I think I understand. Like I said the picture of the character on these forums is a good descriptor of what the game wants. It's more you deciding what playstyle you want.

I'm going to get my butt kicked if I'm using daggers in battle though. It seems like daggers are more meant for specialized tasks. They want you to be a warrior who will use sneaking and stealth attacks to his advantage. They dont want you using a dagger as your primary weapon.

It's more like use a dagger to backstab and stun with poisons then whip out your two handed sword and go to town.

That kind of character would be badass. But what is the point of light armor?

Bows work very well, compared to Destruction spells they're basically godlike (easier to aim, more damage, doesn't use magicka, does extra damage while sneaking, what's the downside?). If you abuse certain items/enchantments/perks you can even get sneak attacks doing upwards to 1000 damage.

However you're still most likely going to end up heavily armoured and focused on health.

Exactly. I just wish they'd be more up front about it, if I had known that the only truly viable path was a Warrior with other stuff sprinkled on top I would have spent my skill points/level ups very differently. I'm really wishing my 350 Magicka was spent in Health instead.

You can't use all armor enchantments on all armor types.
Most of the mage prefered enchantments for mages are unavailable on heavy armor, many are unavailable on light armor too for that matter. Some can be found or made, but they are inferior to the options you'll find on cloth, as it should be.

This topicis banol. Yes a warriors is going to be best if all you wanna do is combat.
thieves get a bunch of tricks and more non-combat stuff to do, and mages get combat variety

Right. I may have to start over now which svcks. I think i get it. Use dagger or bow as an opener to paralyze or poison then whip out your two handed sword and go to town.

I think you might be confused. Incinerate does 90 damage when maxed out. Dual casting will do double (I'm assuming) and stagger the opponent. 180 damage that can be spammed while perma-stunning the enemy is far more powerful than anything a warrior can do, unless there's some gambreaking exploit that I haven't heard of.

Also, since magicka won't be important at all with this build, you can boost health and be just as durable as a warrior. More, if you use the alteration and restoration spells liberally.

I disagree with the OP.

I took on a Krosis at level 12 or so on my mage, and won after a few minutes of brutal combat. I attempted the same on my pure warrior, who was the same level.

Let's just say, I'm not trying that again any time soon.

so to clarify, are you saying a mage with maxed destruction for damage, alteration/restoration for defense, enchant for crafting and pure magicka isn't on par with a warrior with 2hand for damage, heavy armor/block for defense, smithing for crafting and pure health?

for argument's sake, other skills untouched

if not, what is the skill-for-skill comparison you're making?

i want to try this for myself

Which ones would that be exactly? My game has no issues enchanting heavy armor with the mage enchantments.


Well, the point is -supposed- to be, faster movement speed, faster stamina generation and less noise generated. Until you're quite heavily invested, the biggest benefit is the very low carry weight though (you can get a perk to remove all the weight from both light and heavy armor, but the heavy armor one is deeper in the tree).

dude atleast it not oblivion and youre a mage who still shoots that little slow moving fireball at level 45

meh, mages are always suppose to be fragile.... read the fantasy books, movies etc. etc.


I think the spells are dead on, Illusion, is my favorite school of thought, it works well with my gameplay...

A mage will never be able to tank... The are powerful the best mages, but they are limited...

It is what it is...

Playing a game in itself, tells me intelligent play..

well you have to play intelligent with the mage...

anyone can be a two-handed weiding barbarian, how many can dish it out being a mage, from the begining to the end....

Playing dagger thief (single dagger) stealth character and doing fine.

my mage feels more and more powerfull as I gain spells and perks and increase my mana pool... it was trully difficult at first, even hired mercs to help me out... but once I got spells and mana pool to support it, I trully started to feel powerfull and standing toe to toe against leaders, bosses and dragons.

The problem with this whole thing is the three class idea people keep pushing on it.

This is not how skyrim works

There are skills. Those skills belong to a class set list but that isn't all that important

The mage skill sets are not broke.

The OPs OWN starting example had a "rogue" who just put on light armor and rolled through his enemies using long swords and not getting backstabs while he was using stamina as the battery for unlimited damage power attack. The character sounds like a crazy berserker but he's obviously using non rogue skill set skills to accomplish this. Obviously it's about the skills.

Destruction is a damage type. There are four damage sets 1 handed, 2 handed, archery, and destruction. Does destruction balance against the other three when you factor in synergy they have with enchantment and smithing? No

Alteration is a defensive set for the most part with utility. There are four defensive skill sets alteration, light armor, block, and heavy armor. Does alteration match up as a defensive set when compared to the other three with smithing and enchantment options? Hard to say because alteration has quite a few non-defensive utility powers as well while giving a consistant protection against magic. An argument could go on for a while comparing it to block.

I'm not saying mages are great or mages are bad. I'm saying we need to compare each individual skill of the same purpose instead of talking about how good a "class is". If the reason a pure mage isn't good is because of the power of destruction in comparison to other offensive skills then it is destruction specifically that is lacking.

If the goal was to compare pure health vs pure stamina vs pure mana... yeah.. you should probably be taking a bit for everything you use if you need it. I'm not sure how to properly compare those instead of just looking for target amounts for your playstyle.

The base damage of a high end weapon is somewhere between 40-50, before enchantments that add about 30-100 extra on top. Then that gets a 100% bonus from perks that gets multiplied by critical hits/power attacks. Then to that you can add the armor enchantments from where you can get around 100-200% extra damage (Gloves/Boots/Ring/Amulet).

That should give you at the very least 250 damage per normal attack with a potential of upwards 1k (Not quite sure how all the multipliers stack), and hits quite a lot faster then your double casts.

my mage feels more and more powerfull as I gain spells and perks and increase my mana pool... it was trully difficult at first, even hired mercs to help me out... but once I got spells and mana pool to support it, I trully started to feel powerfull and standing toe to toe against leaders, bosses and dragons.

the buildup I been using is one heavily focused on destruction mainly for dishing out dmg, and alteration with restoration for defence and support.
am also planning a new character with new buildup using sumons and companions and supporting them with restoration, conjuring and illusion.

I'm playing a pure mage who is now at level 3 or 4 with 2H great swords, wearing several pieces of iron armor. But, whatever works lol, it's still fun.

You are COMPLETELY wrong.

I don't know about the thief, but I've been playing it as a mage almost exclusively and have no problem with it. In fact, I think the Warrior class is a bit weak.

Based on what? The NPC's?

I'm going Archer type atm and i have to say i'm not underpowered at all, even if enemies do try to attack me i can slow-mo myself outta there so....idk what u talking about.

You forgot to talk about range. Mages can do those attacks and kill anything before it comes close to attack. Of course, you can say that warriors have so much health that they shouldn't be concerned with getting close. In the end, both are viable. Warriors will probably have it a little easier in the early game, while mages will have it easier against higher level enemies.

i want to know if the aoe potential of destruction is being taken into consideration in these damage output "calculations"

Exactly. The issue is with Destruction in particular not measuring up with any of the other ways of dealing damage. This is largely connected to the fact that the weapons synergize greatly with blacksmithing/enchanting while Magic doesn't.
You can do all those enchantments with Archery too. Archery can also exploit the up to 30x damage multiplier you can get from sneaking for damage potential up into the thousands. In fact Archery is my Mage's main method of attack against most difficult enemies, since my bow hits for over 100 damage per hit without even any skills in the Archery tree or Archery damage enchants(My enchants are all carrying capacity).

Thats what the op based this all on...

Ok, you win there.But wouldn't most of that damage be overkill? Plus, you can be a godlike DPS caster with destruction and enchanting alone.For warriors, you'd need 2H, Archery, Enchanting, and (possibly) Smithing.