Keep in mind I'm talking about Master difficulty play.

Last night, I did the Speaking with Silence quest for the TG. It's the quest where you go with Mercer Frey to Snowveil Sanctum and face all kinds of heavy duty Draugr before meeting Karliah. I was looking forward to this quest because I could actually use area Destruction spells and not have to worry about killing my follower/Frey.

I know that Destruction is weak but I've been trying to make a go of it. So to this end I took along over 30 restore magicka potions, all worth a minimum of 77 points. Most were were 97 points or more. In addition I found 5 or 6 more restore magicka potions along the way. I also carried 6 or 5 fortify magicka potions.Note that this amounts to somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 extra magicka points.

I have a necklace that provides an additional 25 points of magicka, a ring with 25, and gauntles with 29. My gilded Elven armor provides my character with an 18% reduction cost in Destruction casting as well as a bonus for regeneration. I also have over 400 magicka before those enhancements, which gives me 500+ total.

I was out of potions about 1/4 of the way through the final fight. After getting killed for the umpteenth time because the controller only gets the dual casting move right about half the time I had to do the unthinkable: turn down the difficulty. I even resorted to scrolls---Scrolls!!

In sum we're looking at 4 solid enhancements and close to 50 restore/regenerate potions and it still wasn't enough. Not even close.

This character does carry a sword which is only to be used in emergencies. Her 1H score is 27 with no perks, but her power attacks caused almost as much damage per hit than my Fireball spells. My Destruction score is 58 and I have every possible perk in the tree at this point.

The only mitigating thing about this is that my armor rating is only around 200. So what I'll do is go to work on that and begin taking more perks. But I think the above is a good anecdotal example of why Destruction is one of the main things Beth may want to adjust with a patch in the future. They adjusted Smithing so I don't see any reason why they can't do it with Destruction.

Yup, since destruction does not scale, you have a couple ""workaround"" options.. (hoops to jump through to make destruction function). You can:

A: make fortify destruction damage potions en-mass via alchemy (nightshade and glowing mushrooms is one) You will need some alchemy perks and buffing gear to make them strong. Also you have to chug one all the time.

B: Put mass perks in enchanting, to cut casting costs to 0 or near zero, and then use impact to stagger and whittle everthing to death.

C: Make weakness to element poisons - and then pre-poison every powerful thing you intend to kill...one.at..a...time...

D: A combination of these three things.

And there you have it. OH- also runes don't scale and become worthless (basically) and neither do familiars so the wolf is worthless, and neither do....
Yeah, scaling would be nice.

I've been wondering if there are some good threads out there about Destruction damage output vs. everything else so If you see one with all the numbers, please link it. Like the OP, I was generally very disappointed with how much I have to hit things, especially compared to dual wielded glass swords or perked sneak attack enchanted glass bow (I can one-hit sleeping Blood Dragons on Master).

There are. search destruction.

If you combine a very strong fortify potion with a very strong weakness potion and then blast said enemy you can do great numbers. The problem is there is all this procedure and protocol for the other 10,000 enemies you have to kill that it gets overly tedious compared to blade or bow.

Yeah... well, my alchemy is 78 and I have 4 of the 5 perks. That's how I had so many potions. You're right though in that I did neglect to make Fortify Destruction potions. I only had one. Next time I'll have 20 (seriously).

I also have 4/5 perks in enchanting now but when I made the armor I was wearing I only had 2. I have the smithing materials, grand soul gems, and materials to make a new set of armor (the set I currently own is Legendary already!), so I'll do that.

A question: Should I continue to go with armor enchantments that provide extra magicka or should I go with cost reduction? What tends to be more effective?

Xoham, someone posted the exact numbers in a thread a few days ago but I forget which one it was. I believe the OP of the thread titled with something along the lines of why Destruction isn't broken. Which I could be more helpful, but that's all I remember. But that guy's post should have been made a sticky. He demonstrated by the numbers how Destruction spells actually becomes less effective and less cost efficient as you "improve" the skill. It's hard to imagine why they would design it this way.

When a character like mine, who almost never uses a melee weapon and has no perks in the mentioned skill can be almost as effective in combat with a sword as she can with all the Destruction stuff in my OP, it points to serious screw-up.

I always wondered why I often hear "Destruction is too weak!!". Now I know why.

Do (some) spells scale for enemies? Because I just fought a Dragon Priest, one fireball of his staff did almost 200 damage to me, when I checked his staff, it said it was going to do 40 pts of fire damage. Weird.

But you have to deliver the weakness potion via some other means than magic. This means you have to have some kind of bow skill. And I don't know about anyone else but growing up I don't recall thinking of Merlin slinging bows and arrows.

Further, Destruction is the worst first-strike means of attack in the game. You get sneak bonuses for melee and bows but not Destruction. I've had to take the Assassins Blade perk in the sneak tree as well as invest quite a bit into archery so that the character is viable. And as I mentioned earlier, my Alchemy skill is high as well.

All other skills stand on their own but Destruction doesn't. You need alchemy, enchanting, and/or melee. No other method of assault requires all those things. And it's too bad because sending explosive fireballs at opponents is so much fun. For me it's easily the most entertaining way to cause damage.

Yea, my character gets owned by magic. I was under the impression that magic was OP hah.

Cost reduction is better. Since the magica costs go way way up with more powerful casts the static buff of magica enchantment is relatively worth less and less.
Also, if you can get your enchanting up you can save on some of the cost reduction perks in the tree you have enchanted for.
((( Or you can super meta game and get enchant maxed out and skip all the cost reduction perks... but please don't post this on the Stamina/Health/Magic threads as it is totally meta and not normal progression.)))

Enemy spells are "scaled"... ironic? See how effective they are?

All true.

Yes you do have to apply the poison with a weapon (or you can make the poor argument that you can pickpocket the poison on the enemy- which takes sneak and gobs more perks). So yes, you will probably be shooting a bow and arrow each time you apply the weakness potion.

If you are on a PC, there are mods that make destruction scale, and make it great. If not, and on a console, well that is why I post on it in hopes it gets patched. (devil's advocate)

I usually do warrior but sometimes I meet opponents do too much damage for my armor and I can't kill them before dying. That's when I whip out my level 20 destruction magic secret weapon, Flames. I also have 100 magicka. Those Draugr Deathlords with Ebony swords and axes, they can kill me with 3 or 4 swipes, but I can kill them with flames because I can stay out of their attack range, and they do not regenerate. I can whittle them down slowly. The fight can be a bit long, but it works because draugrs are rather slow and you can dodge their attacks indefinitely.

some thoughts:

Try getting more fortify destruction, it will improve your gameplay much better than more magicka. Another thing is that sometimes leveling alchemy and enchanting and distributing perks there makes your destruction perks/skill obsolete to your/enemy levels. Its impossible to cast destruction higher levels spells without the apropriate perk.

I agree with this, 100% The cost of Master level destruction spells is something like 1400 magicka. There are not enough magicka boost enchants in the game to deal with that, but cost reduction enchants handle it nicely.


I don't understand what you mean by "meta". My first pure mage invested a lot in cost reducing perks because I thought enchant was "cheap". When I figured out how much the higher level spells cost to cast, I realized there was no practical way to cast them without serious cost reduction gear, at which point I decided I'd rather just make the gear myself as a mage and I gave in to enchant.

I rerolled my mage and my new mage takes no cost reducing perks other than the ones that are prerequisits to other perks he wants. That saves him something like 18 perks that can be spent elsewhere (11 of those are going into enchant). That is the way they designed the game, so that is the way I am playing it. Seemed like the "normal" progression to me, but I admit I don't understand what "meta" means in this context. My only understanding of "meta" is the data scrubbers to remove hidden data (like prior edits and such) from documents before you email them.

@ turja-

What i mean is the process of leveling yourself up while maxing enchanting (probably as a warrior) and then making 100% cost reducers for your magic school, and then posting that one should never invest in magic when leveling.

This is not a normal progression for a mage, and that comment only has to do with the stamina/health/magic threads.

Meta in gaming lingo means to replay something with the foreknowledge of events and play to the future you know will occurr. (i.e. Boss 5 is weak to fire so ill stock up on my fire scrolls in levels 1-4) I dont consider advanced tips helpful to new players who don't have an intricate understanding of the mechanics (which is why they are asking if they should level up health ) i suppose this is a personal opinion.

Ahh, yeah, my mage still puts most points into magicka. I kind of need it at earlier levels when I am still working on enchant (especially given that I am not taking any cost reduction perks) and at higher levels, enchant only gives you two schools free (or like I play nearly free destruction and spread the reduction around for the other schoools), so you still need magicka if you want to rely solely on magic and use more than two schools.

I do think it is kind of lame that Bethesda designed a system where someone could take no magicka level ups and still be as good at two schools of magic as someone who put all level ups into magicka, but of all my complaints about Skyrim, that is the least of my worries.

Thanks for the explanation of "meta"!

OP - not that I disagree with you but, it sounds like you are perked into a lot of different skills. Alchemy, Enchanting, Smithing, Archery, Destruction. That's spreading perks pretty thin. If your build isn't pretty focused, especially on Master, you are going to have a tough time. Also, it's pretty helpful to have something for crowd control when you play on master; Conjuration or Illusion tends to keep everyone from trying to pulverize you. I'm not suggesting that you perk into those trees at this point, just offering an alternative perspective on why you may be struggling.

I'd just like to add that if I drink a fortify archery and then use a poison, I'm pretty sure I still far outpace Destruction doing a similar thing.

Changing outfit during battle does not take any time, just as eating food and drinking potions do not take time. It is annoying style of play, but in theory, you can be proficient in all 5 schools with just 100 magicka. This works best if you are not really a mage, but a warrior who does magic as a hobby.

That's true, but I just cannot bring myself to do complete outfit changes during the heat of battle. Swapping rings is okay cause that would take only a second, but I won't change robes during a battle. Amulets, gauntlets and helms are a bit of a gray area for me, and I sometimes change them in battle, but usually only if I break away from actual combat. There really should be animations for all this stuff and for drinking potions. Dark souls has a pretty good potion drinking animation.

Nah. With those schools I'm almost at max perks for my level for each one or the next perk in the respective tree isn't important. For example, with archery I'm at 54 and have 3/5 Overdraw, Powershot, and the perk that lets you zoom in (forgetting the name right now). My Destruction is actually at 54, not 58 and I have every possible perk with the exception of Rune Master because after about level 10 Runes officially become useless. In Smithing I have a 73 with Dwarven, Elven, Plate armor perks (Glass is the next perk I'm taking). Etc. I'm not missing anything.

As for Conjuration and Illusion, I maxed both of those with my last two characters. I'm trying to do something different with this one.

Just some advice. If you don't have much in the way of magicka reduction yet, use firebolt instead of fireball. Dual cast it and impact stagger lock your enemy. Take your time and don't waste your shots. Fireball costs way too much without enough reduction enchants.

Yep. Fireball was the spell that convinced me to reroll my mage and do enchant instead of cost reduction perks. I had the adept cost reduction perk and I had put most of my level ups into magicka and my Destruction skill was 70, almost to the expert level perk, and I could still only cast fireball a couple of times before running out of magicka. When I bought the expert level spells and saw how much magicka they cost I got fed up with that character and went with cost reduction through enchant rather than perks. I am much happier now.

One quick fix, would be to make FOD potions last 5 minutes. I could live with that.

Someday, I hope Bethesda realizes that Destruction is not simply magic, it is also a weapon, and should be treated as such.