Fire Breath is a good example.

• The first word in the shout can do 50 damage every 30 seconds. That's 1.67 DPS.
  
• The second word in the shout can do 70 damage every 50 seconds, for a result of 1.4 DPS.
  
• Lastly, all three words does 90 damage every 100 seconds, for 0.9 DPS.

Why in the world make the shouts get progressively weaker? They are supposed to increase in strength as you learn more and spend more souls on them (gain more knowledge of the words), not decrease.

Here's a really hilarious one:
Whirlwind Sprint

• First word moves 50 feet every 20 seconds, for 2.5 FPS.
  
• Two words moves 75 feet every 25 seconds, for 3.0 FPS.
  
• Finally, 3 words moves 100 feet every 35 seconds, for 2.86 FPS.

This makes sense in... no way. The second level shout is actually the most effective. This tends to suggest that Bethesda didn't intend their shouts to scale up or down, but just randomly picked times based on what seemed like a good idea. I don't like this system.

I'm not saying anything extreme, I'm just saying that this current cooldown system seems inconsistent with itself, and with http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1366766-your-thuum-is-truly-powerful/page__fromsearch__1.

For these reasons and the reasons in the above link, I really do think that a single, static cooldown is what would make the most sense for shouts. All shouts, all levels, everything should have the same cooldown. Say, 30 seconds.

From that point, you balance the damage output and duration of the shout around that. If you want a stronger shout, do slightly more damage. If a shout is too powerful, such as Storm Call, then make it last longer/shorter duration, and do more/less damage.

Well, if you kill your enemy in 1 hit dEEps doesn't matter. But I agree that something is wrong with fire Breath. It's far to week for damage anyways. It should have been like a fire nuke spell. Much more damage. Same with Frost of course.

As for whirlwind sprint. If you are using it only for travel then yes, those numbers are dumb. I usually forget about it though unless I need it to cross a gap or take a shortcut/get somewhere I'm not supposed to be.

Honestly many of the shouts did not turned out to be useful as expected.

I know people have been talking about this and it's good for someone to finally bring it to attention with real numbers. I hope this is addressed sooner rather than later... if ever. Shouting is fun and practical. It just need polish

Remember that one Bethesda game that had balance?

Me neither.

It is fun, I enjoy it immensely. I wish it was a little more consistent with the Lore, though, and I wish it was implemented a little better. I hope nobody reads this thread as a complaint. It's a suggestion, a constructive criticism perhaps.

You don't think they're useful because of this system. or like you said, maybe you forget about them. On one character I usually have any 5 shouts favorited because they really are so useful to me. My nord warrior uses them in place of magic and it's beyond fun to do. Each shout has it's own use. That's why they all need their own cooldowns

Completely agree, I also think each shout should have its own cool down, allowing multiple shout uses (maybe this could be unlocked during the mq).

I'd like to see the ice form level 3 shout as an area attack all around you, I see no need to use anything other than level 1.

Frost breath and fire need boosting, I think level 3 should attack like the dragons breath, continuous breath attack for a few seconds. Or maybe introduce 2 new shouts for this and just scale the damage better for the breaths.

They need to reduce the effectiveness of marked for death, it's stupidly overpowered.

You know, that's something I never thought about. Why don't the words increase the DURATION of fire/frost breath? I mean, you're saying more words for more time. A stronger, longer shout.

Man now I'm just getting bummed out...

I've always wanted the maximum Fire and Frost breaths to be like the dragons' versions. I don't get why they aren't like that.

I agree...somewhat. I agree insofar that the Fire and Frost Breath shouts should be more akin to our dragon brethren's capabilities. That being said, overall I see shouts not measured as damage-per-second or effect-per-second abilities, but rather burst damage / burst effect abilities.

Let's think about how shouts work in real life. (Cue "This isn't real life" comments. Bear with me.) When you shout words, for example "Hey guy over there!", your voice bellows forth in a deafening roar, getting that guy over there's attention. That doesn't work any better if you prolong your syllables into "Heeeey guuuyy overrrrrr therrrrre", thus taking longer to say it. But, if you use more words, such as "Hey guy in the red shirt and blue pants by the hot dog cart!", your shout becomes more specific, performing its intended function (getting that guy over there's attention), more effectively. So, we're not getting "attention-over-time", but "attention-burst".

This seems to be the reasoning behind most of the shouts as they stand now in vanilla Skyrim. When you use "Yol", your 1-word shout isn't very specific, so you get a general-damage fire burst. As you add "Toor" and "Shul", your shout becomes more specific, adding a greater burst of damage. Or a stronger burst of time-slowing. Or armor-eating, or ice-forming. You get the picture.

/Suddenly I feel like that long-winded metaphor is unnecessary. My sleep-deprived mind says you get to read it anyway.

Edit: I addressed the dps/burst dichotomy, but neglected the cooldowns.

Continuing with the "guy over there" anology, consider this. Using a short shout "Hey guy over there" requires little intake of air, leaving less time between that shout and the next one "Look out for that car". If you instead choose to shout "Hey guy in the red shirt and blue pants by the hot dog cart", you have to pause longer to inhale more air to shout "Look out for that four-door sedan speeding toward you at approximately 45 mph", resulting in the guy over there getting hit by the four-door sedan.

I've read many theories, most of which make sense. Another is that Dragon language is not the first language for our character (Tamrielic, or whatever, is), and so the more complex thing s/he has to say, the longer it takes to think about it.

And honestly, the rationalizations are all fine. I'm not looking for an explanation. I am simply saying that from a mechanical point of view, in terms of video games (and not alternate reality logic), it makes no sense. There's no game in history that has Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 spells that don't scale in any way or order. So while you might be able to explain the lore, you can't explain to me why a rational game designer would have come up with this solution.

That's why I don't like it.

Then, you can stack on top of it all the other inconsistencies, such as legendary "shout battles" in the past, or the Draugr that use shouts back to back, and I just get more frustrated with how very strange the Shouts are implemented for the player.

The fire shout makes sense to me. The more powerful the shout the longer it takes to catch your breath. I mean how many shouts do you need to get in in a single battle. 1 maybe 2 will do unless fighting a whole army of people. But even then I don't think spamming shouts should be available but to each his own.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1368696-wip-dragonborn-ascendant/page__fromsearch__1



The problem is the same as it is for Destruction: the cost for casting raises up at a faster rate than the damage. 50 damage for 30-sec cooldown. 70 damage for 60-sec cooldown, 90 damage for 90-sec cooldown.

In that time, not factoring in magicka recharge, do you know how many Fireballs a destruction mage could cast? Or even with magicka recharge time? Even without any mods that denerf Destruction? Or if a nonmage has a Fireball stave as well, even if they svck at Destruction, they can do far more damage in the time it takes to recuperate after belching out a full-power Fire Breath.

And Fire breath isn't the only one. The Thu'um just is... lacking as far as feeling powerful goes. This is the power that reshaped Cyrodiil from a jungle to a deciduous forest. Why does it feel anemic?

Offensive shouts are mostly worthless, to the point that I forget I have them, like the ridiculously time-limited daily powers. Other than unrelenting force and dragonrend, all the shouts I use are not attacks, accomplish something specific, and work every time, like clear skies, slow time, and become ethereal. I can't consider 10% fire damage to a middling foe's health an effective use of the long cooldown time (which stupidly applies to all shouts, not just the one I used).

I agree that each shout needs its own individual cool down. I mean, I love storm call until I find I have to wait a week for it to cool down. C'mon Beth, how practical is that in-battle?

Has anyone checked the range and area of effect of the shouts? Fire Breath isn't very good against a single enemy, but when there's many enemies in a line then it's pretty good.

Why are you measureing strength by DPS? Shouts are not melee weapons so DPS is irrelevant. The DPS as you calulated it makes sense as there should be a time penaltiy for the stronger shout.

Yep. That's my biggest problem with the shouts, too. The high cool-down times prevent them from being used in battle more than once, and they're not strong enough to be "game changers". The ones that can be useful, like Storm Call and Call Dragon, have such high cool-downs that it encourages you to save them.

It also doesn't help that ones like Storm Call will harm friends, including your followers. Makes the shout utterly useless because it'll kill whoever you're with in addition to the enemies (or at least turn them hostile and lower their disposition to you).

Almost all of the offensive shouts are useless. Ice Form is the one I use the most. And yes the recharge times are ridiculous. Shouts like Fire Breath should have really short recharge time, or should do more damage in order for them to be more useful.

Let's say you are fighting 5 tough enemies at once in a room, and the only weapon you can use is the Fire Breath shout. Would you only use the first level shout? Maybe you can usually manage to hit 2 of the guys with your shouts. But once in a while you manage to line up all 5 enemies in the target zone of the shout. Do you use the strong shout in that case or do you still use the weak shout?

DPS is not always the best way to judge a weapon or spell.

The thing is though, 90 damage at anything other than under level 10 is a literal drop in the bucket. Oh, whoop-de-do you hit 5 targets with it and did a total of 450 damage. Now you have 5 pissed off targets who have each lost about 7% of their total health, AND a 100 second CD on your shouting ability.

But seriously, who would go into a room with 5 enemies and only have the fire breath shout as a weapon. That situation doesn't exist.

And so is a bombardment of fireballs. Which are not subject to cooldown, just having enough magic juice.

One dual-cast fireball without any damage augmentation nearly does as much damage as a tier-3 Fire Breath shout. 88 vs 90.

Even with a... certain character's meditation instruction to boost Fire Breath's damage, and even with fire augmentation boosting its damage even further, the most it can manage is 135 damage. Which is outclassed by.... wait for it... two otherwise unaugmented dual-cast fireballs. Which is still easily managed by any inclined mage. Or four normal fireballs, which can be done by any yahoo with a Fireball staff. And of course, the mage's dual-cast fireball would also get the Flame augmentation perk benefits too.