In a world full of strong people carrying big weapons there are those who take cloak and staff and spell to defend and aid themselves and allies...

I offer some food for thought.

"There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste; there are no honors too distant to the man who prepares himself for them with patience."
Jean De La Bruyere on patience

What do the guardsman of the world use? Sword and shield. What do the armies and masses rely on? Physical force. Rarely does the bandit take the time to learn the secrets of magic. And rarely do those same lowly few survive the encounter with an adventurer...

But through patience and practice and dedication... Power is obtained. While I've not yet played a high level caster, I believe that the path of the pure mage has great potential for end game payout. Understanding magic and the way it works, utilizing all of the schools of magic correctly and improvising when necissary are all key to survival.

A warrior is not born over night, but a sword is a reliable weapon of any army.

But a wizard is forged with brilliant mind and patience. For those that seek instant gratification, look elsewhere, as magic is not deserving of such petty desires and should be appriciated by only those with the will to see it through to its full potential.


TLDR: Stop complaining that you can't destroy everything at the beging of the game with ease, slow and steady wins the race.

In short: Enchant your [censored], drink some [censored] potions, blast [censored] to pieces. Simple as that.

Your avatar and half of your posts go so well together that I think you truly are an incredibly aggressive gnome.

A crude but effective way of looking at it, I suppose...

David the Gnome approves.

I'm pretty sure magic is unbalanced. It's not really an argument. Some, like me, can live with it. But to say it's not unbalanced is laughable.

Haha.

Look, it's not a failure of philosophy or morals that people are complaining about. I think you've been too taken by the (albeit amazing) overlay of story, environment, and characters, that you've forgotten beneath it all it's still a numbers game.

Now the numbers need tweaking, or there needs to be new numbers to affect other numbers to balance things out, or the numbers don't need to be changed at all. These are basically the options. Role-playing "dedication" and "hardwork" won't make the numbers more balanced, if they need to be

What if I want to play a battlemage?

he is a troll in gnome skin!!!!

Actually the problem is the beginning and end game. throughout the midlevels balance is perfect but towards the end they actually limit the damage you can do and it's not much at all.

lol if there was a gnome race in Skyrim, they should have their own special school of destruction that was based off of rainbows. Imagine dual-wielding rainbows lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cndVTJ3EFw

I still don't see what makes it so unbalanced. I killed two giants using only duel firebolt spells and unrelenting force (not too much because of the long recharge time). Expert difficulty, easy enough if you know what your doing.

The only thing that's imbalanced is min-maxers meticulously crafting smithing/enchanting potions with their +25% enchanted alchemy gear, and then creating Dragonscale armor or Daedra armor that have a whopping 300+ armor (almost 2 times what you could achieve without buffs) or Daedric swords that hit for 305 damage before enchantments. Magic is CLOSE to where it needs to be, it's just the crafting system that completely hurts it because it inflates armor and weapons. In addition, the lack of spells, such as 'weakness to ' really hurts magicka users. It's bewildering that they included poisons that would make enemies more prone to elemental damage (frost, fire, shock, [censored], etc), and yet they don't give mages that raw ability, unless I'm missing a tome or something. A lot of the problems here would also be fixed if mages could enchant their gear with +25% damage to . Just by adding these two things for magicka users would go a long, long way to fixing magic, specifically destruction, hell it might even make it stronger.

he is a troll in gnome skin!!!!

How am I a troll?

There is just one huge glaring problem here!

Mages are so overpowered it's laughable, my mage playing on master has yet to be hit let alone die, once you get summon flame/frost atronach and a few mid range destruction spells, you are an indestructible killing machine, gave up playing him after 30+ hours as the tedium was overwhelming.

Hear/see/guess mob, summon, kite, kill......rinse and repeat!

This could all be fixed if magic damage scaled with skill level... I really hope they patch that in, it isn't like that would be a labor intensive thing to add in.

I find no problems with magic, though it's still early days. Dual-wield magic and various destruction perks work well, particularly with increased damage. I like the new alchemy system of discovering ingredients, rather than them being automatically available by skill increase. In general, the game feels a much more mature experience than the previous instalment. Can't comment on looks, I am playing on very ancient hardware (nor do I particularly care).

Eryllon, Altmer, pure mage class, did a couple of necromancer dungeons now listening to the story of Rennardt the Red (or someone)

http://oi42.tinypic.com/11kxj47.jpg

Edit: Forgot to add that a few things are missing, like a breath-meter and active effects on the screen. Nothing which can't be fixed.

OK, I admit that I am taken in by the lore too much to make an accurate statement on this... But seriously, how can anyone blame me? Have you played this game?!

I use almost all of the skills and tend to dual wield a sword and the flame spell. My destruction is level 50ish and Its fine. You want to talk about underpowered, what about the explosives in Fallout (different game I know, but same company)?

actually it's the reverse magic is great early on but doesn't advance or have the same synergy of other damage skills.

Damage skills being destruction, one handed, two handed, and archery

it doesn't scale up in damage with your skills and it doesn't scale up with enchanting and it doesn't scale up as well with perks (+50% with perks on enchantment (6 perks) vs +100% damage for all other damage skills (5 perks))

There are also all kinds of other skills to help other weapon skills like alchemy poisons, sneak attacks, and smithing.

It's great in the short term. But end game there just isn't anywhere for it to go and no way to get more out of it like there is with a weapon.

so you have it backwards. it's not growth potential that helps destruction users like would make RP sense but instead it is lack of growth potential that hurts destruction.

If you want to use every magic skill and use the best stuff in this game you would use every magic school and just swap the magic out for a cool enchanted bow. Same great range none of the lack of growth potential.

I am NOT talking about magic. Illusion and conjuration are pretty awesome. I AM talking about the destruction skill as a direct damage skill in comparison to other direct damage skills.

STOP with these threads. If you are NOT level 50 mage, then don't post threads declaring level 50 mages svck for being angry about no spell scaling. I'm really growing tired of this.

No one is saying freaking anything about magic in the beginning of the game. What purpose does this thread serve? You're just creating a group of people that don't exist, and then insulting them.

lol @ people saying 'LOL I'M SO OP AS A MAGE'

come say that when you're level 40 and you hit like a wet noodle, simply because your skills don't scale.

To a point I can definitely sympathize with you. The game svcks you into its world because the world is so well presented, with so much detail on the small scale and so much that is awe-inspiring on the large scale

I don't blame you and fully agree with all you've said.

Nice post

My only complaint with magic is that there are no higher level blast spells. The rest shoot balls that have to charge and are harder to use in combat.