Well, that's what I play on so I guess I should be good to go. I don't want to have to shoot enemies 800 times for them to die.

Yeah it starts to suffer definitely later on the only way to use it at later levels is with magic reduction at least a seventy five percent reduction and only the higher level spells that creates a one dimensional system compared to what we used to have.

Each to his own. I love te long fights on expert

Nope. Killing enemies just fine. You just gotta be smart about it.

I don't find Destruction broken at all. If you make good choices with your perks and build your character with what you need, I think you can handle anything that comes your way. If it's too easy, up the difficulty and if it's too difficult, lower it. I'm having a great time with it.

^ This. I would only add that Beth may as well slightly nerf the cost reduction enchants for all schools (down to something between 75 and 90% max cost reduction possible given current spell costs, maybe less if they reduced nominal spell costs significantly). It makes sense we should have to pay some spell cost, even if that is relatively small for high-level mages.

The main strength of Destruction (and Illusion) is fighting against groups. Many Destruction spells hit multiple targets at once. Spells like Fireball, Chain Lightning, and Wall of Flames are powered just fine for this reason, but the spells that only hit one target - Firebolt/Incinerate, Lightning Bolt/Thunderbolt, etc, are underpowered for their cost. If I'm fighting a single, tough, non-dragon enemy, I usually have to rely on Alteration's Paralyze spell.

I think Destruction should have some on-touch spells, which have a higher damage/magicka ratio than their ranged counterparts, to use when enemies get too close.

Enchanting armor till you get 100% less to cast destruction spells and having the perk that staggers enemies (even dragons) can be very useful even as you and your enemies level up

Enchanting armor till you get 100% less to cast destruction spells and having the perk that staggers enemies (even dragons) can be very useful even as you and your enemies level up

Not remotely. I've played extensively on Master and Expert with a lvl 61 with a bow and swords. Both difficulties are simply ridiculous. They are almost exactly like turning up the difficulty in Oblivion. Unrealistic/implausible enemies, with crazy high power and incalculable resistances to damage of all kinds. Tedious, boring, and frustrating, as well as demeaning to the point of "getting stronger" for the PC. Don't even get me started on the ridiculousness of NPC mages(which are screwed up on any difficulty), but playing as a mage is pointless when these high "difficulty" levels are used.

I have a real problem with a shirtless guy wearing furs, trained to 100 on all skills, who can survive the absurd amount of damage I'm supposed to be doing with the BEST gear in the game(and I don't even need to enchant any gear to kill anything on master). Master makes enemies do 2.0x damage, and you do .50x damage to them....which is just stupid. In ANY game.

Bethesda truly screwed up when they made the difficulty levels for this game, just like Oblivion.

Let me stop before I write a whole thread on this topic, as it's the number one game design flaw with Skyrim that I will never understand.

OT: I play all my characters on Adept now, including my pure mage, because it at least makes sense (most of the time). Am I coping with bad game mechanics to make a pure mage viable? Yes. Should I have to? No.

Most of my favourite destruction spells are the low level stuff like Firebolt, Flames and Sparks, they just feel so nice to use and it's a shame that they become really ineffective at higher levels, I wouldn't want to play a mage without mods.

Absolutely. We each pay $60 for this game, so we should do what allows us to have fun. I play dead-is-dead, which I'm sure many on here would not enjoy. But I have a blast.

Overall, it sounds to me (and I may be wrong) that the problems with destruction magic happen only if you're a) a higher level and if you play on a difficulty setting above adept.

I'm going to start putting some of my perks into destruction. And lets not forget the other schools of magic, conjuring, illusion, etc. I'm sure successful use of those could help any mage be much deadlier.

I think they should have cost-reduction effects stack multiplicatively instead of additively. For example, if you have a 25% reduction enchantment, your spells cost 75%. If you have two 25% cost-reduction enchantments, your spells would cost 75% * 75% = 56%, as opposed to 50%. This is a subtle difference with only two enchantments, but with four 25% reductions, your spells would cost about 32% instead of 0%. It also implies that you could never get 0% cost without having a single enchantment with 100% reduction, which frees the developers to allow more than four reduction enchantments and have a higher ceiling for them, such as 50% instead of 25%.

It's really weak at high levels, even at lower levels, costs a ton of mana, even with perks, there just isn't enough mana to spare, and the attacks do less damage than swinging a sword free of cost. but if you can chain cast for long enough and get the dual cast impact stagger, you can just lock a mob down indefinitely 100-0. it's pretty cheesy tho.

Those spells essentially have "powered-up" versions at Expert level.

Firebolt => Incinerate
Flames => Wall of Flames
Sparks => Wall of Sparks
Lightning Bolt => Thunderbolt
etc.

I never get the stagger perk because it makes combat pointless and boring since you can just chug mana potions to keep stun locking. Should be 50% chance to stun at most. 25% imo.

I think the stagger perk is overpowered, a 25% chance would be fine.

Yeah but those powered up spells have a different mechanic and feel from the lower level spells, sometimes you just want to throw a high speed ball of fire at something, or pull an Emperor Palpatine on a dragon, later in the game it's not effective to do those things.

It's not all that bad, but the base magicka costs for expert/master spells are way off.

Without enchanted gear I run out of magicka after 3 shots of incinerate, and that's barely enough to kill a Draugr Scourge or a Falmer Gloomlurker (while there are three of them attacking me).

I can make short work of them with fireballs, not to speak of firebolts.

True story. That type of thing will repeat itself over and over if you don't carefully choose which spells you choose to use against certain enemies. It seems like Bethesda made the high level spells cost so much because they figured it takes only one successful hit on the enemy to do a great deal of damage, that could otherwise only be equalled by 6 or more hits of a lower level spell on the same target. So they thought being a higher level mage meant making it easier to damage an enemy because you didn't have to repeatedly hit them, but at the cost of so much magicka that you would die if you miss(or if you inevitably run out of magicka, lol)........

Which doesn't work out right because it's not hard to repeatedly hit the same enemy. At all. So....it's kind of an irrelevant "balancing" idea they came up with. Which is why they need to tweak the damage done or the magicka cost of all high level spells. Preferably both.

I will agree on that point, that master spell cost is just too high.

My mage I recently retired had every single attribute point put into magicka.
That's no points whatsoever into stamina or health. They both were sitting at 100 while my magicka was around.....300-something.
He was also the first high level mage I've had. He was a glass cannon and I wanted to have the greatest advantage when I got the fire storm spell. Well, when I finally got it, with my pretty big pool of magicka, I could only cast it once (this is of course if you dont use fortify destruction gear) before having to drink potions to bring my magicka back up.
That, is [censored] ridiculous.

From my own mage playthrough experience I would say the problem isnt that destruction mages are broken or underpowered per se, just that there is feasibly only one way to play them on anything higher than Adept. (Nullify spell cost, impact, alchemy. There are what I relied on to keep me alive. Had I not had them, things would have been substantially rougher if not impossible at some spots.))

Edit: Before retiring him I made a full set of gear that just fortified magicka and magicka regen for [censored] and giggles and even then I couldnt cast firestorm more than once without having to recuperate. Of course this would be fine but it does LESS damage than incinerate does. : /

I agree with this the stun should a twenty five to a fifty percent chance to stun the enemy.
But magic coat wise the spells cost way to much the higher level spells that is they cost way to much and they do to little, I hope we get spell creation back so we can tailer our spells how we want.
I also want our old spells back for varieties sake.

Yeah I miss the unlock spell the most, Im a damn wizard I shouldnt have to resort to manually picking a lock, hmpf!

no way. My 40K Hammer Orc kills any dragon on master in few seconds. While my pure mage almer suffers each moment of the 7 min i use to kill a frost dragon using 100 % fortify destro potions .
This is because the CRAP damage dealed by spells.

Unfortunately this makes them absolutely useless when there are friendlies around, since they'll take splash damage and turn hostile (or die, pegging you for murder).