Destruction spells are horendous in this game.

1. Damage does not scale. Your enemies health do.
2. Disproportionate mana cost/damage ratio for higher lvl destruction spells.
3. Spells are boring.
4. Perks does not add anything interesting to game play.

I'm so happy that I abandoned this school without sinking and perks into it.

Why conjuration is the bread and butter school.

1. Summons scale - your daedra lord will still be the most powerful creature outside of bosses as you lvl up.
2. Bound Weapons scale better than normal weapons and look cooler (bound weapon perk)
3. Awsome Perks - summon 2 things. Bound weapons auto soul tap, bound weapons banish summons are among the most useful mage perks.
4. Best Mastery lvl spells - being able to summon permenantly is insanely good.
5. Cool factor. Atronarchs look badass/having a daedra lord under your command?
6. Summons fill in other roles - frost atronarchs/daedra can tank an incredible amount of damage. Storm atronarchs have ranged chain lightning...except more damaging.

Kind of sad that conjuration is overwhelmingly better than destruction.

so where does ur dmg come from

My spellsword uses both.

I often use illusion instead. No need summoning an Atronach when I can get the the entire room to attack each other and I just finish the survivors.

Depends on how feisty I'm feeling.

Umm... the OP is not being accurate for many points. The comments by the OP are mostly based on personal preference, not actual game capabilities. I am playing pure caster but I do not care for the conjuration school. Fix the familiars and make them actually useful, and I would consider conjuration.

Scaling is about the only point that is accurate, but it really doesn't matter if things die anyway. I mean, if something has 500 health and you do 501 or 1000, the enemy is just as dead.

The same thing is true for melee and ranged weapon attacks, of course.

Summon two things? You mean summon two of the same kind or summon 2 different creatures?


I remember summonning everything I could in MW at once (I could summon 11) and my poor comp. froze XD

Agreed... unfortunately a lot of people use mages because they want to be whirling dervishes of elemental forces, and for that reason Destruction is a real disappointment in Skyrim. The real nut-shot is that it's possible to play in lots of different ways within the warrior or thief subsets, each with very different and perfectly viable styles. The only truly viable way to play a mage, though, is to go with secondary damage - either by Conjuring a pet or by making enemies attack one another.

I really hope Bethesda patch in scaled spells. It's a real shame that if you max out Destruction there's only a few spells really worth using - the Novice-level ones have by that point become completely redundant - and even then, they're nothing like as powerful as melee or archery can be.

Hmm, I find the opposite at the moment. My zombies and familiar don't last long enough to be worth the time to cast and they die too quickly. But my fireball spell makes fried chicken of everything it touches and has awesome knockback on the finishing strike. I blasted a goat right across a river once!

Every build has to have something. You need some offense, you need some defense. A thief won't get by without sneak or armor. A warrior won't get by naked with only a sword. A mage needs to use conjurations or illusions.

Every single build needs something to prevent damage or detection.

It just comes down to lack of buffing. When the only way I can buff my damage is capped early in perks. Plus no enchants or alchemy buffs destruction. The ONLY way to buff destruction is locked up in 3 perks. A 100% buff in your first 5 lvls and then an additional 50% buff unlocked much later. Much, Much later I found two items that each gave a 20% damage buff to destruction. I found a couple pots that buff damage. But then I discovered Poison and all my worries vanished. Sure its kinda of backward to run in, freeze every one and then stick my little pointy knife in someone before unleashing the mayhem, but consider the mayhem unleashed.

Agreed, a Destruction mage needs Conjuration and/or Illusion to survive. However, a Conjuration specialist doesn't need Destruction or Illusion. An Illusion specialist doesn't need Conjuration or Destruction.

I just think Destruction is underpowered by comparison to other schools. I totally agree that to make a balanced and complete build, you have to concentrate on more than one skill. I just think it's a real shame that the only PURELY offensive magic school there is, is also the most underpowered, especially by comparison to the non-magic offensive skills in the game. It basically means that the type of mage I want to play the most - as in, the one who conjures storms of fire that can wipe out whole groups of enemies - is basically not a viable build, and instead I have to do things like conjuring demons to survive, which I don't really like.

Well, this isn't my experience with destruction. I can blast bandits with chain lightening and kill them in one shot. I think you might have needed to utilize perks/up your Destruction level because points 1 and 2 do not really apply (3 and 4 imo too).

And stop [censored] calling "magicka" mana. There is no such thing as mana in this game. If I see another person say that there is "mana" in this game I'm going to flip [censored].

Isn't there a Conjuration perk at the master level for a Necromancer-type playstyle where you get to have 2 summons and they stay with you permanently? Like having two giants follow you around and just destroy everything? Someone said this yesterday in a thread.

That alone makes Conjuration just that much better than Destruction by tenfold.

Familiars are pretty rubbish but Atronach's and up are good. I find that I'm using destruction less as I level up. Flames used to kill everything, now it does bugger all I use lots of different spells though from all the spell trees. Variety is the spice of life! Do find it pretty annoying getting 1 hit as a mage because I have 100 hp and no armor, probably need to use more alteration stuff.

I find that illusion is really limited in what mobs it affects, often find myself in situations where fury does not work on any of the mobs im fighting, as the weaker mobs tend to die off more quickly anyway. Zombies get cut down really easily, and you can only have one at a time? I'm probably just not doing it right.

I have a question. When I kill things with my summoned swords, does it level my one handed skill or not?

If I played as a mage, I'd be a High Elf for the magicka bonus, and use the freed up enchantment space to put oakflesh on every piece of clothing. Goodbye fragility. Then its just a matter of getting some punchy spells, magicka-restoring potions by the bucketload and a badass enchanted weapon for when I need to get personal.

Bingo, effective magic user.

all i can say is... patience is a virtue.
how can you say anything if you haven't "sunk" any perks into it? Mages have it rough on hard difficulties if you ask me, but get some max mana/ mana regen+ / spell cost - and you can become a serious powerful force.

dual cast stagger allows for some serious free dmg from far away... and can be used with lower tier moves to repeatedly shut down opponents. I've found that dragon killing is a breeze with dual cast stagger. I'll stand right in front of it at this point, you can just interrupt his breath (blood dragon as well w/e)
mix your casts with some other attacks (i spec'd shield for block to stagger more :] and interrupt other mages or melee that made it through the first volley of destruction)

spells are boring?! i'm sorry but let me watch a flame atronarch do MY work for me... yawn. flipping between higher and lower tier and then flipping between dual and single cast with the nagaa mouse is absolutely awesome to look at with destruction spells. plus chain lightning is sixy as all hell.

****spoiler****
plus when things get out of hand i just pull out the skull of corruption staff and shield and spew the nightmares from the mages of my college while mana recharges >

Yes it does. In fact, you can do quite a bit of damage with the Mystic Binding perk with them. It might even be a good idea to put just 1 point into the 20% 1h damage perk.