There doesnt seem to be a limit for this. Chain lightning could stagger at least 6 bandits (marauders and the boss)

If enemies couldnt hurt me,there isnt any problem. Only archers are a threat for mages(and even that ends with dragonskin),melee enemies are jokes to laugh at.

A draugh deathlord,beeing the most dangerous melee enemy,is gone after 7 dualcasted incinerates. Thats fast enough considering thats at least a miniboss.

Yes...that's the real issue. They need to curb the power of enchanted melee attacks. I don't think anything short of a wave motion gun should be able to take out a decent sized dragon in one hit.

It means both. I don't want Destruction spells to be made as powerful as Legendary Daedric weapons. I want a middle ground. I want Smithing nerfed to the point that a Legendary weapon isn't quite so extremely powerful and Destruction boosted to the point that it's a comparable choice.

Everybody brings up "Stun Lock~!", but that's just another example of a poorly balanced ability. The Balanced Magic mod handles this well -- it gives Impact a 50% success rate, so trying to keep anything staggered is a crapshoot. I'm fully in favor of that as a tradeoff for the boosts that Balanced Magic provides, namely damage scaling to the skill and magicka regen not being quite so stifled in combat.

Nobody wants more powerful mages. They want different builds in the game to be well balanced against each other so that the difficulty isn't swinging wildly from one playthrough to another.

source please

We'll shut up when it's fixed. Also it's a single player game, there's no such thing as cheating.


What you're really saying is "I lackz teh self control! Pleez cut content, Beth!" Also, I have had it with these motherf------ dragons in this motherf------ game, and one-shotting the weaker members of their race would be a pleasure. Also it would be cool if dragonrend violently ripped the dragon out of the air and forced it to the ground the very second it hits, rather than allowing the dragon to land when and where it's conveinent for his scaly ass.

okay so i want to be a destruction mage NOT a mage. I don't want any magic except destruction and no other weapons. I'll use heavy armor. How is this a viable option?

challeging enough that you die each time you have more than 2 opponents facing you or get jumped by a sabrecat/cavebear

Thats just you being terrible at the game, look at my post. You will see how much damage you can do, more than enough to survive on master.

Yeah you can't do 1000 damage in one spell like you can with melee, but thats boring as hell. Don't comment if you don't know what your talking about.

^THAT and the fact that you maxed your crafting skills means you technically raised your combat difficulty level by A LOT (due to levelling). I know because I've done that too, now I'm trying to increase my combat skills as much as I can and I'm noticing a big difference. I'm not even sure if your skill in destruction doesn't increase the effective damage of a spell, because I noticed that now it's much easier to kill some enemies (e.g. wolf goes down after one firebolt now and I don't even have to cast it in dual handed mode).

Destruction doesn't get damage scaling with Blacksmithing or Enchanting, but it does get damage scaling with Alchemy. You can make Potions that increase Destruction Damage by X%, and you can make Weakness To Magic and Weakness to Element Poisons. You first have to apply them to a bow though and hit them with it, then Destruction's damage ramps up alot. Hit a Giant with 2 arrows, one poisoned with Weakness to Magic, the other poisoned with Weakness to Fire, then hit him with a few Incinerates, and watch the Giant drop deader than snot on a door knob.

But yeah, there's still a problem with Destruction magic being innately less powerful than weapons, and using a limited resource (If you don't abuse Enchanting). One possible fix, would be to reduce the massive health pools of opponents in the game, while giving them all Armor Rating, to reflect how tough their hide is or such. You'd think that Dragons would have a high Armor Rating, considering their Scales/Bones are tough enough to make into some of the best armor in the game. This would also add viability to the Skull Crusher/Bone Breaker perks for Blunt weps. Want to reduce your opponent's damage mitigation against your weapon strikes and do more damage? Use slower weps.

Not to me. If I'm not mistaken if you dual-cast Incinerate it will net you a whopping 350 damage plus stagger. Stunlock FTW.

Why do people keep comparing meelee weapons buffed using smithing, enchanting and one handed skills/perks to base destruction magic. With enchanting (reducing mana to zero cost), destruction skill maxed and with destruction perks, I have no problem with any enemy at level 69. Not to mention using potions to increase destruction damage.


Edit:

Plus I have the dual enchantment perk so with a robe, hood, ring and necklage enchanted reducing destruction and alteration cost to zero the game is extremely easy. Before a battle fire up dragon flesh at no cost, then equip paralyze and destruction and fire at no cost.

220 damage per dual cast, ~500 if you use a +120% destro potion. This allows me to kill an ancient dragon in ~12 hits on master, how is this underpowered?

The only thing they need to fix IMO, is cap %magicka reduction to 85%, and reduce the magicka cost of spells to make them more usable.

I'm pretty sure that reduction in magicka regen was done on purpose so that mages would have to rely on potions just as much as the others. Between potions to restore and fortify magicka and magick regen, plus potions to increase the strength of your spells, any fight can be won handily as long as you come prepared.

It's funny that mages need to rely on a non-mage skill to actually boost their mage skills.

I agree with ya. Personally, I find all builds can be op with the right tactics, equipment and perks.

You get range and versatility with destro. If you have 100% fortification, you'll find destruction to be quite viable. You won't be able to dispatch enemies as fast as you can with your melee weapons, but you'll have a number of spells to accomplish the task and you'll be able to do it at a distance. If mages are beefed up anymore, they'll simply be overpowered. It's good that there aren't fire spells that can do 300 damage, that'd be ridiculous.

Range? Archery gets that.

Versatility? Mages rely on Expert Destro spells for damage, of which they have a grand choice of three spells. Runes? Crap damage and you can only lay one. Cloaks? Mana drain.


100% fortification trivializes the management of a mage's resource, which cheapens the entire idea of playing a mage.

The argument against destruction is how strong you can make melee and archery with smithing, alchemy and enchanting?! Without those you would struggle to make archery, 1h and 2h as strong as destruction. Your point is moot.

Destruction mages only need alchemy and enchanting to do high damage. You may hate destruction because you can't exploit the damage as much as the other combat styles, so that means you can't one hit everything on master, what a shame.

Like melee have the option of three different weapons, hammer, sword and axe. Archery only has a bow. I don't use 100% magicka reduction and play fine as a mage using destro on master, I have around 90% reduction which isn't to overpowering.

The only reason melee and archery get so strong is the abuse of crafting, by your argument does that mean melee and archery is cheap?

I think you can hit a little faster with magic than you can with arrows--doesn't make up for the damage differential, but I'm in the camp that thinks damage is just fine.

Versatility: AOE primarily, although there are some benefits to using fire vs. ice vs. lightning that are much easier to switch between than poisoning an arrow.

Adept-tier spells are still useful for me, especially fireball.

Destruction is fine. Smithing is ridiculous.

Melee is potent even without alchemy and enchanting (which has actually been proven). Destruction needs a potion boost every 30s (which is impractical) and the trivialization of its resource system to deal damage.

It has never been a matter of one-shotting anything in Master, it's a matter of Destruction remaining static and impractical. What if I don't want to turn myself into a peashooter with infinite ammo?

Without crafting, destruction damage will surpass archery, 1h and 2h. You don't need a potion every 30 seconds, it lasts for 60 seconds, and I only ever use them if I'm in a situation against maybe 4 draugr deathlords. Which any character would struggle against.

I can kill ancient dragons fine without the potions using dual casted (220 damage) incinerate. Ancient dragons have 6000 health on master (the equivalent of due to half damage dealt by you), so it will take 28 incinerates dual casted to kill an ancient dragon on master. Without abusing crafting, you wouldn't be able to do that with archery, 1h or 2h.

The problem is the huge magicka cost, even with the perk. Thats why I need 90% destruction magicka reduction to be able to cast a good few spells, thats the problem IMO. If they fix that and stop the exploits in crafting, then the skills will be more balanced.

Which you can also do with a bow... with tons more damage... and in slow motion so you can just dance your way out of any incoming attacks while shooting... and as added bonus, you can add an enchantment that paralyzes enemies and makes them drop to the ground every second hit...

Yep, destro is perfectly fine... as long as you play on easy difficulty levels and the enemies don't last long enough for the difference to show, that is...

Also, to those saying that destro is balanced and it's just that the other skills are OP... when 4 out of the 5 offensive skills (1h, 2h, archery, conjuration) are more than viable by themselves, and only destruction lacks in comparison, it is quite obvious that destruction is the one that was balanced wrong... when one thing out of 5 performs badly, you fix that one thing, NOT THE OTHER FOUR!!! Common sense...

Here's what needs to happen:
Fortify One-Hand, Two-Hand, Archery reduce stamina cost of power attack instead of damage. That would put it on par with Destruction.
There's no way this will ever happen but if it did I wonder how many seconds after the patch landed would all the dual weilders be on the forums bi0tching. I think that would be totally hilarious.