I am looking for reliable information about playing a high level Destruction mage.

By reliable I mean something more informative than "it suxorz don't do it". Because everyone says it scales badly, that it's not viable, etc. but I've seen so little actual examples that it really starts to look like an urban myth.

Gameplay video or hard data on how many HP enemies in the ~51 range have would be best. Or someone who actually made a high level Destructomage can just give examples, like "I am level x, I mostly encounter [enemy], they take n Fireballs/Incinerates to kill".

Thanks.

I don't have any hard numbers, but I found my pure destruction mage to be perfectly viable. He was much less powerful than my melee characters or archer, but even on master the challenge felt just right (the other disciplines need to be nerfed in my opinion.) Early in the game I felt I could play as a stereotypical mage (rely mostly on a large magicka pool plus the occasional potion, and wear robes armor.) But late in the game the magicka costs for viable spells goes through the roof, you'll need to take advantage of gear enchanted for -destruction spell cost to make it through a fight. I also ended up wearing heavy armor rather than bothering with cloth + mage armor spells, there's no incentive to do otherwise and having to recast your armor every 60 seconds seemed like much too big of a hassle. The dual cast stagger mechanic is really what makes it viable. Against a single opponent it can trivialize combat, but against a group (assuming you're not using AOE spells due to friendly fire concerns) some challenge remains - miss and you're likely to get smacked before you can cast again.

The stuff about destruction not scaling at higher level is true (you can't get your spells to be more powerful , you can only reduce their cost for spamming them ) , however if you play on the default difficulty settings , it's not a big deal , it becomes an issue in harder difficulty settings when enemies have higher hp and hit harder .

If you are on pc , there is a mod called Balanced magic , that completely fixes the issue without overpowering it

Without a mod you need to specify a bit more what your playstyle with Destruction will be. In general I feel you will have to take either Enchanting or Alchemy and you have no choice if you want to handle the tougher enemies. Taking both will easily make it viable but taking neither is not going to work and taking one is generally enough.

EDIT: Talking from the perspective of Master difficulty.

Destruction magic is limited in terms of damage. You can use alchemy to fortify your destruction, it might be wise to invest in enchanting for magic reduction perks as the high level spells cost an obscene amount of magic.

Agreed. Alchemy provides the means to boost damage while Enchanting provides the means to reduce spell cost. You can do without alchemy if you take enchanting because with enchanting you will have zero spell cost and can spam spells while using some store bought destruction spell damage boosting potions (though these potions pale in comparison to what an alchemist can create).

You can do without enchanting if you take alchemy as you can significantly boost damage while using store bought spell cost reducing gear, and store bought alchemy boosting gear, though keep in mind the store bought gear will cap out at 75% reduced spell cost (72% if you use a Master robe). Personally I am using this setup.

Using both yields greatly increased damage with spamming.

So everyone has the answers, but nobody has the evidence.

How typical.

i play on xbox so do you expect me to film my tv and create a youtube vid just to help you? I had help for you but now go help yourself

My altmer sneak mage, has around 92% magicka destruction reduction (which I made sure wasn't to much), so I can't just endlessly spam spells for stagger but I have enough to do a decent amount of damage. Aim for around 90-95% for fortify destruction, so you don't burn up stupid amounts of magicka but don't cast them for free.

I had +50% perks on all the elements, the dual casting and impact perk. So incinerate does 100 damage (you get 10+ damage from the illusion fear perk, even without the fire fear perk ha), when dual casted I do 220 damage with incinerate, 198 with thunderbolt dual casted. Considering how fast you can cast spells, I can take down ancient dragons (master difficulty) without to much hastle. Chain lightning (master spell) does 112 damage per second, so thats a good option to.

That being said, if I drink a destruction potion (around +120%) with the previously mentioned spells, I could decimate ancient dragons even quicker. Incinerate will do 484, thunderbolt will do 435 and chain lightning will do 247 per second. I usually carry a good 40+ destruction potions in case I need them.

So thats how I survive on master using destruction as my main combat skill. I wouldn't advise getting the perks that give fire fear, or ice paralyse, as they don't really seem worth it.

My branched out orc can take out an ancient dragon using only destruction magic. He's at 270 Magicka (natural, no enhance), has cost reduction perks to just below master, specialized in shock and flame branches (no dual or freeze). It took two spammings of frieballs at full magic (magicka potions), plus some dancing around him in circles spouting flames (just because it was fun). I have 60% faster regen, and 10% additional reduction in cost. Totally, totally viable. Just don't get hit.

Most of the alchemy thing is more theorycrafting than done in practice.

Since its extremely impractical to bring 1.5 weight of potions per enemy. you encounter in a dungeon -> 1 weakness to magic poison, 1 weakness to "element" poison, and fortify destruction potion.
First you need to hit every enemy you intend to kill with two poisons. Which means you've already entered combat.
And then you need to drink the fortify potion which lasts exactly 30 seconds.

And then you probably still need enchanting to jack up potion effectiveness to begin with; and lower casting costs.

Its very impractical attempt to make something sound viable

You're better off spamming X spell for stagger.

Don't bother will all that weakness to fire crap, just read my post above and you will see you don't need it. But if you were to use a weakness to magic and fire poison on an enemy, then my tactic above, you would kill anything very quickly even on master.

You wont get to be "high level" and "pure" in this game. Your character level is based on your skill levels, and if you stay pure to one skill you're not going to advance much past the 20s.

You generally do need to max out alchemy and enchanting with all the perks to chug potions like that

That and finding a reliable source of ingredients for the effect.

If you want hard numbers, go http://www.uesp.net/wiki and do the math yourself. It's all there - available spells and their damage and magicka cost, melee damage formulas and the bonuses available from smithing and enchanting (neither of which are able to benefit destruction damage.) Really the only numbers that end up mattering are:

100% magicka cost reduction from enchanted gear
100% chance to stagger from destruction dual cast perk

nasty

Yeah you do need alchemy for my tactic, I don't mind though as I like alchemy. You don't need it to be able to use destruction at a high level as my comment above states, you can use it without. Or you can use the potions you can buy from alchemists, which is +50% IIRC.


For me having 100% magicka cost reduction just ruins the game, you can kill everything by staggering. No fun, it's the same to me as exploiting crafting to make weapons with 1000+ damage. But you do need to use enchanting to be effective with destruction at a high level, due to the extreme cost.

You can get a decent reduction from bought items though, 22% from master destruction robes, and I presume you can get a neckless/ring of peerless destruction that gives you 25% each. 72% will probably be enough combined with the perk.

Agreed, I thought the magicka management at low levels was a lot more interesting, and better balanced. At high levels though, if I can just remove a broken mechanic via gear, I'm more likely to do that than try to painstakingly balance it - when all is said and done I mostly just like lobbing fireballs at stuff.

i dunno why anyone is going out of their way to help this ungrateful, spoilt little child. Those that have kindly attempted to give him some insight have had all their efforts thrown back in their faces. Some people just aren't worth the effort.

I'm willing to test, but I can't seem to google the means to determine a NPC's health. It could be as simple as opening the console and clicking on someone, but I'm not in a place where I can check.

As it stands, level 40 or 41 and Deathlords take around six seconds to kill (although I tend to use the lower powered Fireball spell more often than incinerate.)

You could try getav health but I don't know if that tells you their current health or their maximum health.

I kind of agree with sh00byd00, but since you seem interested, the way to determine an NPCs health is by entering the console, selecting them, then typing:

getav health

getav stands for "GetActorValue." There are a bunch of actor values, skills are things like heavyarmor, destruction, lightarmor, onehanded, sneak, etc. Health, magicka and stamina rates are :
healrate
healratemult
staminarate
staminaratemult
magickarate
magickaratemult

The list will get a lot more comprehensive, and be available on the CK wiki, once the CK is released.

*edit - if you want their maximum health, type:
getbaseav health

or

getavinfo health

for a more comprehensive list of both the actor value and the modifiers effecting it.

Well I use around 92% destruction magicka reduction, which isn't to overpowered. It means I can cast a good amount of expert spells, but not endlessly stagger the enemy. I played for a bit with 100% reduction, I had no challenge so I tried to get a decent reduction, 92% was balanced for me.

the problem is that many players want to use destruction magic only without investing in another branches. Then kill everything with their fireball and be cool. This approach doesn't work. You need to get pro in another disciplnes too - like enchanting and heavy armor, for example, to be a succesful destruction mage. lol

back it up with conjuration and u'll be fine, at least I was (played on expert with that build)