

read the guide in my sig, it shows you what enchants to put on the 6 pieces of equipment you wear to make a very powerful mage.

If you think throwing down wall of fire from one hand that does 50*1.5 + wall of frost in the other 50*1.5 = 150 dps, and then dual casting incinerate for stunlock and 190 damage per cast (about 1 per second) is weak you are playing a different game than I am.

Destruction when you have the right enchants is the all about pure DPS. If you want burst damage sneak attack with dual daggers.

So in other words, destruction is the only form of direct damage that has a prerequisite of another skill in order to be "merely adequate"? And before you even open your mouth, I realize that everyone has SOME form of supporting skills, its just that with destruction, your supporting skills do more damage than the skill they are supposed to support.

Correct, as it stands now I place the blame 100% on how bad mana regen is, and not how bad destruction is.

If the mana costs of destruction was more reasonable(I dont think this would be good, it makes hybrids too strong) or mana regen was usefull then I have no issue how destruction performs. I like it to be a good DPS attack chain instead of a burst attack one.

But right now without any mods to fix anything you NEED to reduce the cost of your destruction spells at least by 90% to be able to play it at high levels if your sole damage dealer is destruction. If you add in conjuration, you should be fine with just 50% reduction in destruction and let your summons do most of the work.

I just rolled my 12th mage char trying to figure out how to play solo destro on master without cheesing and yeah ... destruction + weapon seems be the best I tested so far. I am focusing on destruction, but I am not putting everything into magicka. Since I don't depend solely on it for my dps output, I can afford health pool that does not get me one shotted too often (doing 1:1 magicka:health).

Basically when the enemy does not do much damage, I just pull out my daggers and chop him up. That saves me magicka to deal with the more threatening mobs. We will see how it goes.

Ha, I've not used a single magic skill except Enchanting. I'm glad all the over-powered magic players are starting to realize flaws in said characters.

Stealth ftw.

Sneak mage is my preference. 100 in sneak on a mage build is lots of fun. No surprise melee in your face. And if my magicka runs out I move off a bit and they quickly reset to passive so that I can regen.

On my current play through, on master difficulty, I leveled to 22 in the intro dungeon making everything after that very challenging. Fun times.