You see its not supposed to fix everything, just the glaring things. Destruction needs a bigger fix than anything. (Subjective)

Dawnguard wont fix everything, just most of it.

I would say the bugs overshadow destruction magic.
Destruction could benefit from spell creation and getting new spells.

There are tons of mods that fix the destruction problem. I don't get why you think dawnguard should solve it.

well...because there are tons of people on console...who don't get mods...there are people who don't want mods....etc etc..and it is Beths game, if there is a problem, Beth needs to fix it.

Pure damage is really easy to exploit. I never play magi and even I know this. Couple of enchantments and a set of robes and off you go.

BTW: based on the PC 1.6 "Beta" I'd be surprised if the DLC didn't break more than it fixes.

...I'm a pure mage, and even I'm going to argue against that. We need variety with spells, not necessarily power. Also, smithing. Smithing was implemented pretty poorly, being done on a by-material basis, rather than in a similar way that every other perk tree in the game was done. Hell, even lockpicking was done in a more intelligent manner, and that whole freaking tree is worthless!

I've said it before, I'll say it again. The tree should have the following:

Basic Crafting (Leather, Iron, Steel can be improved by 50% more)
Advanced Crafting (Orcish, Elven, Dwemer can be improved by 50% more)
Expert Crafting (Glass, Ebony, Daedric, and Dragon can be improved by 50% more)
Light Armor Expertise (Light Armor can be improved by 50% more)
Heavy Armor Expertise (Heavy armor can be improved by 50% more)
Weapon Expertise (Weapons can be improved by 50% more)
Jeweler (Unlocks new jewlery types, jewelery value increased by 25%)
Arcane Enchanter (Can improved enchanted equipment)
Artisian (Can craft weapon and armor with designs originally meant for other materials)

There, there's your proper perk tree. Or something like it. It works much like all the other perk trees when done in this method, far better than the "one path to rule them all" we currently have.

The problem with magic isn't that it's too weak right now - it's just that you have to play differently than past games to get the most out of it. The big problem is the limited selection of spells, and how similar and mundane destruction is. Very few constant damage spells, very few AoEs... it's a 1 sec duration missile fest, which is kinda boring.

I never said Destruction's major problem was the power.

I like the magic visuals so spell crafting would destroy magic altogether.... I want more spells though a lot more

You sure as hell implied it. Are there problems with it? Yes. But the main one is variety, which will come with time. Other skills have a bigger problem that need to be addressed, such as Smithing's mishandling, and lockpicking's complete uselessness.

Destruction isn't the only magic school you can use you know. The stagger effect is great when it is combined with a frenzied opponent bashing a staggered one's face in. I guess if you want to create a pure destruction mage, but you might not get too far.

I ran a mod that made a huge difference in how Destruction felt in the higher levels, and it was very simple in that it changed the Dual wielding magic to damage ratio up to be 400% magic going in over a single handed cast and 500% damage coming out over a single handed cast. This made the cost worth dual wielding and also made the spells very strong if you had the mana to cast them. I had much fun with this simple change before deciding to go even further and add a full overhaul mod, but honestly something as simple as that ratio change made a huge difference and shouldn't take much effort to modify if Beth wants too.

That seems kinda overkill. The only reason you wanna dual-cast destruction is to stagger the foe - if you make it too much more powerful than it is now, it could wind up becoming too powerful. I can stagger dragons, and as a mage, they are a joke. That stagger perk is crazy powerful all on its own. Proper damage scaling with level is fine and needed, but if you try to empower the dual cast destruction any more, you could break it.

Other schools, though, need it fixed. There's no benefit to dual casting in other schools at all, IMO. Maybe for mage armor builds, dunno, but outside of that... there doesn't seem to be too much point. Making it cheaper, even if by 10-20% of the current overcharge, would go a long way to making it worthwhile.

illusion works on stronger opponents and conjuration spells last longer.

That alone doesn't justify the +40% cost per hand. That's nearly 300% of the cost of a spell, but for a rather small boost in comparison when you think about it. At 20/25% cost per hand, it's a far more reasonable amount - 240-250% normal cost.

Of course Dawnguard won't Improve/fix evrey flaw or bug, but It's making archery better, Wherewolfs, and Vampires all much better then before.'

Not to mention adding two more factions, somthing I'm looking forward to.

Archery is already strong as it is...

A lot I variety would make the Distruction skill the best, Like for casting about 10 fire bolts is more promising then casting a Incerate spell and Firestorm is just ridiculious

So what if Dawnguard isn't perfect? Nothing in this world is, and I'm satisfied enough with Skyrim. Regarding magic... I just have one word to solve all the problems regarding that: mods. Mods already make the magic in Skyrim much more fun, varied and interesting. It's a really nice scenario: whatever Bethesda lacks in their vanilla game, the modding community more than makes up for it.

i agree with this, but remember: PS3 and Xbox cannot use them

Bethesda=No love for Mages, just fancy lights

True. As a rather foolish person who bought the game for the 360, I would know. When I saw that almost every bug that frustated me and every little nitpick was addressed and fixed for MONTHS for the PC version, I finally bought a gaming PC and another copy of Skyrim for PC. I never looked back. The only advice I can give to new players of Elder Scrolls games: NEVER, EVER buy & play the game on consoles. The PC versions, just because they can be modded, are so much better than the console ones that I think it's a horrible waste of money to buy Skyrim for PS3 or Xbox. Vote with your wallet.... Maybe if bethesda focused on only one platform, their games wouldn't be such a bug-riddled mess.

You guys and your mods. Not everyone can afford a compy good enough to play Skyrim, you know. Many of us can only play it via console. As such, please stop dismissing things with just "Oh, use console commands" or "oh, just install a mod". I'm sorry, but it doesn't work that way.

Man... I feel your pain

I'm gonna be that guy: I've gotta say, if you have a problem with Destruction, you're using it wrong. Period. Not only can my level 43 Altmer archmage rely solely on Destruction if he feels like it--WITHOUT that "staggerlocking" or 90-100% cost reduction nonsense--but he actively uses every school other than Alteration, meaning he has no armor. Restoration, in fact, sees the least uses out of all of them in that file outside of offensive spells against undead; I rarely take damage and have invested enough in health that I generally don't get OHKO'd (I've got 250 health last I checked).

I don't have any followers (though I sometimes use atronachs) and I usually play on Master. I say usually because, from what I've seen, you have to set the difficulty differently every time you load a different save if you want to change it. That is to say that even though my archmage plays on Master, that's the default setting for all my files, so I have to change it to Adept if I want to use my Nord and change it back to Master when I load my Altmer. My Altmer is the only character strong enough to even survive on Master.

Destruction, like most other skills, is all about tactical use. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Archery is more point-and-click than anything while Destruction has many different spells that favor different tactics, like cloaks, runes, AOE spells and walls. But alas, I'm wasting my time: this is another nonsense "Destruction iz bad" derp thread, and I don't think this phenomenon is going to stop until people can use Destruction as the only skill that gets them through a dungeon; nobody seems to listen to other arguments and criticisms (even [or especially] from players experienced with Destruction on Master difficulty).


This is the absolute most ridiculous and stupid post I've seen in this forum in a long time. It's fine to think that a skill is weak or have whatever criticisms you may, but you're asserting that Destruction and magic at large is lacking because NPCs frown upon it? You're literally and explicitly using the lore as a basis for your claim that magic is poorly designed. I didn't know that people were capable of believing such far-fetched nonsense.

Edit: As a side note, I didn't read much of this thread after that horrendous post I quoted.