That's actually a lot of the problem right there. You're high level, lots of magicka and skills and you know master level spells. But what do you rely on most of the time? Impact from a dual-casted firebolt. You pick up this spell at the beginning of the game and you're forced to rely on it for the ENTIRE game. That's why it gets boring. That's why it gets repetitive. Unlike warriors and rogues who get new swords, new knives, new bows, new armor, the mage is stuck relying on the exact same spell the entire time. Where's the feeling of progression or improvement?

All the magic schools have very little to offer at any level. People cling to the "pure destruction mage" argument and ignore the overall lack of of options in all spell schools. I do not know why they defend this limited magic system. It offers less customization for mage characters. There is a lack of spell types, no variety to make our mage how we want. I use all spell schools and the magic system in this game is underwhelming. All schools hardly offer anything for us mages.

You CAN play the game how you want to... You'll just get your *** kicked a lot.

Alchemy svcks. Seriously, it's the single most mind-numbing skill to use in the game.

You know all those "0/5" type-perks? Those should be innate bonuses for reaching a certain level of mastery and perks should be PERKS. They're like what exalted players refer to as "speedbump charms." they're in the way of what you really want, but you have to spend points to get them.

Destruction is supposed to be the whip it out and blow it up school of magic, Conjuration should be the tank/meat shield school of magic.

This is so obviously what they should have done. Glad I am not alone out here ..

Right, because destruction is broken, duh.

What is a little frustrating to people is that as a pure mage, you have to build yourself very carefully. If you aren't wearing armor you deperately need alteration and re-casting stone flesh and similar spells.... you also need conjuration because destruction will peter out at high levels. You have to up destruction or illusion though, because until you level conjuration you can only summon one thing at a time...

Long story short, if you are going to play a no-armor wizard (pure mage) there is basically one "right way" to do it, and that includes enchanting your own clothes to reduce spell costs and being very careful about how you raise your perks and skills to be sure you have optimized yourself.

In my opinion, the reason it is a little frustrating is that Skyrim added a lot of flexibility in how to build a warrior or thief character. Unlike Oblivion, its very easy to play a warrior character that also does restoration (Paladin) or a thief that does illusion magic, or any number of other interesting combinations. There is really a lot of flexibility for warriors, thieves, and for armor wearing wizards, in how they want to progress. BUT it feels like if you are doing a no-armor, no-weapons wizard, you've got to follow basically one strict recipe for having a successful character.

When I run out of mana I pull out my staff of fireball. That never runs out.

Shouts are worthless anyway.

I've leveled two characters now. First was a sneak/archer on Adept. Got him to the point that I would one shot anything except ancient dragons; they took two. Second is a Nord barbarian on Master that wields a greatsword and wears only hide armor. Level 49 now and he one shots everything except draugh warlords, dragon priests and ancient dragons, which take 3, 3 and 5 power swings respectively instead. Niether of those characters have ever used any of the shouts for any tactical purpose. The only one I use regularly is whirlwind sprint for moving around town. The rest are just pointless, and their cooldowns make them even more so.

On the topic of magic: yeah, it's worthless too. I started a high elf with the idea of going heavy armor/destruction, and ran into nothing but disappointment. The biggest problem is that the perks, quite frankly, svck. For one thing, having to pick an element to specialize damage perks into is stupid. There should either be a single 20/40/60/80/100 perk at the bottom that affects all destruction spells in line with the other damage perk trees (2h, 1h, archery) or there should be a 20/40/60 perk at the bottom that applies to all spells followed by additional two-tiered perks for each elemental tree. The way it is now is inefficient, wasteful, and pointless.

Of course, all that only applies to player cast spells. That npc mage will still have no problem one-shotting you from across the room with an instant damage lightning bolt.

This could have been such a great game, but as far as I'm concerned at the moment the magic trees don't even exist. Except enchanting, of course. Because there's nothing more rewarding with trying to play a warrior style character than being forced into a magic tree to ensure that your weapons and armor are more effective than paper mache and cardboard.

I'm a high level mage and don't use destruction at all anymore. No reason to. Just pop off a Mayhem spell or a Mass Paralysis spell, then summon 2 Dremora Lords at the same time and sit back and relax.

Destruction is only really useful in low to mid levels.

In previous TES games, destruction had a lot more effects that were useful. With destruction in previous games, you could cast spells that directly damaged enemy health, without being elemental in nature (so fire/frost/shock resistance didn't matter), you could use it to drain enemy fatigue, drain health, drain magicka, and drain attributes (drain strength to make them weak, drain speed to make them slow, drain endurance to make them fragile etc.), and you had destruction spells that damaged weapons and armor, potentially breaking them. But since there's no longer the possibility of armor or weapon degradation, that effect is out...

As for dying easily, well that kinda comes with the territory. Mages have always been glass cannons who die if someone sneezes on them.

People claim magic is the most broken aspect of Skyrim...

That is the only viable (RP) option, but it still doesn't fix destruction. I've never been a big staff user in any game. :shrug:

Just wondering....

If all of you "Pure Destruction Mage" players really are using PURE DESTRUCTION wouldn't you stop leveling once Destruction has been mastered?... And thus not be gimped by the level scaling / damage limit problem?

Agreed. Every mage should always keep 1 or 2 good staves on hand for when magicka runs out. It's saved me many times with gimped Destruction.

Okay I admit it. Destruction spell damage should scale with your character.

But I still completely disagree that being a Pure Mage svcks. You really just have to make use of ALL of your magic abilities in order to be successful.

"Pure Destruction Mage" for damage output. (<--For the love of Pete get this through your heads!) You can still use Alchemy, Enchanting, Alteration, Illusion, etc.

We just do not want to have to rely on companions and/or summons to do the damage for us when we run out of mana. Why give us mana regen just to take it "mostly" away when we need it the most? Make sense to you?

Is this really that hard to grasp?

I'm not saying I want to run around in underwear doing nothing but destruction. I just don't want my "weapon" to be gimped.

Mostly. Every so often I have to cast a heal spell, which levels Restoration. Sneaking around levels up the Sneak skill. If I'm using bracers/boots that classify as Light Armor gear and someone manages to hit me, Light Armor levels. Speech levels up slowly. I read books which level up random skills.

Otherwise... I leveled Enchanting for dual perks although it was completely unnecessary. I suppose I could level Alchemy--that supposes it's possible to craft those Destruction damage potions. I haven't bothered checking, but I suppose Alchemy would give me something to spend Perk point on.

There's a mod that fixes this, but why the heck Bethesda didn't make a mage mask that's not armor is beyond me.

I really wish it were like this:

- Keep the existing spell system as seen in Skyrim. Have defined spells like Flames, Fireball, etc. Like I said their effects are great and their visuals are stunning.

- Now here's what should be different: Let players enter the magic menu and tweak those spells.

Take the lowly Flames spell for example. As it is in Skyrim, it starts as a novice spell and stays a novice spell for the entirety of the game. Which renders it completely useless past level 10 or so. It simply doesn't do enough damage. Therefore the player should be able to say "Hey I'm an expert at Destruction now!" and go into the magic menu and adjust the Flames Spell with a couple of sliders. Like this...

Menu ->
___ Magic ->
_____ Destruction ->
_______ Flames -> Alter Spell? [Yes] No

Range: 1m--------------[]------------ 20m (10m +5 Magicka cost per second)

Damage: 8pt/sec---------[]-----------------60pt/sec (22pt/sec +15 Magicka cost peer second)

This spell is now an ADEPT level spell.
Keep Changes? [Yes] No

So there you have it. Flames is still Flames. Frost Rune is still Frost Rune. But you can play with them all you want.

The O.P. is here: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1313799-mages-dlc-wish-list/page__p__19754521__fromsearch__1#entry19754521

Its interesting. Whenever these threads come up and people start making comparisons, excuses are ALWAYS made for melee! What you mentioned with weapons and archery are par for the course for a high lvl character and yet - excuses are still made?

Shall I use one of their favorite mantras? Which would be, "If you're having issues as melee or archer, then you're not doing it right"... :rolleyes:

This thread is waaaaaaaaay to serious. Not even one person laughed at my joke :'(

I use a destruction scaling mod that also tweaks mana regeneration in combat to actually utilize all of those regeneration effects. I experiment with quite a few things and my mage is currently lvl 14. At a destruction skill of 43 with the first flame perk, my flames spell does 20dam/sec. Overpowered? I hardly think so. This is just to show that such a thing can be done without "breaking" destruction.

My Dunmer pure mage is lvl 41, Destruction at 100, Restoration at 71, Conjuration/Illusion/Alteration are all below 35 and almost never used.


Do you have the Impact perk for Destruction? Do you carry magicka potions? If you answered yes to those two questions . . .how are you having issues? Granted, I use Restoration in addition to Destruction, but I could (and do) just as easily use heal pots and hide behind things when fighting Mage/Archer mobs.



I think a good amount of the Destruction-complainers simply stand still and hope they don't get shot. You have to move, hide behind things, and fire on the run. Most importantly, dual cast destruction spells with the Impact perk! You seriously cannot lose with it, provided a healthy magicka pool, potions, or spell cost reduction (which is OP and needs to be changed to be multiplicative with a strong diminishing returns curve and hard cap.)

Edit: currently playing on "Expert" difficulty, may move up to Master, but it seems like this will only increase the mobs' HP, and thus time to die, as I never get hit anyway. Bethesda needs to have different levels of AI difficulty (as in, the mobs dodging and aiming more effectively), but I suppose that's more of a technological limit than purposeful.

I have to say Destro in Skyrim probably the most boring magic play-style I've played in an RPG.

Spamming 1 spell for most of my play-hours, ungh.

this..you need to take advantage of the alteration spells for protetion..illusion for invisibility and conjuration to get bound daedric weapons