Seems like a simple issue to spot - There are essentially 4 ways to directly do damage in the game:

1 - Archery
2 - 1 Handed Weapons
3 - 2 Handed Weapons
4 - Destruction

Sure, Conjuration and Illusion give you mechanisms by which damage can be inflicted, but you're not the one doing it directly.


First Perk of Archery, 1HW and 2HW is a 5 rank increases damage by up to 100% perk. First Perk of Destruction is a 1 rank reduces magicka cost perk. Destruction need 6 perk points spread across 3 perks in the middle of the tree to up Frost, Fire and Shock damage by 50%.

As your Skill increases in Archery, 1HW and 2HW, your damage goes up. As your Destruction Skill goes up, your mana cost by spell is reduced.

Archery, 1HW and 2HW can get a new weapon that increases their damage potential. Destruction has a limited spell spell selection, and does not have higher level versions of the same spell.

Archery, 1HW and 2HW can use the Smithing Skill to create and enhance their weapons. Destruction can not.

Archery, 1Hw and 2HW can use the Enchanting Skill to directly enhance their Weapons to do more damage. Destruction can not. Enchanting can be used to enchant other equipment to also enhance damage output for Archery, 1HW and 2HW. Enchanting can be used to enchant other equipment to increase Magicka regen and reduce Magicka cost for Destruction.


I could go on but I believe this list covers the main reasons why Destruction falls behind. Archery, 1HW and 2HW can all have their damage enhanced in a multitude of intuitive ways, and they all stack. Destruction has very limited ways to increase its damage potential, and it simply can't keep up with the weapon based skills in terms of sheer damage output.


My fix -
As your Destruction skill increases mana costs go down and damage goes up.
For each "Rank" perk (Novice, Apprentice, etc) mana costs are halved for that rank and damage of all Destruction spells goes up by 20% (stacking up to 100% at Master Destruction).
I would leave the element specific +50% damage perks as is.

Even with all this, I'm not sure Destruction would keep up with the extreme stacking capable with Smithing, Enchanting, Alchemy and a Weapon based skill, but I think it would definitely narrow the gap for most people, and be a whole more intuitive. You could use Alchemy and Enchanting to help boost your Destruction by a bit for more Damage, like you can with a Weapon based skill, but you still don't get direct enchantments on your "weapon" and you don't get new higher level versions of the same spells like you can with weapons.

I like option B as a sort of additional set of perks, but these are all over-complicated ways of fixing a very simple problem. There's clearly a graded damage curve for bows and melee weapons, whereby increasing your 2-handed weapon skill from 20 to 21 makes your battleaxe do a little bit more damage, and a battleaxe will do a lot more damage with a 2-handed skill of 100 than with a skill of 20, even without any perks.

Why can't the same system be applied to all spells? So (pulling numbers out of thin air here, just placeholders):

- Flames does 8 DPS at Destruction 20 (pulling numbers out of thin air here) but does 40 DPS at Destruction 100
- Summon Familiar summons a ghost wolf for 30 seconds at Conjuration 20 with an attack rating of 10 and armour rating of 20, but for 150 seconds at Conjuration 100, with an attack rating of 50 and an armour rating of 100?

It seems so obvious to me, but what do I know...

No, i already tried fire.
Maybe i need to point in the 1st post that i am playing on master, on novice/apprentice/adept i believe Destruction is not so lame, simply because mobs have much less hp.
But we a talking about max difficulty here.

Again, it doesn't matter if you kill something with 500 health by doing 501 damage or 1000 damage. Claiming that Destruction (or magic, in general) "lags behind" is beside the point. Mathematically, it may, but that really doesn't matter when something is dead, after all.

By comparison to warrior and stealth styles, magic has a pathetic potential damage output, and for one very simple reason - the spell's effectiveness/damage doesn't scale with your skill level...

Again, it doesn't matter if you kill something with 500 health by doing 501 damage or 1000 damage. Claiming that Destruction (or magic, in general) "lags behind" is beside the point. Mathematically, it may, but that really doesn't matter when something is dead, after all.

I am sad, because a lot of people dont see this problem in depth.
Look at this link: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1266212-2469-armor-3199-damage-using-smithing-alchemy-enchanting-only-31-perks/
What do you see there?!
Exactly! The synergy of ALL 3 crafting skills, that work together to improve weapon DAMAGE. But wait! There is more! In game we have items that increase weapon DAMAGE!
But wepons damage is much weaker then spell damage you will say!
NO!
As you can see in that link, a dagger could deal 171 damage! A dagger! Not a greatsword!
Even master lvl destruction spell dont do such damage! And you need some seconds to cast them.
But can we ,spellcasters , improve our spell damage? No! After you get perks for 50% damage output for fire/frost/lighting we cant do nothing.
There is a special potions for busting damage output, and still weapon damage will be a lot bigger then spell damage.
Look at that link (1242 damage this daedric bow! 3199 this two handed sword!!)
I dont know who was testing balance for this game, but it is safe to say that they failed (atleast for the max difficulty).

Again, it doesn't matter if you kill something with 500 health by doing 501 damage or 1000 damage. Claiming that Destruction (or magic, in general) "lags behind" is beside the point. Mathematically, it may, but that really doesn't matter when something is dead, after all.

I say we need to take a look into Enchanting~ Surely it will provide the answers we seek~

I agree, but as i said before, i didnt saw any enchat that increases magic damage.
Hope i am wrong.

This is the problem right here.

You can all rant on about your anecdotal encounters about how weak/powerful destruction is, but that is all subjective. I don't care how much damage you think you're doing with destruction; If you pick up a melee weapon, I guarantee you that you can do more.

It's a fact that melee does more damage with a substantially smaller investment. This should not be the case. Destruction doesn't scale and thus, it will get weaker as the game goes on.

I know from history that Bethesda is in the habit of letting the mod community do their patching for them. In fact, I can't help wonder if that is the majority of the reason they release the construction set in the first place. But they really need to visit this with an official patch. Magic shouldn't svck like this when compared to the other classes.

People dont seem to realize that it's not just one handed/two handed that ends up breaking it; its the combo of the various skills that does that. For example, i bet if you went exclusively one handed, you would be about as powerful as an exclusively destruction based mage. Throw in sneak for some chars and that dramatically increases...throw in armorer and it increases even more! Throw in ENCHANTING and it increases vastly more than that.

See, that's one of the main problems here; a broken melee character has 4 skills just backing up their damage output! A destruction mage has...1.

People dont seem to realize that it's not just one handed/two handed that ends up breaking it; its the combo of the various skills that does that. For example, i bet if you went exclusively one handed, you would be about as powerful as an exclusively destruction based mage. Throw in sneak for some chars and that dramatically increases...throw in armorer and it increases even more! Throw in ENCHANTING and it increases vastly more than that.

See, that's one of the main problems here; a broken melee character has 4 skills just backing up their damage output! A destruction mage has...1.

Magic doesn't need patch. Invest in higher level spells that do more damage. You have magick buffs that allow the spell to be cast longer = more damage. You compare to a melee character, but you forget the big disadvantage with melee. There are no area attacks melee uses. Melee are up close and personnel always getting hit; mages can shoot constant streams from afar.

I use melee, but not at master level. (Expert) I wouldn't expect it to be easier for me at Master level.

Actually, going exclusive one handed/two handed are worlds better than destruction, on average you can be doing several magnitudes of times more damage once the skill scaling and perks set in

Magic doesn't need patch. Invest in higher level spells that do more damage. You have magic buffs that allow the spell to be cast longer = more damage. You compare to a melee character, but you forget the big disadvantage with melee. There are no area attacks melee uses. Melee are up close and personnel always getting hit; mages can shoot constant streams from afar.

I use melee, but not at master level. (Expert) I wouldn't expect it to be easier for me at Master level.