Thunderbolt (343 magicka) has a slightly higher base cost than ebony flesh(341 magicka). Compare this to
stoneflesh(194 magicka) and lighting bolt(51 magicka)

Ebony flesh is basically a portable suit of magical armor and should cost a fair amount(and does). But thunderbolt is a pretty lackluster standard attack spell and shares this hefty cost. Not a minor flaw. Not just nitpicking the game.
Can we please all agree that complaining about this is pretty justifiable? Spell cost and the magnitude of the effects could seriously use some revision. An entire core gameplay style is affected by severe balance issues. More than any other change or addition to Skyrim I would really like some awareness to perhaps convince the developers this kind of thing is worth fixing with an update.

Honorable Mention-Conjuration absorb bug caused by the astronach perk and stone. Pretty irritating, but not as pervasive as the deficiency in desruction.

I agree but i also want the atronach bug fixed too as its rather annoying trying to conjure something in a door way so it can get hit and give me time to gather my energy back only for it to fail and i get killed -.-

both problems need to be fixed. Would like to see magic get some much needed attention.

Playing as a pure mage in Skyrim is dull! I'm level 21 mage now, and i even have trouble killing Elk's with a destruction spell!

As with my level 30 warrior on PS3 i kill everything quite easily in my path! Even Giants!

I agree I think hearthfire will give attention because dawnguard is giving aftention to UP werewolves and dragon bone weapons

Agreed, the cost of magicka has to be reevaluated and and more destruction spells is greatly need. In Response to Bero's Speech, There are curses in the School, it would be better for stealth mages such as casting a curse that deplete 1 HP/sec for 45 seconds (90 seconds dual casting). This could change up the Mage play-style greatly. I hope there are more suggestions or whatevers in this thread.

I don't think an expansion dlc will address this, if anything what i'm asking for(a few data changes) would be in the form of a free update. New spells are a possibility in paid dlc though.

I think we all underestimate how much magic revision will be in dawn guard. At he very least Todd Howard mentioned in his e3 interview that vampires are more magic based.

I agree. And the idea of having to pay more money just to fix the core gameplay is ridiculous. I too had to remake my Mage because of the Atronach perk screwing me over. My new Mage is level 73 and I find I'm still using lower level destruction spells because the higher ones aren't scaled very well. It would be nice if the damage by spells increased by your level, or something.

There is a shout for that. Marked for Death. I have not found 1 HP/sec to be that impressive, but it also increases the victim's vulnerability to physical attacks. It is one of the most powerful shouts for warriors and archers, works best against high HP opponents like dragons and draugr deathlords.

In Skyrim, you are given a whole bunch of extremely powerful spells that does not cost magicka. It's pretty awesome.

Maybe I am just missing something but I dont see much of an issue, I wouldnt mind it being tweaked but I use a fire based spellsword even at level 35 my fireball does more than enough damage to wreck multiple enemies. Half the time I dont even need to bother swinging my sword. It can be a bit expensive to cast relatively speaking but I havent really found it to be to much of an issue. Maybe because I am not a full blooded mage? I dont really know.

Fireball is great. Good magicka cost per damage. Incinerate is more expensive, but has more than double the damage of firebolt. You can't spam it like you can with fireball or firebolt, but it still has its uses. It's good for sniping situation, when you are more concerned about highest dps and not about cost. To use it effectively, you generally have to have higher magicka and higher cost reduction, i.e. be a better mage.

I'm okay with how the cost is balanced for expert level destruction magic. Very expensive, but powerful. 140% increase in DPS, but 180% increase in magicka cost per damage.

fireball damage with perks -60 base cost-133
incinerate/perks-90 base cost-298

you could dual cast fireball for about the same cost as casting incinerate...and it has aoe
More powerful spells are supposed to replace %damage perks...but it obviously doesn't work that way. Destruction is weak(even at the beginning of the game) and if it has to be argued if stronger spells are worth the investment...well something is obviously very wrong with the system. The spells all around need to be less magicka intensive for it to be a good skill.

Enemies often have greatly inflated health and if 90 damage for about 100 magicka sounds good to you...well you don't know the game very well.

This is destruction's major flaw is it's damage to magika cost ratio, it's out of wack and spells cost wayyyy to much to cast compare to little damage they do.

Not only this but I find the whole magic system boring cause Beth never added a spell creation system, which ruined it for me completely.

If they lower the magika cost of destruction spells, then add a spell creation system I would be happy and actually play a pure mage.

Useing the same couple spells over and over again gets boring extremly quickly, I loved the spray spells, but once you reach a certain level they are worthless to use. Terrible design if you ask me

enchant armor/jewlery to tone down costs? did anyone think of that? and i think the magic system is bad ass. i have had a few times where i had to switch to frostbite because my bow couldn't deal damage fast enough. you cannot spam melee perks/enchantments and not expect magic to be more powerful. my main toon is a melee guy, but my new mage is doing just as well and handling enemies just fine.

If you want a game with an insane and awesome magic system try Two Worlds 2. The game itself isn't all the great, but the magic system makes up for it I think.

Dman what level are you? Later on you will see destruction isn't all that great, because there is only a couple ways to increase destruction damage, and once you reach that as you level your spells will do less and less damage.

I used to use the Atronach stone but switched to the Lord stone... Will never go back to it either, feels less cheaty and gives me a reason to use Wards.

As I said already, I like Fireball a lot, and I use it a lot. But I also use incinerate quite a bit in my battles. At level 41, my current mage character has 390 magicka, and Incinerate costs 31 magicka and fireball costs 15 magicka and firebolt costs 4 magicka. It means I can cast incinerate 12 times when I'm walking around. That's 1080 worth of damage, which is usually enough to kill a regular run-of-the-mill enemy. If I see an enemy by itself, usually I will use dual cast incinerate to kill it before it knows where I am. If I'm facing 3 or 4 enemies at same time I will use fireball or fire runes. Sometimes, I will switch back and forth between firebolt and incinerate. Using firebolt to stagger and incinerate to damage. It depends on the size of the battle. If I'm in an open battle with many enemies and get worried about running out of magicka, I will switch to using firebolt. But there are many situations where you are 1 on 1 against medium strength enemies, and incinerate works well. What I'm doing is balancing damage output against cost of the damage. Faster I can damage someone, more magicka it costs. Usually I want to kill my enemy as quickly as possible, but not run out of magicka before the battle is over.

Another situation when I use incinerate is for boss fights. I know the opponent is going to be strong, so I take out my best spell, even though it's expensive. I also have potions I brought to help in those fights.

Thing is...you would probably need less of those potions if you just enchanted an iron sword. All those fortify destruction enchants your using to make your character less terrible? Your missing out on extra survivability and utuity that comes with enchanting combined with any other build. 3 items each with -75 destruction cost should be roughly on par with 3 enchantments doing 120% two handed dmg. Melee is a whole other league...and doesn't require crafting to be viable in the first place. Enchanting enchances things. And their are better things to improve than destruction.

And it still looks like you are having more trouble than a high level character should. At level 40+ a competent/combat focused character using crafting should be well past potion dependency

I don't like using wards because they should have been able to be used as shields for CQC as well as magical combat so i don't use them.

90 damage spell is probably somewhat equivalent to 200 damage sword, or 400 damage bow. The dps for two handed casting is 180, and dual casting is 198.

My current character is a Destruction Mage with Alteration and Alchemy on Master difficulty setting. No enchanting or smithing.

At level 41, my Mage has 64% damage reduction and 390 magicka. And Incinerate costs 31 magicka per shot. Normally I can cast it 12 times before I run out. 1080 damage.
In special situations, I can boost up my stats with food and potions.
Elsweyr Fondue +100 magicka
Fortify Magicka +90 magicka
Fortify Destruction +120% damage.
Regenerate Magicka +120%
+Lots of restore magicka potions

So when I'm fighting a tough enemy, My stat is 580 magicka, and my spell is doing 200 damage single cast for over 400 dps dual handed cast. And I can cast it 18 times. So, in 9 seconds, I can deliver over 3600 points of damage. Which is enough to kill everything except dragon priests and high level dragons. In that case I use one or two more restore magicka potions to deliver over 10,000 damage within 30 seconds.

I've been on this since release. So have a few other members and now it is picking up force after Bethesda fans stopped trying to prove to us we were wrong. I hear Heartfire may be a magic revamp.

Destruction is also perfectly viable without using crafting. Pure destruction is actually quite strong build. I use very few potions in my play.

This is one of sillier things you have said. Telling an alchemist not to use potions is like telling an archer not to use arrows. It's not dependency, it's utilization. As I said, pure Destruction is fine. Destruction + Alchemy is fine. Destruction + Enchanting is fine. Destruction is pretty good, as long as you invest in it.

My mage is 26, she doesn't use destro thogh. She uses illusion, alteration, and conjuration.