Abacus, you really can't convince us the magic is fine. Most have played mages as well and can safely say, destruction is terribly implemented. You may be fine going to every extreme to make your character viable but the fact remains destruction does does meet the standards set by other skills in the game.

I have a 75% reduction which means I can cast Incinerate lots. But then I have no perks in Conjuration or illusion so a basic calm spell takes away quite a bit of my magica. Its just I run out of perk space so I use lots of reduction on one school. Also I use archery so much I don't need all the magica.

Some people complain magic is too easy. Some people complain magic is too hard. Your complaint appears to be that magic is too hard. I'm just saying that it's not as hard as it seems once you learn how to play.

Its not hard. The game is not hard. but destruction doesnt function very well. I use alteration can cast a restoration spell in 1 hand and swing a dagger in the right hand and beat the game. Its better than destruction. Ever school does wht it's supposed to except for destruction. Look at the numbers. Do you really think a 90 dmg spell is as powerful as a 300 armor rating spell? No? Well then why do they cost the same? Probably because of an oversight. These these happen, but in the context it's as annoying as all hell. People don't want to be punished for prefering using all spells over melee. But that's what this oversight is causing. The numbers are counter intuitive, and that is that.

It's interesting that you mention 300 armor rating you can get with Ebony spell and 3 perks in alteration. It's not as strong as you think. It gives you 36% damage reduction, perhaps similar protection as a moderately smithed elven armor set with 200 armor rating. It's free and it's enough most of the time, of course. In fact, if you are a mage, not having any physical protection is fine most of the time. But a strong archer, a Draugr Deathlord at Lost Valkygg with Ebony Bow for example, does 500 damage per shot. That means your health needs to be 340 or higher to avoid getting one shot. It is not common for a mage build to allocate 340 to health in early level. But Alteration also has Dragonhide spell, which provides best protection you can get in the game.

So I would say that yes, thunderbolt can indeed be a more useful spell to a mage than Ebonyflesh in some situations. Thunderbolt is an expensive spell, but it has its uses. As a mage levels up, his magicka pool gets bigger, and his equipment gets better. At some point, a mage using Chain Lightning and Lightning Bolt will notice that he has quite a bit of magicka left over at the end of battles. He can use up that extra magicka and become a more powerful mage by using more expensive, higher damage spells to deal more dps.

I find playing Destruction mage without doing 100% cost reduction is fun because I get to use whole range of spells to suit the situation. More powerful spells are more expensive, and weaker spells are cheaper. Some spells are great for casting on crowds. I would even say concentration spells are great and they become virtually free quite early on in the game. I have found good uses for all of my destruction spells, and they remain useful throughout the whole game. (Except the Wall spells. I find it hard to come up with a good way to use it. Perhaps I will figure it out later.) On the other hand, most archers have one best bow that they use at any point of the game, once a better bow is available, he switches over. Most one-handed warriors have one favorite shield and one favorite sword. For people using alteration, once Ebonyflesh is available, there is really no reason to use Ironflesh.

Dude, your seriously in denial. Your defending an aspect of gameplay mathematically proven to be inferior within the mechanics of the game. Yes this game is built on numbers. Thunderbolt is 2.4 times more powerful than the apprentice spell for over 6x the cost. Most enemies will have around 500-700 health, as opposed to the 50-150 you see around the beginning. Your offense is about 2.4 times more powerful at endgame than it was around level 10. Assuming 0 cost. Normally you would have just kinda collapsed in on yourself. and the points in the large post are largely irrelevant to the core issue here.

Heres a visual for those who don't play nice with numbers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UtkRrHOl0A&feature=related

I've got 100 destruction and i personally only use lightning storm and fireball purely because any spells in the range higher then fireball drain my magicka like crazy. Even lightning storm one of the 100 skill spells drains my magicka slower then incinerate or icy spear. But i think destruction magic is pretty powerful as it is, with less magicka i would feel pretty unstopable when i come to think of it.

The only think op about destruction is impact...and that's pretty dumb. All of the weapon skills can stagger though. Doesn't require focused fortify skill enchantments either.

Dragon Bane weapons

You are making 2 separate statements.

1. Damage of 90 is not good enough on master for end game.

My response: People's preferences for what is adequate damage at end game differ. In my opinion, the sweet spot in adept is about 50 dps in adept and 100 dps in master. So, for me, destruction magic feels powerful in adept, and adequate in master.

2. Magicka cost for Expert Level is too high. Your damage goes up by factor of 2.4 while the magicka cost goes up by 6.7.

My response: In my opinion, this is a fair trade. Let's consider an extreme case. Let's say your damage goes up by 2.4 and your magicka cost goes up by 2.4 also. What happens then? All your earlier spells suddenly becomes useless, because you are killing the same enemy 2.4 times faster, but it doesn't cost any more to do so. The game suddenly becomes much easier as soon as you obtain the new spell. So we want the cost to go up significantly more than 2.4. Maybe 4.8? Still too low in my opinion. Higher DPS is very very good thing to have. I'll spend everything can spare to get higher DPS. So what we want to happen is so that the old spell still remains useful while the new spell has its uses. The game designer settled on the ratio. You can kill the enemy 2.4 times faster, but to kill the same enemy with the new spell, you need to spend 2.7 times more magicka. It's the trade between magicka cost vs. dps. I think it's a good ratio.

In practice, in my games, I use expert level spells regularly mixed in with other spells. As I level up, I have more magicka reserve, and find better gear to buff up my magicka/regen and reduce my casting costs. As I level up, I can gradually better afford to use more of more powerful spells.

The tactics you use to make destruction viable are generally regarded as min-maxing. there is nothing wrong with doing that, but the skill is unusable without it, and sub par without. If you were playing a thief or warrior, the game would be a cakewalk with all the the options enchanting opens for them. As a mage, all your getting is marginally less svckitude. The only point yo have been successful in making is that you enjoy being a mage so much your willing to put up with some pretty horrible game mechanics. But most of us expect quite a bit more than the bare minimum, especially if your min-maxing(something many people won't even do). And you keep talking about trade-offs, as if skyrim was designed as some tightly balanced fantasy tactics simulator. It really isn't. If you ever played any of the other classes you would realize something-they just get more powerful as they gain levels. They get better weapons and gear and perks that greatly improve their function. Thats the way it's supposed to work. And if you try and describe the mage class as a sort of hard mode, for thinking people, I will laugh. This is, at its center, a very, very simple game. 90% percent of the combat boils down to attack/defense.

.... if you cant even kill an elk with a destruction spell, which can easily be done with the apprentice spells, you might have a bigger problem than the fact the the magic schools in skyrim need help.

The tactic I use to play destruction is quite the opposite of min-maxing. Typical min-maxer in skyrim would use smithing, enchanting and alchemy to create an OP character. I have done that and have grown bored with it. What I try to do is to create a natural style of play with no grinding. I have played as a sneak archer, sword-and-board heavy armor, and spellsword style before I started playing as a destruction mage. I kept hearing how destruction magic svcked on this board from people like you. So I decided to try it out myself. One of the common thing that people kept saying was that destruction magic is too easy and too boring if you use enchanting. So I tried a build without doing any enchanting.

I have come to conclude that destruction magic is quite strong without enchanting on adept. And it's quite adequate on master.

I started with assumption that the game designers for this game are not complete morons, and in 5 years of development they have done some careful thinking and testing about how people might play with magic. And in my experience, my assumption has been confirmed time and again. Magic in Skyrim is pretty well designed and fun to play with. The designers may not have thought of all possibilities, but I think they have done really good job. When people complain about magic in Skyrim, they are most often people who are used to a similar but different system used in Oblivion. Fortunately, I did not play Oblivion, and I have been spared the need to hate on Skyrim's magic system.

destruction really needs a revamp I'm getting bored of using incinerate over and over again while there's cool but useless aoe, rune, and cloak spells I can use but will have little effect

I don't hate the core changes they have made. They are not inherently bad. But without the ability to properly improve offensive spells while enemies consistently scale up, gameplay suffers. you really seam stuck in the "developers can do no wrong" train of thought, and that is a bad place to be. Things can always be improved and mistake are always being made. Oversights happen. I love the visual effects added to the series, but destruction is mathematically proven to be an inferior style of gameplay in most respects.
And honestly, you can't remove an amazing feature like spellmaking and not expect complaints. (Tazer spell, I miss you. -1000 fatigue spell/summon deadroth spell, I miss you even more.)

Yet another Oblivion nostalgia victim. Hating on Skyrim because it doesn't have spellmaking. You proved my point.

I just explained this. Do I miss spellmaking? of course! Do I need it do enjoy skyrim? Not if the gameplay components replacing it are respectable. And that is what was intended by the developers. But these mechanics, under player scrutiny don't hold up very well. Skyrim as a sequel, should have strived to improve upon it's predeccesor in all respects. In many ways it does, but not in every way. If you don't think sequels should expand and improve, you got something wrong.

It wasn't just Oblivion. Spellmaking has been in TES series, since TES I: Arena. Every TES game to date has had Spellmaking in it, except for Skyrim.

i agree. is skyrim lacking a little because it doesnt have spellmaking? sure. but only slightly, lacking a very small amount. but the variation of ways to cast fire damage (flamethrower, projectile, AoE, trap, cloak) makes up for it in my opinion. but that was what kept pulling me back into oblivion for what, 6 years? the fact that i could create something that actually has an impact on how i play. if skyrim had that i'd never need another xbox game ever again.

The main issue with destruction is scaling. All those nifty tactical spells mean nothing if they become useless as levels advance. Scaling has always been an issue with not just TES but Fallout as well. This was supposed to be corrected with Skyrim's leveling mechanics. But destruction wasn't planned out adequately. I think they thought the damage perks would be enough, but they aren't. Really, the simplest solution is simply to make a plus damage enchant. That's really what fortify destruction should have been to begin with. The perks for lowered casting cost would be more than enough in that scenario.

There are a number of other issues, such as AOE killing your thralls/followers. Something like that isn't bad in itself, you should have to be careful where you lob that fireball. But when the resource mechanics require you to use certain spells not because they are tactically advantageous, but because they are the only ones that are effective (due to piss poor scaling) then that is a bad deal. Scaling the damage of spells throughout the game, or an enchant to do so, would have avoided all of these issues to begin with. They went through all that trouble to come up with these various spell types (runes, spray, AOE at distance, AOE on character, etc.). Its such a waste that only a few are viable in end game.

This thread is silly, comparing the useless defense spells to the weak destruction spells? Dragon Hide is so useless it's a joke. 6 seconds to cast for 30 seconds of use? 30 seconds!? This means you have to cast out of combat (far enough away you can't be seen by archers) and then you have to run to the fight with the little time you have left. All alteration spells are borderline useless in Skyrim.

Why bother with rune spells? They're an awesome idea, but they're weaker then fireball, and cost more magika. continuous spells don't get stun casting, and are also weak. Magic doesn't scale with your level, so a warrior picks of a shiny new blade and kicks ass with it, wile you get a new spell and can't use it effectivly untill you get the reduction perks.

Why use any element but fire? Everything and its undead grandma resits frost or is weak to flame! Dwemer Sphears, spiders and centurians, trolls, Nords, Ice Wriaths, Sprigans, Frost Spiders, Drugr, Falmer, etc, etc... The list goes on for quite a bit, and I've barley scratched the fire loving surface.

We have traps, sniper spells, close range spells, area deniel spells, AOE spells, and yet they are all useless because the new ones completly replace the old. All you'll ever use is the AOE and single target, long range spells. So much many brilliant spells going to waste, such a shame. There really needs to be perks that make low level spells much stronger, and high level spells slightly stronger, this would make all spells have use.
Runes should deal massive damage for their cost and limitations, not be some strange higher cost, weaker, short rangeversion of the AOE spells.
Continuous spells should deal higher DPS then the long range spells, at the cost of their range and lack of stun.
Master des spells should all have half the casting time. What good is a weak fire AOE that you have to hug your target to pull off and stand there looking them in the face for weeks before attacking?
The AOE and long range spells are fine in their function as they are.

All melee and range attacks have criticals, something spells do not.
All melee and range attacks receive stealth bonus damage, spells do not.
So before you even begin to compair that sword that has 200 damage, remeber those 2 things.

I need sleep, my writing is getting slopy.

While I'm generally very pro-Destruction, this is the best point I've seen so far about it.

My Altmer arch-mage uses every school but Alteration, and he's very proficient in Destruction. Thing is, I almost always use adept and master spells with him; expert level spells aren't good enough for their price--and I use the archmage's robes and Nahkriin, which is a net +100 magicka and -35% cost for Destruction spells. I'm always better off using Fireball than incinerate, as I'm losing a meager 30 points of damage for much more reasonable casting and 15 feet of AOE.

I agree that 30 seconds is too short. But if you invest in stability and dual casting, Dragonhide is 98 seconds which is long enough for most battles. If you anticipate a longer battle, you can use a Fortify Alteration potion and get Dragonhide for 200 seconds. I think dragonhide is great. You just need to learn how to use it and invest properly to use it.

Alteration is not useless. It's a quite powerful tree. It has paralysis spell. That justifies investing in alteration all by itself. Plus it has 30% worth of magic resistance. Plus 30% atronach perk.

Runes are fantastic. They are fun to use, and great for hunting and trolling. And they are amazing for leveling up destruction quickly. It's much faster than using fireballs. I have cleared several dungeons with just runes. Once you get the Rune Master perks, you can use runes just like a weaker version of fireball, except with better magicka efficiency. A lot of people get frustrated because you can place just one rune at a time. You can continuously cast them next to your victim until they are dead. Very high rate of fire is achievable.

True. I use fire 95% of time. It's pretty nice. I use ice for fire element dragons, and shock against mages in some situations. I feel bad ass and very accomplished if I recognize a dunmer and use ice spikes to kill him.

I find whole range of spells quite useful throughout the game. I think they are great. I still use concentration spells in late game time to time. I learned how awesome rune spells are just a few days ago, when I forced myself to use it and learn how to use it effectively. Only spells I haven't figured out how to use are the wall spells.

Great thing about concentration spells is that they are free. You can use it when you run out of magicka in the middle of the battle while your magicka recharges.

Interesting you mention criticals and stealth bonuses.I think stealth style works quite well with destruction. Magicka regenerates super fast when you are out of battle or when you are hidden. So in stealth situation magicka cost does not matter. Incinerate is great for these situations.You can quickly dump lots of magicka to deal great deal of damage quickly and hopefully killing your target. If not, retreat and hide to quickly regenerate magicka.

With fireball, you you can damage and kill your opponent at extreme range. As long as you can see them, you can kill them. Effective range for fireball is longer than most archers can achieve. When it's far enough, the enemy never figures out where you are even in broad daylight.

Good morning.

I may add that i used flames.