Where is a mage going get the magicka reserves to power both conjuration and destruction? A more approperiate answer is Destruction must use enchantment to reduce costs so one-handed+Smith=Destruction+Enchanting in terms of number of perks used to deal damage. Furthermore Smithing can also augment defense whereas enchantment cannot and mages must rely on alteration or restoration so effectively Destruction mages must perk 3 skill sets to deal damage and stay alive whereas melee only needs to perk two sets.


Archers can use conjuration, melee can use conjuration as well I don't want to use those I want to deal damage with destruction supported by enchentments so yes it does matter

Name me a single game where you didnt have to use a potion as a mage, there are none. zero. Every game from diablo one, to final fantasy, to skyrim, you used potions as a mage, expecting not to have to use potions now is RIDICULOUS. Yes they could add 2 more perks to augmented flames / frost / shock, but if they dont, I dont care, cuz I get along just fine at level 52 without that being able t one hit EVERYTHING, I can 3 shot the most difficult bosses if I intelligently use potions and enchanting.

I use destruction, and just to test, I summoned my dremora lord, surprise surprse, my dual wielding incineration bolts did more damage,and could kill enemies faster...

Baldur's gate, Icewind dale, Neverwinter nights. There you go......

Neverwinter nights. There are only hp potions, and for the average mage it's better to keep attacking until they die rather than stop and hope they can survive long enough to dring the potion...

This link begs to differ.

http://mikesrpgcenter.com/bgate/potions.html

http://mikesrpgcenter.com/icewind/potions.html

http://mikesrpgcenter.com/nwn/items/potions.html

Yep, they all have potions.

Yeah, just did some research, there are more than just HP potions. Sorry. Any other games you wanna throw at me? also, that is the gameplay mechanics fault.

Dragon Age: Origins had lyrium potions, but if you invested in mana and wore low fatigue gear (mage robes) you could get through fights without them. Dragon Age 2 took it a step further and put a fat, shared cooldown on all lyrium potions, so they were just something to use in a pinch, not rely on for general combat. In both games mages did plenty of damage without having to resort to any tedious, combat interrupting potion spamming.

I love how two-handed is practically useless on those charts compared to one-handed...

Because allocating potions to the right dpad button and moving your thumb is so tedious. This mechanic is not known by a lot of people though...so I can understand the misunderstanding. Go down to potion in favorites, hold right on dpad, bam, just hit right whenever to use potion, and the same goes for left on the dpad. People complain HARD about depth in this game, and alchemy is the most in depth thing available, very confusing to me.

I'm playing on PC, so for me, the instructions would look more like: wait for the CK to be released, reduce magicka costs for all spells and boost magicka regen rate while significantly reducing the strength of -spell cost enchantments. Add fortify damage enchantments for mages, and reduce the chance for dual cast to stun. Make enchantments placed on cloth stronger than those placed on armor. Make sure flames and firebolt do enough damage to still be used late in the game, and turn incinerate into a high damage, long cast time, low magicka cost spell that could be used for stealth attacks. Save my hotkeys (I have 6 within easy reach) for switching between all the spells I need to regularly access (candlelight, flames, fireball, firebolt, incinerate, ebony flesh...)

*Edit - Also "fix" certain spells, like candlelight and the mage armors, so that they work like sustained spells from Dragon Age (cast once to turn them on, cast again to turn them off.) Add in a fatigue mechanic that increases magicka and stamina cost if wearing armor.

Thats up to you, but for 3/4 of the people who bought the game, which play on console, this is not an option ,and dpad shortcut is not well known.

I'm sure though that console users, with only 2 hotkey slots, would rather not be forced to use them for potions just to make destruction viable. They have to switch spells and equipment just as much as PC players.

Yes, they do, but the two slots are very useful, personally I dont use them for the potions, bu if they dont change the values, I have no problem going through the game at level 54 with the way it is now. Zero problem.

You're someone who never played BG, Icewind Dale or NWN aren't you? Let me help you with that: in these games you can play as a mage without using potions. Because mages don't use mana to cast their spells. You may get shocked but there some rpgs that mages don't use "mana".

Final Fantasy, Diablo he says... Here is an expert on the subject.

Yhea, but we all wished we COULD use a potion to get a spell back! The spells in those games were FAR better then in Skyrim. The Magic Regen is far better in Skyrim then D&D. Dragon Age got it right, that was a REALLY fun game to be a mage. Spell Combos(Mass Paralysis Glyph Combo + Storm of Century) and Combos beween mages and warriors(Cone of Cold + Critical Attack!) Was all of the fun melee perks like Two Hand Sweep! So much fun there. Ehh, now I think of it the combat in Skyrim is downright boring. I never player Dragon Age2 . Perhaps it is time to go pick that up.

I thought the combat in DA2 was actually a step up from DAO in a lot of ways (and I really liked DAO.) They nerfed mages a little (and no more arcane warriors ) but introduced a lot more cross class combos, so there's a big incentive to mix up your party composition (some parts are essentially unbeatable unless you intelligently use combos and bring the right people - I'm looking at you, Xebenkeck.) It was also a lot harder to break the difficulty, and nightmare difficulty is very hard, something I really wish I could say about Skyrim. It utterly fails in terms of exploration, but I'm sure you've heard all the flaws a thousand times already. If you end up liking the game, the DLC are for the most part a lot better (more varied environments, no overuse of enemy wave spawning.)

As for comparing it to Skyrim though, being in 1st person adds quite a lot of excitement. Compare being face to face with a dragon in Skyrim to chipping away at one in isometric with a bunch of archers in Dragon Age. You also can't have the same variety of spells in an FPS, there's no way to build an interface for it (short of voice commands maybe.)

Destruction just needs scaling period. Magic needs scaling. For each level up in a magic skill there should be a small increase in the magnitude of the spell, about 0.5% per skill level. So Conjuration spells would last longer, Destruction spells would do more damage, Restoration Spells would heal more/block more damage, Alteration spells would last longer/block more damage, and Illusion spells would last longer/affect higher level enemies.

Never was an Arcane Warrior fan. Loved stacking Hexes on targets and unleashing magic! Even Staff attacks were brutal if you knew how to build your character. But at then end of the day I loved Warriors in DAO. Even ran a full warrior party though it. So much fun.

How is that relevant to Skyim? Just think of the Hexes! Where is the Weakness to Magic Spells?! Well there is just a TON of magic effects that are not implemented in Spells. There should be a Weakness to Magic/Fire/Forst/Shock Spell. It IS lame you have to use a POISON to get that effect! Just like it is Lame you can boost Melee Skills through Alchemy and Enchantment, but NOT Restoration!

I put together another spreadsheet with things like destruction damage scaling, destruction damage perks, fortify damage enchantments, and tweaked the values around to make the destruction damage more or less match melee/archery damage (flames matches 2H, firebolt matches heavy archery, fireball is slightly weaker than firebolt but AOE.) I ended up with 0.5% bonus damage per skill level, plus a ranked damage perk for 20/20/30/30/50 (total +150% damage). The base damage for flames is still 8, but firebolt was reduced to 6, and fireball to 5. With all the damage boosts though, your dps curve would look like this:

http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii167/bl3count/rebalanceddamage.jpg

I also reduced the max fortify damage enchantment strength from 40%x4 to 15%x4. The same smithing improvement is used, but the numbers shown assume you're only getting +10% smithing per piece of enchanted gear, rather than +25%. Fortify smithing and enchanting potions are also taken out (I'm playing right now with a mod that makes those changes to enchanting and alchemy, and difficulty stays pretty good even with full crafting synergy.)

This tries to stick with the way spells are ranked in the vanilla game, but what might be good would be to swap flames and firebolt - you'd start out with the ranged, lower damage spell, then get the higher damage, short range flame spell at a higher skill level. Then for fireball, increase its damage to make it really destructive, but give it a high magicka cost. Magicka costs for flames and firebolt would be such that you could continuously cast them without running out of magicka, but fireball would deplete you quickly.

I've played two Mages, an Archer and a dual wield character all to 50+ each in Skyrim. While yes, Destruction is easily the worst damage output skill on the game it's also the most balanced. Archery, One Handed and Two Handed are overly strong and even moreso when Smithng and/or Enchanting come into the picture.

I get so bored playing as a melee/archer character in Skyrim because of how easy it gets if I put any thought into my perk build.

they don't have Mana potions, and that what you whre referign to when you said "show me a game that mages don't use potions". correct?


Yeah what he said.


I'd give it a skip, while it had some interesting characters, it pretty much skipped on everything else. Also you don't get those spell combo's your referign to anymore either.

destruction magic is weak at high lvls but the impact perk and free destruction enchanting balance that...the only problem is dual cast only works right half of the time, the other half i'm casting the spell in both hands and therefore no impact stun (got killed many times because of that)

They got rid of mage-only combos (i.e. a mage can't shatter their own frozen enemies via that fist spell) but they replaced them with http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Cross-class_combo, and there are considerably more of those than there were spell combos in DAO. I swear, everybody that's complaining about the DA2 combat lacking depth just never played on nightmare, they were never forced to actually learn it all.



It does make it more playable, but its kind of a crutch. It would be better to up the damage a little but reduce chance to stun, maybe make it caster skill dependent or something.

Yeah, my mage hasn't put any perk points into enchanting for this very reason. Free casting two schools seems like a cheat (even thoguh I know it was an intended part of the game). If I was going to do that, then why did I keep selecting magicka on level up, when I could have just taken health? You don't need a large mana pool if you have free casting with two schools of magicka. Sure you can keep the blue in the bar without being cheap, but the easiest way to do that is to use illusion/conjurations spells and only using destruction to clean up what is left.

I couldn't imagine playing a pure destruction mage without using either potions or enchant (I use potions as the lesser of two evils). It would be way too tedious and you would never have the feeling of power that a destruction mage is supposed to have.