You obviously are taking other skills. This game is not about power leveling. Level to 20 and raise only destro skills and take all the destructions perks - and you'll see destro is balanced just fine. Once you start training other skills, is up to you to synergize them w/ destruction.

By all that is holy this. If you want a challenge raise the difficulty, don't gimp a style of play. It's called 'Destruction' magic for a reason - it's supposed to destroy things! That's what it's supposed to be good for! I've heard rumors that a balance patch is supposedly coming out for destruction, but We'll keep talking until it happens.

And without enchanting, or even without ANYTHING, destruction will do moderate damage for a few seconds and then either run out of mana or die...
Removing specific parts of the equation does npot help you know... but, both when you remove EVERYTHING and when you include EVERYTHING, destruction is miles behind every other combat skill... When you need enchantments and potions to be a glass cannon with 2x destro damage and infinite ammo, any melle/archer could do that with smithing+enchantment and 7x damage... and they have infinite ammo by default (they can attack normally with 0 stamina, they just use it to do MORE damage than normal...)

No, I'm sorry but you can't deal 300+ damage with a bow unless you exploit the game or if it comes with a sneak attack. Oh, and I play on master anyway...

Wait, people use bows without trying to sneak attack?

I think destruction and shouts should be leveled, the first one with your destruction skill and the second one with your level. The "fire breath" shout is stupid at high levels, and so are destruction spells.

Getting 100 enchanting and using it to get 6x +100% archery enchants is not called exploiting the game, it's called PLAYING the game AS THE DESIGNERS MADE IT! And with those enchants, plus a good upgraded bow and some good arrows, 300+ damage can happen even without ever using alchemy and smithing... because if you do, we'll be talking about 1000+ damage easily...

Exploiting the game is using the tutor bug + pickpocketing to get to lv50 archery before you even speak to Gerdur in Riverwood...

I don't get it. I only see people complaining about how their weapon type X compares to weapon type Y. Why do I see no one explaining whats actually wrong with it and why its ruining the gameplay experience. Its like a freakin MMO forums here with all the whines. Really some of you guys should play EVE online. You would fit right in. BALANCE NERF BUFF

If its 100% then it is exploiting, you can only get 40% normally, 47% with combining alchemy.

The bow will never be able to fire as fast as spells, so you can do 300 damage per shot using enchanting, I can do 220 damage per dual cast, but I can dual cast a lot faster. You can then make a bow with 600 damage using crafting (you can't get much higher than that without the restoration glitch), I can make a potion to help my destro damage, then I will do ~500 per dual spell, with a much faster rate of fire than you.


You have no idea what you're talking about, I play on master with destro and I can take down an ancient dragon with 14 incinerate shots (which fire much faster than bow+arrow). Yeah you may be able to kill it in one with sneak critical from a bow you crafted to have 600 damage, I don't enjoy exploiting the system like that. Your point is moot, destruction doesn't perform badly compared to the other 4, you just don't understand.

Maybe you enjoy a game with no challenge, with your armor that beats the armor cap and weapons that do 1000+ damage, your playing the wrong game IMO. You will probably enjoy multiplayer [censored] 'who can spend more to be the best' games.

Using the in game mechanics to make you strong is not exploiting. Destro. needsca boost in power. Get over it.

They will stop exploiting of the mechanics when they balance, the problem with destro isn't power, it's magicka cost. You clearly haven't played using destro, or you're terrible using it, because destro does enough damage, even for master. Just because it can't be exploited like all the other combat skills doesn't mean it can't be used well.

I don't know what are you talking about. I'm level 25 mage (destruction 85 or so, enchantment 50 (though I almost don't use it now), and restoration ~40, conjuration/illusion/alteration ~30 thanks to Ogma Infinium), and I run around with no armor and an adept fireball spell and pwn everything (on expert, maybe that's the point?). I agree that smith/warror is stronger though.

I agree that Destruction is weak at Master difficulty (with a high level) and is not viable unless you like some very long battles.

I disagree that Destruction should be brought inline with Archery, 1H or 2H (by raising Destruction's damage,) because archery/1H/2H are absurdly overpowered--people are 2-shotting Ancient dragons and that's just wrong. IMO bringing everything in line would result in nerfing the archery/melee 'schools' and scaling up Destruction, just a little. (And it needs master tier runes and flames/frostbite spells.)

I pretty much agree with this. I think incinerate does a very well balanced amount of damage, and that archery and melee become too overpowered late in the game. End game magicka cost needs to be rebalanced - if you can't one-shot with a spell, it shouldn't deplete all of your magicka. Firebolt also does a respectable amount of damage right around the time that you first learn it, overall though the lack of destruction damage level scaling means there are big peaks and valleys in effectiveness as your most recent spell becomes progressively weaker and weaker. Magic would be much more interesting if the different versions of elemental spells retained their effectiveness rather than completely replacing the ones that come before - fireball (ranged AOE) has a different use from firebolt/incinerate (ranged single target), which in turn has a different use from flames (short range, and should have higher damage.) Anyway I've said this all about 8 times already in the countless threads dedicated to this topic.

Sigh, destruction spells don't scale, its fine at your level, wait until you get too level 40/50 and then come back to us. By then, you'll find that you'll have to use enchanting to actually be able to kill enemies (bring down casting costs)

What is wrong with Destruction in Skyrim? Well, since you asked...

1 - Spells become almost useless once you've leveled past them. While there are a variety of spells you can cast, the novice and apprentice level spells are so relatively weak compared to the expert spells, they are laughable. So you end up using only 2 or 3 spells out of the 24 in your destruction spellbook. You will never find (or be able to create) a more powerful version of the spell in the game.

2 - The impact perk. Perpetual stunlock does not offer challenging or entertaining game play.

3 - Managing resources is a game mechanic that makes choices more interesting. Magicka is a resource. Enchantments that reduce magicka cost to 0 is lost potential. I should be able to think "Do I have enough magicka to cast that really powerful spell and still leave enough to mop up whatever survives?"

4 - Speaking of managing resources - spell costs are out of whack. Master level spells are prohibitively expensive without resorting to enchanting. In combat regen is too slow to make up for it. You are not going to have enough magicka to get through a challenging boss fight using destruction as your only means of offense unless you continually pop potions, sneak out of combat to let your magicka regen, or use enchanting to negate magicka cost.

5 - And since I've brought up master spells... Seriously? I have to remain still and defenseless for 3 seconds in the midst of a group of bad guys to cast an AOE (which can be interrupted)? If I'm using those nice mage robes which have no armor, I guess I'm just not allowed to cast master spells. I'm dead before I can finish the ritual. And the damage... is really not more than a dual cast spell that does not require the ritual.

6 - Which brings me to another point - why provide mage robes when the only viable option is to wear armor? (Yes, I know this crosses over into Alteration, but if I'm expending all my magicka to frequently recast protection spells, I am even more screwed when it comes to destruction. And you know those mage-y dragon masks? If I try wearing one, my protection spells don't protect me anyway, even if I took every mage armor perk, so why bother?) There is no penalty for wearing armor, and I can enchant it to be just as good as the mage robes, saving myself the trouble of switching spells and recasting ebonyflesh in the middle of a fight.

7 - So I can spam stunlock anyone for free in my enchanted daedric armor and be a successful destruction mage, but also be bored out of my mind. If I try to play any other way... I get the impression Bethesda thinks I'm doing it wrong. Wearing cloth armor and using a whole arsenal of spells without enchanting away the magicka cost should NOT be doing it wrong!!! This is irritating, frustrating, and YES, ruins my gameplay experience. This is not an MMO - I shouldn't have to wiki the perfect build. I should be able to role play as I see fit and have a reasonable chance of beating the game.

Now then... I'm not the sort to just sit around and whine, so I created a mod to address these design flaws. Now I am thoroughly enjoying my mage, and I love destruction. It's not super powerful, but you can use some strategy and a whole arsenal of different spells and really have fun with it.

No. It does need more power. I'm fed up with people saying its just fine. Its not. It shouldnt take a million hits to kill something. FYI I don't svck. So stop making false accusations. And people have already done the math. You can't argue with numericle fact.

I wish there was an adept or expert version of sparks......I hate duel casting and I hate having to shoot my lightning bolts. I want a continuious stream of electricity. Lightning Storm is just....inaccurate as hell.

Archery and mele are just fine. Its up to you to not spam it. You literally have to try to make archery and smithing strong. Stop saying you dont when I know from experience that you do.

Okay, I dual cast incinerate to do 220 damage. I can use a +120% potion to do ~500 damage. How strong do you want it to be, enlighten me?

With that data I can kill an ancient dragon (one of the most difficult, highest health enemies you come across) in 28 dual incinerates, and 12 incinerates with the potion. That to me is very strong, you couldn't match that without exploiting the system with archery.


Some good points there, I totally agree with the clothing-alteration armor problem. There needs to be a benefit, I do it anyway as its more fun and challenging, but there should be a benefit.

Edit: The archmages robes are unique though, they provide very useful enchantments you can't match on armor. There needs to be more unique non-armor apparel that is useful.

I use master spells all the time, they key is to use the become ethereal shout or use sneak/invisibility. Thats how I cast my master spells mid battle, use become ethereal and walk up to them, charge up mass paralyse and floor them all. Then unleash blizzard followed by fire storms, which do a lot more damage than stated.

I do wish there was a quest, maybe if you had all the master spells available, from winterhold that allowed you to cut the charge time down by half and so you can't be staggered whilst charging.

The magicka cost is ridiculous I agree, I use ~92% magicka reduction for destruction (which I made sure wasn't to much), this allows me to cast a good few spells but not endlessly stagger the enemy. I shouldn't have to do this myself though to be honest, I should be able to use destruction without enchanting. Some people just go with 100% reduction, I don't find it that fun, but others do.

What you mean to say is: "I made 3 crafting characters." addendum : how boring.

As others have said - of course destruction looks underpowered compared to over-utilizing the crafting system.

I'm used to having to apply common sense to my builds to be successful at high difficulty levels, examples of this being DXHR, ME1/2, DAO/2, FO3/NV. Getting gang @#$%ed by choruses? Make some resist poison potions or find something enchanted for poison immunity. Getting one shotted by mages? Elemental resistance potions, or pick a Breton and go the magic resistance route. Using a bow to kill things? Smith a good bow and use archery fortifying enchantments. I'm not pouring over a spreadsheet filled with dps calculations for hours trying to optimize my build, I'm doing common sense things that occurred to me immediately during my first playthrough. Yeah, I should have clarified though that the way melee and archery damage should be nerfed is through a drastic reduction in the base fortify enchantment strength. I don't think anything that common sense should ruin the difficulty level. Also not sure what you mean by "spam" melee and archery. If you mean firing arrows or swinging swords repeatedly, I... What the hell else are you supposed to do?

This. Its even [censored] if you go complain about it later

Destruction is fine Imo, I have no problems with it. Killed a giant at level 3 using my mage using frostbite without abusing any pathing or AI. Pebkac = Problem exists between keyboard and chair.

Destruction is weak without pots on master, they need to fix the master spells before they touch anything else. They are so terribly designed its a joke.