I for one have found the destruction spells to be pathetically weak. I've played 3 characters, the first was a mage type, then a sword and shield warrior type and a ranger type. But one thing I did on all three was max out my blacksmithing and enchanting, putting a good number of perks into each.

What I found was that while through Smithing and Enchanting there are ways to drastically increase the damage you do with weapons, but there is nothing to increase damage with spells even with enchanting.

I'd like to point out the difference this makes.

So with 1h weapons the first major advantage is that with perks you can increase the damage a full 100% whereas Destruction spell can only be increased 50%. On top of that, with smithing upgraded, and a full set of blacksmithing enchants, you can more than double the base damage of your weapons. Add to that the 40% increased 1h damage enchant that you can put on 4 pieces of your armor, 160% total, and the end result is a deadric war axe that does about 300 damage on a normal swing.

Compare that to the Expert level destruction spells that even upgraded do only 90 damage... keep in mind that I'm comparing to a 1h weapon, I don't care about dual casting. And let's not forget the dual enchants that I put on said daedric axe that gave it 39 frost and lightning damage that's 78 damage right there, nearly as much as the destruction spell.

In short, I have a one handed weapon that does nearly 400 damage on a normal swing, probably double that on a power attack, while my most powerful fast cast destruction spell is still only 90 damage.

I think the easiest solution to this horrible imbalance would be to scale up the damage by the player's skill in destruction magic. Personally I think about 2% per skill level, 200% total at 100, would be just about right. This would put the expert level spells at 270 damage, still not as high as the 1h weapons, but at least competitive. But even a 1% per skill level increase would make the spells more viable. As it is, I find myself using bond weapons on my mage character more than I use spells.

BTW, with the axe and enchants I mentioned, I've killed a regular dragon with one power attack.

I agree destruction needs a damage over haul or at least higher level duration spells I like to just spam flame and frostbite but they are just too weak I don't want to have to aim I just want to destroy

I look at it in a different perspective. Destruction spells are actually quite approriate and their damage level makes a challenging game

enchated and smithed weapons are like cheat codes especially when you couple it with the skill-less melée combat system where no one moves out of u way and u hit each other midlessly like circus music is playing in the bakground

you are right.....................


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enchant + blacksmith is pathetic

I agree totally. Relying on spells for combat purposes is a waste of time.

I agree with you. If it wasn't for my specialties in Conjuration and Alteration, I wouldn't be able to play pat level 25. As it is I'm forced to reduce destruction costs by 80% just to be able to support my dremora lords. Not too mention that the master destruction spells are absolutely horrible because of the cast-time.

Did you do a search? How many times are we going to rehash this? This has been posted LITERALLY 100x.

Bethesda knows. Now we will see if they care.

If not, modders are already balancing and fixing this....

I realize there is a build-up internally and then the need to post - but this horse is dead, raised, killed, dismembered, thralled, turned to ash, ashes scattered, regathered, submitted to the Daedra Lords, burned in Oblivion and then put into a little container and scattered across all our hearts.

yeah it should scale more. But you can use enchanting to tweak it so its okay

Mages are balanced, choosing to grind crafting skills to get max power at an early level is not balanced.

I think the real problem is that smithing and enchanting are terribly overpowered. I have a pure mage around level 35 or so and the game is entirely playable, but it is true that it is much easier on a warrior character with an enchanted and upgraded daedric greatsword. Too much easier, in my opinion.

If you are a mage and relying on Destruction alone, you are handicapping yourself like people who put restraints on their game play. If you add Conjuration to Destruction, you can have a very potent mage PC. Seriously, you conjure a Dremora Lord who goes in to melee while you pot shot ice storm from the outside and you're really hitting hard.

oh look it's this thread again

Alchemy.

didn't you get the memo? beth hates mages and are trying to make everyone hate them too...destructions weak, many spells have been removed, spell creations removed and magicka regen rate slows to 1/3 normal rate during combat, staffs are weak and there's only 4 different looking staffs...did i forget anything?

No. Smithing and enchanting are not cheat codes.
They are viable playstyles. Destruction on the otherhand is a complete joke and needs to be buffed. The damage it does is so miniscule its quite pathetic.

I personally have no problems with my mage, not since I got my dremora lord anyways. But not everybody likes to use Conjuration, what am I to do if I'm level 30 with 80 destruction, 60 alteration, 60 restoration, 50 illusion, 20 enchanting, and 30 conjuration. In this sceneraio, the mage focused mostly on Destruction and yet his damage would be abysmal. Why is this somehow fair?

Nobody cares. It's so blatantly obvious that Destruction is pathetic that we have to keep posting this over and over until we get a fix. Sure the PC players might be able to fix this with a mod, but not the console players (80% of the Skyrim audience).

I have to agree that destruction spells are far too weak... Mages are supposed to be powerful but easy to kill, instead Skyrim makes them out to be horribly underpowered offensively... If I die when someone sneezes it only makes sense that to balance that out I should be able to cast magic powerful enough that I can kill my opponents roughly as quickly as they can kill me... The balance of Melee vs. Magic damage is really bad in this game...

Enchanting does make one thing easier though since it's possible to reduce the casting cost of all spells from two separate schools to 0 using it thus making you able to fire off your most powerful spells with no worries about running out of mana...

I have level 60ish destro and level 20ish one-handed most of my perks are in destro and none in one-handed but i do more damage with a steel dagger than i do with my upgraded flames.

Impact+any spell dual cast=death


But seriously, once you have impact and chain lightning you are completely unstoppable. I think everyone complaining about destruction either isn't using it right or is lying. In order for it to be useful you MUST have impact and you MUST dual cast

Currently level 40, use my dual firebolts with Impact perk almost exclusively, and I've found that being able to stunlock everything besides dragons (and even then, I just need to use fireball instead) makes the game almost pathetically easy.

Destruction spells are perfect as they are, I'm having a great time with the game on the default difficulty level. If it's too hard for you then try reducing the slider - don't worry, there aren't any penalties for doing so. This is a free form single player game, it doesn't have to be balanced - it's more important they let us create the challenge we want for our characters.

Most "solutions" these days are all "abuse alchemy", "abuse enchantment"
really, the most practical solution for now is "use something else" if you still want a figment of challenge.

Or don't go over level 20, but that probably has people reliving the horrors of "Oblivious"

Impact should be a percent chance of occuring. Anyways even with Impact, I'd like to see you survive when literally surrounded on all sides, how many can you keep stunned with Impact at once?

Also, impact doesn't really fix the problem anyways since you'll still need 20 shots before killing the enemy (exxageration).

Nerf pallys