The guy who made those videos modded it so that he reached extremely high levels. He says so in the sneak video, and that these videos are jokes.

When I'm melee fighting I care less about my stamina and more about my health, ergo I have many many health potions. As a mage I would have a stockpile of magicka restoration potions at all times.

When going the magic route I generally keep all encounters at arms length. This is where conjuration and illusion come into play - takes the heat off me and provides more sources of damage. Theres more to combat than brute force. The most powerful weapon in the world will have a hard time against a mage who summons two daedra and pops in and out of invisibility whilst unleashing spells (and if the mage was wise enough to invest in his stealthy side, backstabs) left right and centre.

I don't know where or if this is stated in Elder Scrolls lore, but is it? Either way, if magic is inherently weaker in the series then at least give us some fun mechanics. A lot of the fun stuff has been removed from magic and now we're leaning on the crutch that is stagger.

I cheated my character to level 55 to test it out myself, and slept about a week to spawn back the creatures to my level (if it still works this way).

Indeed the damage output is quite crappy on the monsters compared to my lvl 28 mage, I went around thunderbolting and incinerating everything I saw.

I met a group of forsworn who took about 5 or 6 double cast incinerates/thunderbolts each in the face before collapsing. Which, if I didn't have tgm on, I'd probably be dead. Also, without tgm, a double cast incinerate depletes a lot of magicka, you wouldn't be able to cast more than two double cast incinerate/thunderbolt before being drained with non crazy enchanted items.

Don't bother mentionning fireball or chain lightning at this level, it barely does any damage.

I met an ancient dragon, it took about 15 double casted incinerates to take him down (he was casting frost).

The master spells at this level are quite horrible compared to the expert spells.


Honestly, the only way to play competently with destruction at this level, is with 100% destruction magicka reduction equipment.

btw it was on adept difficulty.

No matter what class both gonna use health potions if low on health, mages cant heal with magic when they are out of mana. So your warrior uses 1 pot while a mage needs 2.
Your meele can attack as long as he is alive but a mage gonna run out of mana and needs to refil using pots and run away when pots are out.
Furthemore we arent talking about defence but damage so talking about ilusion and conjuration is mute its not you dealing any damage with it.

I'm wondering if Beth intentionally made weapons like that for extremely late end-game battles with extremely high level enemies (at C.Lvl 81, we'd be fighting level 90-100 dragons.). I can imagine we won't be one-shotting them anytime soon even with these godly weapons and armour...

lvl 50 is the highest enemies can go, its the soft cap.

Doesn't matter if the damage is dealt indirectly, damage is damage. Its also more heat off your back. Honestly, what wizard in any fantasy ever in the history of the genre has EVER gone toe to toe with anything? And honestly, I would never run out of potions, I'm part of the 'better safe than sorry' school so I will go in stupendously stocked up and be religious about keeping it that way. As should any mage, your magicka is to all intents and purposes your life bar.

If a warrior uses smithing etc to augment their effectiveness in battle, then a mage should use other magic schools likewise instead of relying simply on Destruction - thats like a warrior restricting themselves to one-handed.

Hmm, so we see the strongest enemies in the game when we're at C.level 40?

I understand you , so your playing a warrior that sits back having a joint while his companion kills everyone, damage is damage after all.
Its nice that you would never run out of potions but your not using them to be able to deal damage but to heal, mages need potions to be able to attack.
Smithing will help a warrior deal damage and get better defence, while spell schols will only take the heat out of the mage not help him deal more damage,

Your build has 100 stam, 200 health, 200 stam while my mage on the same lvl as you has 400 mana, 100 health, 100 stam.
My mage can do 3 power atacks with 100 stam while you can do 6.
My mage can cast the highest dmg expert spell 3 times with the 400 mana pool.

While your sword does 2-4 more damage and x2 for power swing you can still do 2 times more swing than I can cast my spells.
so what we got 3 times 100 dmg ( 300 ) against 4 times 200-400 dmg ( 800-1600 )

Not at all. But I am stating that in building your character, if you intend to role play, you should have some idea of what you trying to do - some notion or thing that forms the basis of your decisions in the game - why you do what you do. Bottom line, power leveling isn't role playing, nor is wanting daedric armor before you fight wolves.


EDIT: and again, just pointing out that role playing rarely lines up with exactly what makes power leveling. Meaning, I REALLY DOUBT that all those complaining said when starting their character, "Wow, I finally can be a Hulkish Orc, who collects daisies in order to make uber enchanted handmade weapons!" I think its far more likely they searched for ways to become uber powerful as fast as possible, and then were "shocked shocked" when the game wasn't challenging. And a character who maxes blacksmithing and enchanting before fighting anything, really should act and smell like a blacksmith...but I digress...

This I like!

If you play regularly with a group of people, its an agreement from all concerned on the broad parameters of the game. Dungeon masters are people who are by and large interested in those playing to have a good time. The anology works fine in that Skyrim allows power levelers to play godmode-like styles if they like as well.

So yes, destruction itself is not mind melded with the other majic schools in the way the melee skills are (BTW, in case its not clear, I don't think of alchemy as a melee skill). The blending happens in the actual combat - meaning you may freeze an opponent with your destruction as your creatures wail on him.

But again, I see no value in Bethesda making sure each "character class" should have to be able to kill things in approximately the same amount of time. Why on earth should this be a priority in a single player game?

I don't necessarily think it's a problem to be able to use mechanics creatively to overpower your character, in fact that's almost a staple of Elder Scrolls games. But I do find it concerning that Destruction scales so poorly compared to melee/archery. That is something which should be addressed.

To balance it of course. Your making one of character classes lag behind and not be as fun as the others by that and thats unaceptable. Plus console gamers wont get mods like we on the pc so gamesas is the only way to get it fixed.

why do some get so hung up on the word balance, most that are saying magic needs a bump (specifically destruction), Balance is just thrown around as a comparison not "OMG I'm worse then warrior buff PLZ" like MMO's

with the introduction of dual wielding and hence dual casting it made it possible to play pure mage (hell even got perks for it) but right now the mage that uses destruction as his weapon (just so were clear I'm just making offense comparison here) is severely hampered not only in damage but in terms of Magica. (and like I said earlier the fact that when your holding a spell and your magica stops regening also is a problem)

Edit: then agian I doubt most read anything thats been said just read OP and put something inane then leave >_>

This is overkill now as we're just repeating things but its silly to compare destruction to a combo of melee/smithing/enchanting/alchemy. Try one-to-one. Its also silly to expect magic to bundle like the melee skills do. If you're going pure mage, you might need to play differently than a brute with a two hand sword. But like melee, also might need to put points in something other than just one spell tree. You might perhaps need to engage in multiple skill trees during a single battle, just like a melee character does - the only diff really is they combine them prior to the battle while the image does it during the battle.

This. Just because you can max crafting for melee advantages doesn't mean mages are under powered. Play both, have fun, it's a game.

People complained that in Fallout 3, weapons felt like wet noodles and enemies were bulllet sponges. So if Bethesda nerfs armor and melee, people will complain about the wet noodles again.

Maybe you don't have to play with the most powerful weapons possible in the game. How about using a type of weapon or armor or magic because you like it?

Sneak is OP, but only if you have high sneak and specialize with daggers, and have the initiative.

My character has high sneak at 90+, but due to the assassin play-style, he has low 1H and archery skill (30-40+), and low light armor. I don't think he will fare as well in a direct combat, such as against dragons.

So the assassin playstyle is not necessarily OP. It is very specialized where it is very effective in stealth attacks, but will fall like wet noodles in direct combat. You cannot say destruction is underpowered because it cannot 1-shot enemies like a dagger sneak specialist.

Lagging behind whom? You're the one one there. It is really all about you.

I was gona be smart alec bout this but instead I'm just going to leave a few points.
1) Destruction in theory could be coupled with enchantment to reduce costs to nothing (the problem here is damage potential has no way of going up in any way not by any other skill tree)
2) without enchanting for cost reduction you have comparable damage maybe higher by a little, however magica is a severe hamper even with full stating to magica every level.

as to combining other trees they don't offer anything for destruction really...
1) alteration provides armor which helps little (not little as in its bad but that it helps destruction not at all)
2) Illusion I suppose if your sneak is high enough you could fire and kill while not being seen if you want to play a stealth mage that could work ( you don't get sneak damage tho )
3) Conjuration like alteration is usefull but does not help destruction in any way.
4) Restoration has that perk to restore magica faster and that is about it.

No - you just fail period. It's been explained about 1000 times. We can't be responsible for your lack of reading comprehension.

Indeed! But what if you DON'T want to use conjuration? What then? Why should I even need to rely on it when my WEAPON is destruction? Especially if my destruction is being made weaker BECAUSE of something like conjuration (something which I will never use and isn't a neccessity)? Sure, as a warrior for example, you might take armor and shield perks but those are things that you would probably take anyways for your concept. Likewise, as a pure mage I may take destruction/restoration and alteration. In any case you are not FORCED to take armor and shields in order to have an effective character DAMAGEWISE end game are you? I use a lot of the magic from other schools as well but not conjuration because it is not my thing. Conjuration should not = neccessity in order to be succesful as a mage late game. It should be something that you want to use for your CONCEPTUAL character. I never use conjuration in any of theses games and don't like the feel of being forced to use it if I want an effective destruction concept character. So - so much for being able to be what YOU want to be... That's like you wanting to play a barbarian character who WON'T use bows because you don't want to as it ruins your concept but find that later on down the line that you will kind of have to if you want to actually be able to kill something when taking a bow SHOULDN'T be a necessity for a warrior.

This game is suposed to be about becoming what you want to be and reasonably being able to accomplish that. Those focusing on destruction as their weapon of choice get screwed because destruction magic DOES NOT SCALE past mastery level spells which means that once you reach that level, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO GET ANY STRONGER SPELLS, nor can you create them since spellcrafting was removed. As you level, your enemies level and get stronger and gain more hits points. Since your damage spells remain at the last mastery level you were able to obtain, the result should be fairly obvious without doing the math. It's should simple common sense?

I don't think anyone is asking for destruction to be overpowered. The main issue is that the mechanic is broken if you play past a certain point. If magic would scale the way that weapons do, there wouldn't really be as much of an issue for high end destruction magic. It's really as simple as that.

For the record, I have the pc version, so eventually this will be a non-issue for me. I'm just trying to explain what the issue currently is with destruction.