I have been playing a Destruction based player in all the TES games from Morrowind till now.
Every other TES game had a huge variety of spells for each tree of magic... That is not the case with Skyrim.
Right now.. I am level 14, 50 Destruction, 30 One Handed Sword, 28 Restoration, and it is impossible to kill enemies.
I play on Adept difficulty and enemies basically destroy me in 3 hits.. and my spells? Not fast enough to kill them.

Sometimes, to my dismay i am forced to turn the difficulty down to Apprentice.. or Novice.

I personally believe Magic is NOT well developed in Skyrim and the developers mostly focused on the animations/graphics of the spells itself. Not the stats, or the perks..

Don't get me wrong, I AM ADDICTED TO SKYRIM, but this is a major let down because I hate playing on lower difficulties than the norm..

Hopefully Bethesda will fix this in a further patch.

Looking forward to your opinions on this issue.

You know that there are more schools than just Destruction, right? You can use them all to help defeat your enemies.

Have you picked up your new spells at destruction 50?

Lets see... from this http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Destruction_(Skyrim).


Icy Spear - A spear of ice that does 75 points of frost damage to Health and Stamina.
Incinerate - A blast of fire that does 90 points of damage. Targets on fire take extra damage.
Thunderbolt - A thunderbolt that does 60 points of shock damage to Health and half that to Magicka.

Fire Rune - Cast on a nearby surface, it explodes for 50 points of fire damage when enemies come near.
Frost Rune - Cast on a nearby surface, it explodes for 50 points of frost damage when enemies come near.
Lightning Rune - Cast on a nearby surface, it explodes for 50 points of shock damage when enemies come

This.

There have been way to many threads with people just using destruction...

Yes, I forgot to mention I leveled up Conjuration and Illusion..
Illusion isn't a great help..
Conjuration is alright I guess, i love summoning Flame Atnorachs for half my Magicka each.

The old days of being able to cast while also being able to take and dish out damage up close are over. Playing a hybrid is tough. At least early on, you need to specialize a little so that you have enough magic power to win boss fights. That means:

- Gear with -Destruction cost
- Gear with +magicka
- Specialize in one of the three destruction branches - lightning seems to be the most useful and easiest to hit with
- Go for 'impact' and 'dual casting' ASAP - this alone will turn an impossible fight into an easier win

For a while I was piling on +magicka regen rather than +magicka until I realized that in-combat regen is sloooow anyway and that it's percentage-based rather than a fixed amount/sec, so increasing your max magicka also increases your effective regen rate.

I really like the 'wizard duels' with wards + offensive spells but I don't think they're really viable until later in the game when your restoration and destruction skills are higher and you have the perk to gain magicka when your ward is hit. The key well through mid-game for mages is dual lightning + impact.

Later on you can hit up the stealth tree for some up-close damage, but so long as you're in robes you're unlikely to go toe-to-toe with anybody who isn't.

You know that theres something called a playstyle....right?

Huh? You should be doing fine based on what you describe for your character, and except for specific instances of more powerful foes (but that happens throughout the game, of course).

Pay attention to secondary effects. Not everything should be hit with fire, not everything should be hit with frost, not everything should be hit with shock.

Depending on circumstances, you should have a melee companion, too (i.e., circumstances where melee occurs, of course).

There are other ways to misdirect enemies, too. Be creative!

My pure mage (Destruction, primarily) is about where you are but lower skills and she has no trouble at all, so something is odd here.

a big help is enchanted items that give you bonuses to destruction.

get recovery in the restoration skill tree. Best perk ever.

Also, I haven't had to turn down the difficulty, but I've been locked in standoffs with magic users and my magic character. Both of us just healing and using either ice spike or fireball. Back and forth...

Just an observation: what I am seeing is a build with no damage mitigation whatsoever. No armor, no pets to tank for you, no Alteration for wards or mage armor, no Illusion to control enemies and stop them attacking you.

Basically your whole strategy seems to be "kill them fast and hope they never get to me".

Restoration is nice, but it is a reactive defense, applied after the enemies are already killing you. You need a means to stop them from killing you in the first place.

Good luck and let us know what you come up with.