I've read a lot about how destruction magic is practically useless at higher levels. I'm not real sure how this works but something about the NPCs continually leveling while your destruction spells peak and level off at some point. Either way, is there not some way around this? What about creating armor that boosts your destruction magic power? I'm just curious because I like to play as a "mystic archer" type that uses a bow and arrow and destruction spells.

I'd bet if you use a bow and arrow and poisons that causes weaknesses to magic, and then use destruction on an enemy, I'd bet it would be more effective. Does anyone find success using destruction magic at higher levels? And if so, how?

Yea its totally fine that a pure wizard has to use archery to be able to do decent damage with magic

You have to have magic reduction to make it truly effective. Otherwise yes its useless.

it is, it really is. a destruction mage using a bow will level up archery making it harder to get the skills they really need and want.a smart archer would enchant their bow with fire/frost/lightning damage and use weakness to fire/frost/lightning poison, which is much stronger than a destruction mage could ever hope to be. beth dropped the ball on this one.

The problem with Destruction magic is there is no enchantment to increase the damage like other damage types (Archery, One hand, etc) other then the two Augment perks that happen at skill levels 30 and 60. So once you get destruction past 60 and to 75 and get the Expert level spell, there's not really much reason to go higher. The Master level spells are an AOE centered on you and have a long cast time and require both hands.

Putting in a third "Augment" perk at skill level 90 would probably go a long way towards resolving this, IMO.

I'm using destruction magic just fine, though I'm playing on Normal level.

And why does my mage need to use a weapon? Does a warrior need to start off with a "Weakness to Weapons" Spell? Of course they don't, because they have scaling damage [unlike the mage], enchantments to boost damage [unlike the mage], sneak damage bonus [unlike the mage], poisons [unlike the mage], and a way to craft improvements [unlike the mage].


...do you sense a theme here?

expert = normal mode imo. anything less and the game is too easy, Even on adept.

Well, that's just it. I'm not a pure mage by any means. I like to use archery and rely on magic if my enemies get in close on me. So I figured that using a poison that does, say, weakness to fire, and then using a high level fire spell would do significant damage. Is that right or would magic still be weak.

I'm very surprised Bethesda has not addressed this since it seems to be such an issue with the game.

I play on the normal setting as well. What level are you?

my only gripe with it is the absurd magicka cost, you shout a few spells and then you chug some potions. Also there should be a second enchantment to raise the damage of spells as well as the one to lower cost

I wouldn't call it broken, but it doesn't function very well. Destruction doesn't become very viable at high levels, but let me elaborate.

Imagine this scale:

FRUSTRATION--------------------------------------------------BOREDOM

This is known as the difficulty scale. First off, Magic does not have damage enchantments and perk wise it is only possible to receive a 50% bonus, as opposed to the 100% bonus most other offensive skills receive. Magic without reduction enchants is all the way on the left side of the spectrum because you do not regenerate fast enough while in combat, magicka cost is too high, and damage isn't spectacular. Respectively, if having 100% enchantments for magic reduction ranks all the way on the right side of the spectrum, because at this point all you do is spam your targets with weak spells and staggerlock them.

Here is what should be tweaked about Destruction

- Increase damage augmentation to 100%
- Significantly increase magicka regeneration.
- Nerf the Stagger perk to only have a 50% chance to stagger, or similar to archery. Alternatively, make the probability percentage to stagger a target half of what your skill in Destruction is.
- Slightly reduce the cost of dual casting.
- Make magic scale with your level.

Very good points there but I really hate your bright blue writing on my white background. It made my eyes sore. I will be seeing you in court

So is destruction on adept level more manageable?

And again, what about a weakness to magic poison? If I hit an enemy with this (from an arrow) and then use magic on them, won't that do some significant damage? Again, I'm not a pure mage, if I was to be classified my character is a mystic archer. Sneak, alchemy, poisons, and the use of often to finish weakened opponents.

I really wonder why Bethesda isn't looking into doing these things. They've made so many wonderful changes and upgrades to the game through their updates, it seems like magic should get some love. The vampire and werewolf perk trees are sorely needed but yet magic users are still left out in the cold.

Play the game on expert trust me, Game is alot more fun, Battles are long and you have to use more tactics and poisens like you seem to be doing. An arcane archer sounds like a fun build but I think you will get fed up of the constant switching of weapons and spells.

pause game to bring up menu
find and add poisen to arrow
switch to bow
fire arrow
switch to spell

Prob better off sticking with just archery.

Yeah I cannot read the colored writing I am on the mobile sight and I refuse to try and blind myself in the white background with the colored writings.

All of the magics problems could be taken care of with spell creation minus the ridiculous magic cost in this game, you pretty much need magic reduction to be able to use any magic effectively later on in the game.

Well, I play dead-is-dead. So the game is definitely a challenge for me. I watch every step, employ tactics, etc. I have a blast.

The apprentice stone is a joke as well. 100% extra magic regeneration, sounds good right? well thats out of combat regeneration, When your in combat that bonus lowers itself to around 10% Also you get 100% weakness to magic. Thats fine if the npcs had the same crap spells as us but their versions are alot stronger.

Max level.

no, mages are just whimps, i have a pure mage who only uses magic and i'm fine, no problems... People just need to wine to feel important joking, no it's fine, could use tweaking though, but it's not broken by any means.

Above poster is prob level 10 lol. No offense

And you have no problem with destruction magic?

I took my mage to level 37-38 on Expert with no problems.

Thats because hes playing on normal, normal = super easy mode. everything dies in 1 or 2 hits. Hell you could even wear no armor and it would take npcs 20 hits to kill you.