Hey guys, as we all probably know mages are way overnerfed in this game mid game but I wanted to find out if it ever got better for mages vs warriors very late game so I hacked my way into creating a full mage with 500 mana, 100 destruction, conjuring, illusion, a full tank with 500 health 100 heavy armor, two handed melee, and one handed melee, and shield with full dragon armor, and a full assassin with 100 light armor, one handed melee, and sneak, all of them with perks matching.

For all three of them I did the same thing and fought with the guards in whiterun/dragonsreach to see just how powerful they were and how long I could last without dying.

Warrior tank:
This guy with the fully hacked legendary dragon armor and 100 heavy armor is insanely sturdy and pretty much impossible to kill by the guards, the fahr and everyone else. Even with 5 guys attacking me each of their hits tickled. With the two handed weapon he did decent damage too but I didn't find that he killed as fast as I would like. But he is pretty much invincible, especially with the shield. This is godmode without actually activating the godmode hack.

Here's the hacked warrior with dragon armor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0HBpm3WEE0


Assassin:
With the 500 stamina, and legendary dragonscale armor, and duel wielded legendary swords, this guy could run around all day and use his special combo all day without having much fear of losing too much stamina. I did take more damage than the pure tank and that's largely due to the dragonscale armor vs the dragon armor but I took out every guard in a few combos instead of a few slow hits like the tank. Overall I think the assassin is the most viable in the game. Able to plow through everything quickly and have enough defense to survive.

But the dps is incredible only this guy, he didn't even need his sneak and backstack to plow through everyone.

Here's the vid.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV1CrWhHZNg

Mage:
I only used the adept and master spells here and overall they were viable... against whiterun guards... but not half as good as the other two. I was constantly running around afraid to get damage and mana was a big problem.

Destruction: Overall the adept destruction spells wall of flame, wall of ice, ect were the most viable. You could create a wall on the ground or blast enemies directly and they take a lot of damage overtime. The only problem is it drains mana too quickly and I don't like not feeling invincible like I did with the other two classes. The master spell lightning storm is like a dragonball kamahamaha and decently strong but it drains way too much mana I had to use godmode to use it and you can't move while using it. The master spell fire storm better and is like a self fire bomb that explodes fire in a radius around you killing all the guards in one hit, the only problem with these spells is it takes like 5 seconds to cast.

Conjuring: The master level thralls I was able to conjure were actually pretty strong. The fire thralls did the most dps but died kind of quickly. LIghtning also died pretty quickly but did decent damage. The two ice thralls I summoned never died but did the least damage. Overall I think the ice thralls were the best to summon but they cost me like 580 mana apiece to summon with the perk, but with the perk, 290 which is still a lot. Conjuring is also decent but the thralls didn't folllow me inside buildings.

Illusion: the master spells harmony was decent and did it's job making everyone pieceful. Hysteria scared everyone away, mayhem caused everyone to fight with the perk, but without it some of hte guys like the jarl aren't effected. It's mostly useful with multiple opponents though it costs so much mana and takes 5 seconds to cast each one.

Alteration: I only ahd the master spells dragonhide which is like invincibility for 20 seconds. It's not bad and I can see it useful for certain situations but honestly if you're a warrior you can tank a lot anyways.

Here's the mage video. Whichout the conjured creatures and it being night so there's fewer guards I would've gotten pwned no matter what spell I used.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceo6wwOMq-4




Overall I have to say that the melee was significantly better than the mage late game cuz I felt like a god able to plow through anything while with the mage I still had to run from not very strong opponents and ran out of mana too quickly.
The game's not balanced in magi vs melee and I hope a patch can fix everything.

I logged on today about to post the exact opposite. I was going to title my post "The Death of Conan" because I want to play a 2h, light armor, archery type with NO magic...however this is so difficult. I was wondering if anyone had success with a pure meele and if so what their strategies were.

Playing on adept I find myself getting roasted very quickly even early in the game. Even with the use of archery it is no use. Once I am detected by the mages they run at me and kill me before I can drop them.


In general I think the success of your style is going to depend on the enemies you choose. I am not surprised a pure mage got rocked by the Whiterun guards. A mage would be smart enough not to take on many guards at once. A good mage would have to summon some help, maybe charm some guards, and then kill the others quickly.

There are soooo many enemies in this game, if you dont find success in one area DON'T GIVE UP!!! Just move on to somewhere else and return to fight another day

I've been playing a caster heavy first character, but more or less balancing my stat distribution on an even keel and I have to say that Mages, especially when wearing Mage "armor" are bloody terrible. I can't count how many monsters I've killed with my Mage using my One Handed weapons because my spells did absolutely no damage to them. It's really frustrating being 15 hours in and wanting to re-roll because magic feels under-powered when you're not wearing Heavy Armor.

mages truly do svck. They need to patch now.

Weird. I dont have much trouble fighting against and killing warriors, but mages seem to beat my ass pretty fast.

I'm talking about player created mages

This is not an mmo. You are not competing with people playing warriors and archers. If mage seems underpowered and that's what you are playing, Bethesda has given you the option to balance things by adjusting the difficulty slider. If you think mage is harder to play on "master" than warrior, then don't play mage on master difficulty.

Same here. That damn frost spike spell or whatever cuts my health down by thirds every time.

This seems to be confusing a lot of people, so I thought I should make this extremely clear.

YOU AND THE NPC's DO NOT PLAY BY THE SAME RULES.

Specifically, the reason that the enemy mages are (sometimes) very frightening, while player mages are wusses is this. The enemies scale almost only on Health, most of the enemies in the game have somewhere between none and poor armor, however the more dangerous ones have horrendously large amounts of health.

You however, have very little HP, your heath will be in the range of 100-300 most likely. That means that when an enemy mage throws his 150 damage empowered fireball on you, you'll bite the dust pretty soon. However when you throw one back at him, he'll just look at you funny since you barely dented his 1000+ health pool.

This is where the PC Warrior comes in, because with some half decent gear he can easily do 100+ per hit, and hit several times per second turning the 1000+ hp enemy to dust in a few seconds. This is also where heavy armor comes in, which makes the PC Warrior mostly impervious to physical damage by giving him massive damage reduction, compensating for the low hp. The enemy warriors do not have these advantages, their armor is crap and their weapons were bought at wall-mart.


TL; DR
PC's are low hp, high armor. Weak to magic damage.
NPC's are high hp, low armor. Weak to physical damage, laughs at puny mages with their non scaling damage.

No, the difficulty slider is just an excuse the implement their horrible combat and level scaling (have fun dying to everything if you level non combat skills before combat ones, if you level smithing fast to get dragon armor your enemies will level too).

if been playing mage for 35 hours this weekend. it was tough to begin with, yes, but it gets better. with a summon or companion most things are pretty easy to deal with if not too easy.

It does get better but it gets much better for melee characters late game like I experimented with.

Illusion magic is still awesome

I never cared about destruction magic anywayz.

Overall it might just be more useful but conjuration is probably the most useful overall.

Melee should be reduced in effectiveness, if anything, get rid of some of those damage perks.

Also mage gameplay is more about control them damage, summon guys, cast frenzy, use paralyze. Fill in gaps with destruction spells.

i play a thief/archer and i get wrecked by mage npcs

Makes sense.

Most RPGs do 'PC: Low HP with stupidly high attack'/'NPC: Stupidly high HP with low attack'. So this is a bit different, but still the same-ish.

Thought exactly the same! Skyrim is about the the Story, the environment and the atmosphere while playing. It's Not! about maxing out player stats and equipment as quick as possible to get a high DPS. Alone the term DPS feels out of place. You should play a character you LIKE to play and not because it does the most damage...

There is one "but" to the OP's post, and that is the idea behind each playstyle. Focusing on combat only skills is supposed to make you the best at *drumroll* combat, which is what you tested for. Focusing on sneaky skills makes you sneaky. And focusing on mage's skills allows you to do all kinds of weird things and do combat. Warriors may be better than mages in direct confrontations like this, but warriors can't turn invisible, or open locks with alteration (that spell is in the game right?), or turn enemies into allies etc. If mages would be just as good in combat as warriors then there would be no point in choosing a warrior.

Oh, and these tests would probably be more accurate if you allow mages to use staves. It really saves magicka.

I typed out a huge post and hit the 'post reply' button and wiped the whole thing out. Long story short, I think the OP is missing the point. Different classes player differently. We can't all be Gandalf wielding our staff and sword and laying down hosts of orcs. Skyrim mages are frail, but what they lack in sheer power, they make up for in versatility and utility. I'm playing a Sneak/Mage/Thief type on the hardest difficulty and absolutely loving it!

Just remember, different classes/builds, etc require different play styles.

ninja'ed by Frank27...

Actually I think it is just the difficulty of this game. Mage enemies are powerful as they should be to melee characters and melee enemies as they should be to mage characters. I've been playing with my assassin char and both types of enemies can be a rea challenge. Mages have powerful spells, but I usually take them out before they know I'm there. Warriors can be monstrous tanks, but some poison can weaken them to where they are powerless. the game isn't really that inbalanced, it's just more challenging than Oblivion where you can god mode on everybody. I loved how in Skyrim, where my assassin was powerless against a Frost Troll when it came to close combat. I had to resort to using my bow and use guerilla tactis to finally bring the beast to its knees where I delivered the finishing blow. I find the game more balanced in difficulty than inbalanced.

dunno, i played now an archer, an assassin, a battlemage, a full mage, a full warrior...worked out all, just had to adjust strategies and pacing is different...

how does your character look (skills your using etc.)? playing something similar but not on hardest difficulty....

I play mele only, and i′ve got no major worries. dragons? no biggie. frost trols? no biggie. if you use a shield efficently it′s pretty much the [censored]

Coming from Dark Souls (also a great game) I'm SOOOOOO happy the stealth class is finally getting some love.

It's almost always warrior or mage that dish out the major damage.

I have a feeling though that as time goes on, Mages will own as well, we just havent figured it out yet. =)