I don't wan't to nuke, I don't want that 3000 damage on my spells. ...or even 1000.


Maybe 400-500 for normal top level spells, before perks/potions. I think that is fair for Master Level Destruction spells and appropriate for a high level mage facing multiple enemies in close quarters combat [which is most of the fighting] with little armor and less health than other what other combat types usually have.

Your clothing allow you to enchant to reduce magicka cost therefore increasing the amount of damage you deal with a spell by allowing you to cast it for longer.

You can enchant your dagger with frost and fire damage.

Or you can cast a frost spell with your left hand and a flame spell with your right hand at the same time.

Magicka works the way it does in "Skyrim" for a reason.

People are too quick to give up.

Azrael
The Nord with the Sword

Care to enlighten us with your understanding then, O Bright One? Since you seem to believe that you somehow matter more than the rest of us...

Destruction is not broken in any way shape or form. It's just totally rubbish when compared to any sword, mace, or bow.

Yep, it does work the way it does. And the way it works is exactly the same as archery, only 5 times weaker, with half the range and the accuracy. If you are fine with this, then ok, my condolences for your severe case of blindness...

Kill Quicker >> Cast Longer

That I have to continuously cast the same spell over and over again just means melee enemies [plural] are all allowed easy access to land many hits on my poorly armored, lower health reserve mage.

Mages should do more damage than melee fighters, not the other way around. Mages should not have less offense and less defense. The mage has no strengths in Skyrim.

The problem is there's no cap on weapon damage unlike armor and spells. The first solution is to limit how much damage a melee weapon can do.

But if you do that, I guarantee that weapon users will be complaining just as much as magic users are now.

As you stand there telling me I'm blind the other schools of magicka are all pulling faces at you behind your back.

When you spot them you may conclude that there's a little bit more to being a Mage than Destruction Magic.

Maybe you can see how the different schools compliment each other and may be used together?

But then again these could just be the sad ramblings of a blind man. The fruit of a vivid imagination that dared to suggest the developers knew what they were doing and actually know more about the game than both of us?

Azrael
The Nord with the Sword

I dont think many would disagree that Destro can be made powerful enough. The problem is the amount of effort needed to do this. I enchant a sword/bow and i am good to go. Not possible with Destro.

What i would want to, is at least having basic spells at a usable level,keeping the ultra stuff reserved to master mages. As for now, everything in Destro is pointless to me.

The problem with mages in skyrim is that they are simpler to play than warriors are. There's zero strategy required.

At high levels/dififculty you either 1) stunlock enemies to death with impact or 2) kite them (or cast and re-cast summons) and win a battle of attrition. Frankly it's more fun to use other tools.

The one interesting magic school (illusion) is good, but it synergizes better with non magic schools. For example a calm spell and dagger/backstab not only kills enemies faster but it's more satisfying to perform than any destruction based followup. Sure, you can use frenzy, summons, paralyzse etc but none of them are fun enough to want to base a playthrough on.

first off: i have a 71 sneak, a 48 archer, a 51 mage and a 41 sword and board. i do know what im talking about.

there is quite a lot of nuker bashing from some of you and i find it a bit irritating. No one is born knowledgeable, and no one is saying you want to be an overnight angel of death frying stuff with a gaze. but the culmination of hard work and exercise should be power. the other ways of dealing damage in skyrim get there. mages keep spamming adept level spells with impact. that is not nuking - there's even a guy who said yeah you can nuke in skyrim, he nukes a target with backstab! really bro? that's a nuker?

In my humble opinion, playing a mage should start from a place of humility, dodging, running, shielding, a struggle to stay alive (much like melee), and learning, getting better, and ending in a venerable mage, with vast knowledge and deadly magic. (much like melee get once they have maxed their skills and perk trees). Instead, you get a crap AoE that takes forever to cast and is suicide to try on master difficulty. to this day, as a master of destruction i still use the aoe fireball which is an adept level skill, but sadly is the best spell to use in most situations. you are a high level destruction capped mage with the best gear attainable! that reads ENDGAME. your tough choices should be whether to use fire, frost or lightning to oneshoot anything but bosses. What is the reason to play if you don't get to the payoff? the other play styles get there...

How will this help you in an dungeon? Enemies does not use the player rules for damage.

Weapon damage is pretty capped, base damage for an daeric warhammer is 31, this can be improved to 41 as an master smith.

Powergaming using max strength smithing gear 4*29% improvement and an 148% improvement potion this gives you 264 extra points who gives you and damage increase of 264*0,05=13 points, or 54 damage for the warhammer.
An daerick sword do 14 in base damage and the max improvement is still 10+13= 37 in damage.

Yes an master with all perks will do 1.5(from skills) *2(from perks) more damage or 3 times base damage.
for an master that is 42 damage for swords and 93 for warhammers.
with 100 in smithing it's 75 for sword and 123 for warhammer. Does not look so overpowered to me.
Even with powergamed crafting 111 with an sword. 162 with an warhamer.

I would hate to see a damage cap for melee. I'd rather see weaker fortify damage enchantments, fortify smithing enchantments, and fortify smithing potions, to keep melee/archery damage a bit more reasonable. I'd also like to see the armor side of things reworked so that you could only reach the armor cap via maxed out armor perks and skills plus fully smithed daedric armor (though I realize a lot of players like being able to wear whatever armor they want late in the game, so I don't expect that change to be made in an official patch.)

The damage numbers I posted earlier also show damage from archery without smithing or enchanting, and its pathetic. Here they are http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii167/bl3count/rangedcrafting.jpg, along with the http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii167/bl3count/meleecrafting.jpg (NC means "no crafting", while "syn" means synergy, or full crafting synergy.) Archery and melee are not viable without them. Those skills have to be taken into account when looking at damage though, since there's nothing stopping a player from using them - the skills are easy to train and there's usually no shortage of perk points.

I wouldn't mind seeing more support skills for magic though (conjuration and illusion and whatnot don't count since melee and archery can use them too.) Enchanting could easily have fortify destruction damage, but another thing that would be cool would be a spellcrafting skill that would be anologous to smithing. Of course, if you made those two skills as powerful as they are for melee and archery, destruction would become just as grossly overpowered as they are, so a more comprehensive rebalance would be needed.

How much power could they possibly need?

Tell me how any random school of magic compliments destruction any different than it compliments archery and melee, then yeah, I may agree with you... but I think you'll find that they're equally useful to both weapon users and destro mages, and thus you may see through your blindness... tell me, how is a destro user using illusion any better off than a sword user using illusion? Or a destro user using restoration than a bow user using the same? Go, I'm eager to hear it...

What is the difference between conjuring 2 dremora and shooting fire and conjuring 2 dremora and shooting arrows? Well, let me tell yoU - there is one and only one difference: In the second case, you kill things at least 3 times as fast...
What is the difference between a dual weilder droping fear among a croud and a destro mage doing the same? The latter will take 5+ times as much to clear all enemies...

I think you can see how it goes...

This is how I feel as well, but I play on Adept difficulty.

I don't really see how a warrior can use any sort of powerful conjuration skills without gimping health and stamina in the process. The magicka cost is just too d&*% high. Either they have to use armour with enchantments that decrease the cost, or they have to have a magicka pool. The enchantments are taking away from those that aid warrior skills, and a magicka pool comes at the cost of health and stamina. Of course these can be offset by potions, but so can anything. This may not apply so much for archers, for whom stamina isn't such a big deal, but it definitely applies to warriors. Archery + conjuration seems to be an OP combo, but i don't think warriors (sans crafting powergaming) have it too easy.

I was facing off against a mage in a daedra's shine who would kill my sword+board warrior in 1 shot. There was basically no way to get in close against the mage without dying. Sure, if I also perked destro, or archery I would have a chance, but isn't that the limitation of the warrior? Some of these problems can be ameliorated with high resistance gear lategame, but that just means that enchanting is almost NECESSARY for the warrior to stand a chance against such enemies. FYI my redguard placed a lot of emphasis on defensive trees (heavy armour, block), perking both substantially.

That being said, I don't like how destro is designed myself. I don't like the idea of long waiting times to cast the powerful spells. It may look cool, but in terms of gameplay it isn't that fun. Secondly, I don't like how impact is basically the be-all-end-all perk in the tree, since it diminishes the gameplay. Percentage chances are fine, but 100% is excessive. Lastly, I don't understand why you can't enchant increased destro damage. It seems to be a silly choice. having that option would allow people to pick between the high damage output, high cost mage vs the low damage, high output mage. Enchanting gear with increased damage would remove your ability to launch zero cost spells.

So while I agree with those complaining about destruction, I don't do so because I think it is too weak (I would sooner say that the lategame weapon/archery damage is exessive). Instead, I would argue that destro just isn't that fun to play (its most efficient use is mindless and boring). To combat this, I would either play as a battlemage or a conjuration mage, so you don't have to see the worst aspects of the school.

It isnt.. you just have to have the perks to enhance the damage in whatever element you choose to use to make it work well. By lvl 60 in destruction you can have fire work quite well using fireball.. clears a whole room in 1 or 2 throws. Gotta have stagger too.. the first fireball drops everyone to their knees.. the second kills them.. if any survive, the final fire perk makes them run in terror while they are on fire buring away.

Later on, fire storm is the nuke of the game.

With weapons you can increase your damage with the following:
Choosing Weapons Made of Stronger Materiels (Ebony, Daedric, etc..)
Raising Weapon Skill
Choosing Weapon Perks
Smithing
Enchanting Damage
Enchanting Fortify Weaponry Skill
Potions
Stamina Based Power Attacks

With Destruction Magic you can increase your damage with the following:
Choosing More Powerful Spells
Choosing Destruction Perks
Potions

Clearly there are way more options for increasing damage with weapons than with destruction magic. Also you can continue to do considerable damage with weapons after your stamina runs out. With destruction magic you are screwed when your magika runs out. It may be fun to reoleplay with destruction magic but it is completely out classed by weapons. Ironically, the best way to deliver magical damage is through a weapon. With the right selections you can dual enchant magical damage perks on weapons that do +81 damage for each enchant. That's on top of all of the weapon damage that is done.

Oh my, the numbers, well I guess I got told. I guess all the theorycraft beats my actual play experience, huh?

Let's say you are correct, and destruction deals 50/75% of the dps of other damage skills. Now, what happens once you realize that with destruction spells you can hit more than one enemy at a time? Also, destruction spells don't need direct hits: fireballs and chain lightnings can hit things which are around corners, that other skills can't even try to attack.

Destruction deals weaker single-target damage: that's true. Put two enemies near each other and it breaks even, put three or more enemies near each other and it pulls way ahead. In actual gameplay, enemies are near each other all the time, and that's not even considering the ease of use (hits enemies around corners, no arc in the trajectory, huge range, etc.) It's also not considering the increased damage common mobs take from different damage types, so a well-perked and well-spelled destruction mage will be doing even more damage to enemies, assuming he knows what's what.

Destruction isn't broken, it just isn't as fun as it could be. Lack of Spell making wouldn't have been so bad if Beth had given us more spells. It's ultimately boring. Also, it doesn't scale, so it does become somewhat weak at higher levels, especially when compared to the other combat skills.

Those of us who accept that destruction isn't underpowered aren't making the comparisons, it's the people who are claiming that it's Up who are making those.


If you choose not to enchant items to boost your regen rate, if you choose to limit yourself to only destruction magic, rather than using illusion or conjuration, you are entitled to do so, but to then claim that you are disadvantaged because destruction on it's own is underpowered while comparing it to buffed up melee ability just doesn't hold water. You are comparing apples to oranges.

I will accept that there is a valid point that destruction magic doesn't get an awful lot of actual damage potential increases...I think there are two per type, plus there is the increased effect vs undead in the restoration skill. However, even with fireball those two increases boost it up to 60 hp, which is pretty comparable to a melee weapon at around the same level, and you have the increased advantage of dual casting, which can bump that 60 hp up to 120+, which takes an awful lot of time and levelling to achieve with any melee weapon, and requires high perks and skills in at least two skills, rather than one.

Now, if we are going to compare apples to oranges, I think that the amount of effort to actually boost melee damage up to the level of destruction damage needs to be factored in, because it's really looking like it's the melee folks who are being disadvantaged due to the length of time it takes them to get comparable damage potential.

It's broken because the damage doesn't scale.

At high levels it forces you to rely on magicka cost reducing enchantments and stun lock, and casting the same spell over and over and over and over. This is not particularly difficult but it is UNBELIEVABLY BORING.


Here's the problem with your argument: You can use illusion and conjuration with a sword or a bow also.

I see what's wrong here. The internet has spoiled the game for you. You've read that your maximum damage potential with a melee weapon appears to be greater than your percieved maximum damage potential with a spell and like the "Oblivion" player second guessing the concept of Levelled Loot you don't seek the item you want until you're sure that you'll be picking it up at it's maximum level value... but in the process... only aquiring the item when it's no longer of any real benefit to you.

How is Destruction better than weapons?

Well the Warrior, Thief and Archer carrry weapons.

The Pure Mage IS the weapon.

Stripped of your armour, sword, mace, hammer or bow you're dead.

Amazing what you can learn from a 'blind man'.

Also those people complaining 'damage doesn't scale'... it does. Just not the way you were expecting it to.

That's how a higher level Mage drops a Frost Troll with the same Flame Spell available to all of us at the beginning of the game.

(If it needs spelling out the larger magicka pool allows for greater damage).

Azrael The Nord witht he Sword

(Edited for strange text wrap effect that turned this into a wall of text)