Well, to each his own. Personally I'm working both one-handed and archery on my warrior and I'm planning to eventually add illusion to the mix, if I ever get to level 60+. Can't hurt to have that sort of crowd control when high level mods start coming out and if you think illusion is mean when you're throwing fireballs around then you don't want to know what pacify + smithed sword is.

Edit: But to answer your question, the reason why you'd have more than one "damage dealer" is for added flexibility. If I see a mage that I can't get close to, I use my bow and fight him on relatively equal terms. If I see a crowd then I sneak and whittle them down a bit first. It's not so necessary now but it's saved my ass plenty earlier in the game.

And my plan with illusion is to let crowds whittle themselves down a bit first all by themself, in case I ever feel out of my league. Like if 10 deathlords start playing shoutball with me, I might want a different approach. Similarly, 10 or so briarhearts would be a bit much if they're all at once.

That's not true. Destruction has many other uses than simple damage; fire damage deals additional damage over time, shock damage drains mana, and frost damage drains fatigue. Furthermore, the Impact perk is very effective for crowd control. I think you may be confusing TES with WoW.

Anyway, anyone complaining about mage-skills, don't know how to use them properly. Simple as that... No offense meant, of course...

Using an good weapon and sneak attack you could single hit to kill the strongest standard enemy in Daggerfall (Daedra lord) and Morrowind (Golden Saint)
yes it required high weapon skill but not 100, sneak good enough to do the sneak attack.
Not possible in Oblivion because the boss health growth at high level and lower weapon damage.

Possible in Skyrim, at high skill the right perks with an well improved weapon. See an pattern.

I get, why you should be able to sneak attack kill in one hit... You take them by surprise and they have no chance of defending... And you get to see a cool finishing-move to boot. I'm talking about people expecting to equip a standard iron axe (or daedric axe) and chop of the heads of several enemies in one great swing. Or blowing up legions of draugr overlords with a single spell. Or taking down countless enemies with a arrow to the face, before they even reach you. That kind of "combat" belongs in Diablo, Sacred, or other hack-n-slah games.

I don't mind having to exercise my brain a bit when fighting a semi-boss, or a crowd of regular foes.

I've never played WoW in my life, and I'm not planning to either. And the complaint isn't "mage skills", it's specifically about the damage output from Destro, which is a bit slow and a bit cumbersome to maintain. And you're right that there are other uses than direct damage, but you'll have to admit that the main use of Destro is just that, damage. Damage with side effects, sure. But it's damage all the same.

Not in my book, pal. The main point of Destruction is special effects! Burn your foes, electricute them, freeze them solid. That's what its all about. I find it particular enjoyable to set my foes ablaze, and watch them burn.

My mage dual-wields (dual-hands?) chain lightning, with the stagger perk on expert.

If you want to one- or two-shoot someone at that level, destruction is not it.

If you start at long range - and that spell is pretty close to the distance a bow shoots - and you kill the enemy with 4-7 shots (before it gets even close to you), then you're fine - probably a few more shots for a dragon.

The fights take a little planning, and don't run up close to the enemy, but if I ran around 1-2 shot everything, I wouldn't be playing it. That would be very boring.

Now, having said that, I do need to look for some spells that do more damage because I notice that it's starting to take longer and longer each fight, and I want to go up to the master level.

That's all still damage, whether it's damage to HP, mana or stamina. Damage is damage.

Non-smith and enchanted yes but you conviently forgot to add in skill perks and natural scaling. Nice try though!

No, no he did not. It's actually 42 damage if you're intent on splitting hairs. 42 damage on a Daedric Sword with a skill of 100 in One-handed and 5 ranks in Armsman. That is without any smithing or enchantments to increase said damage, of course.

There has been plenty of evidence to show that destruction is broken in comparison to other attack skills. You just decide not to acknowledge them. The fact that you NEED enchanting in order to cast more than 3 high end spells, no combat regen and no scaling while relying on impact seems quite broken to me. I don't know what your definition is?...

It's still not an accurate representation, thoough. It fails to take into consideration the increase in dps from crits (it is a sword we're talking about, after all) and from power attacks. No warrior in their right might is just going to swing normally.

Why are you quoting me? Everything I stated was a fact. I did not dive onto whether or not it was an accurate representation, merely stated the facts regarding the damage numbers of a Daedric Sword with 100 skill in One-handed and 5 ranks in Armsman.

While I choose not to dive further than mere numbers, I must say that you honestly can't be serious when speaking about criticals, which only take into account half the damage of a weapon's base damage for normal critical hits and equal base damage with the Critical Charge perk. Critical hits are even more useless than the Destruction skill. I'd say that they're even more useless than the Destruction tier perks (Novice, Apprentice, Adept, Expert, Master).

People who want to play on Master to tell everyone else that they "challenged themselves" find using Destruction at the higher levels to be challenging. Thus, they say that it's broken.

I think the complaint is that its more challenging than archery or melee because of the synergies that other noncombat skills have with melee and archery. I haven't had any problems but I don't play my destruction mage up to level 50 either.

You must be projecting if you're to come to this particular conclusion.


I'd say that there are numerous complaints about Destruction. The easiest to pick out and by far the most visible (In my opinion) are the bad perk composition of the Destruction skill tree and the maximum potential of Destruction being far less than other methods, such as One-handed. Oh yeah, it's also far weaker than it's ever been.

You'd have to be pretty blind to deny that Destruction cannot reach the potential of One-handed or Two-handed or Dual-wielding or Archery. I'd say the perks are also quite questionable considering that you can reduce magicka usage by 100% and that method of reduction doesn't stack additively with the perks (Meaning 50% magicka reduction from a perk and 50% magicka reduction from enchantments won't equal 100% total reduction).

In terms of maximum potential, you're probably going to want to reduce magicka consumption to 0% and perks don't really help towards that goal, making them quite questionable in terms of maximum potential. They also don't really work together as opposed to something like the Arsman 5 ranks (Meaning that if you have both Expert and Master Destruction perks, the Master Destruction perk won't matter if you cast anything but a Master spell, i.e. the perks don't work together).

Personally, I'd say that there's a lot of things to suggest that Destruction wasn't well thought out. It is what it is though. O.o ... o.O ... o.o

Then that is your outlook on destruction. The name itself suggest - well, destruction! You can be "destructive" AND have the added bonus of seeing those effects!

People keep complaining about *having* to enchant with Destruction - but the game throws a ton of Casting Reduction gear at you. Just follow the Mage Guild Questline. Or go exploring. You do *not* have to enchant to use Destruction. You can even find/buy potions - so no need for Alchemy. Both makes life easier, but not critical.

However, a warrior virtually *has* to smith. You can not find any improved weapons in the game. Only the player can do it. So none of this BS that the Destruction Mage has to rely on other skills. A warrior has to at least smith or be left with running around with a sword that does 40 points of dmg. IF he can even *find* a Daedric Sword. While a destructo mage could run and cast dual firebolts all day long just(even with no cast reduction gear) - for way more damage - 75 pts.

Now if you want to say that fully pimped out destruction with max Alchemy & Enchanting is weaker then melee once you use Smith/Alchemy/Enchant loops - then sure. But the answer is to gimp the whole Smith/Alchemy/Enchant loop and not make destuction godlike.

Your answers are not well thought out.

How is that?

Just set the Max Fortify Skill to 50%. Right now Enchanting is silly, seriously with max Fortify One Hand you get 260% bonus. Maxing the One Arm Skill Tree gives a 140% bonus and maxing it and taking all the perks gives a 240% bonus. Something is wrong here. Cap all of the Fortify Skill Enchantments/Potions at 50%. So no more super crafting gear + super crafting potions = mega godlike enchantments. No more limitless casting. Much better balance.

Bs. There is NO way that you are going to be spamming spells WITHOUT enchanting for reduction - or using a mod for combat regen. Especially if you plan on dual casting. Alchemy is too tedious for most and too many potions will start to weigh you down.

How is that? It's quite simple, really. Well, in the particular post that I quoted you ignored Destruction completely in your "answer" and stated that X, Y, and Z should be nerfed. Destruction stays the same with relativity being changed. Not really much of a solution.

Your following post mostly consists of nerf dribble with numbers that were thought up on the spot and numbers that hold no real value in a thorough and well thought out anolysis.

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