Regardless of the single target damage output of destruction vs melee or ranged I have found a few things to be true.

From the perspective of a lvl 40 mage, 90(11) destruction, fire and electricity damage enhanced, my alteration being 79(11) and alchemy 77 (7), 1-hand and bow 44/48 (o each) and lastly conjuration at 51(0).

The bulk of my perks (as you can see) being in destruction, alteration and alchemy. I have a few also in sneak and a few other key skills as well.

I am defiantly a sneak mage. I will sometimes open combat with a few double damage shots with my glass bow of the blaze (37 burn), or a melee sneak attack, Mehrun's Dagger, the Lucky Dagger and Dawnbreaker all have their points for this.

I expect if I had perks in 1-handed or archery the single target damage would be higher. With a few more points into sneak I'll have the 15x damage with the Lucky Dagger, that should hurt most things, or at least get their attention.

I do not find myself hindered killing with just destruction. Yes sometimes I have to spam lightning bolt or firebolt, impact is nifty and I can do either of those all day without running out of mana. Starting with some heavy hitting spells like thunderbolt or incinerate speeds things up nicely.

Then there are the times I walk into a room full of druagr, spiders, or whatever else. Fireball, chain-lightning, or ice-storm (even without the damage boost) eats crowds nicely. I dont see weapon skills doing the same.

I dont feel weak even in comparison to my friend who is a total assassin , he sneak attacks most anything in one shot. I have far more versatility -- or so I believe.

When I do find a tough fight I take a pot of +80% destruction, +90% health/mana regin, and others as needed. I end up selling most of the potions I find as I both make better and never get around to using them. Most dungeons I dont use any pots at all, if things get bad I take the two above pots and get real mean.

Be nice if spells had as much range as bows though, even if it is just a few 'sniper' type spells.

No im agreeing with what u are saying i probably worded it wrong.

I just had a fight against an ancient dragon a few minutes ago. Walking up to its peak, it flew down and landed near me. It was looking at my summons trying to get up the slope to it, so I put thunderbolt in each hand (not dual cast) and zapped it from behind. It only took about 20 seconds to kill it I think? It only got the chance to breath on me once. I have both the augmented shock damage perks but not the disintegrate one yet. Also I drank a +30% potion.

The bummer was, I forgot to use lightning storm. I always forget stuff because I switch between characters a lot.

I'm level 39 pure destro mage, my destruction is at 92.

OP, Yours is not going to increase unless you use it often, in battle conditions.

I'm level 56, Destruction 100, all perks, and I only use destruction. Dual-casted thunderbolts and incinerates are enough to kill everything 90% of the time, and it barely takes any magicka away. For anything that won't die in 2 or 3 hits from one of those, I cast paralyze on them then cover them with Wall spells and watch them die slowly. I don't use destruction much anymore because at this point it makes things TOO easy.

I read the first page. The most simple way to put it is this:

A destruction mage should easily be doing more damage per second (DPS) than any class in the game. But they do the worst damage per second. A destruction mage doing less DPS than a tank class is simply broken.

Tell me, what are your numbers and methods for determining DPS?

Is there in fact a way, perhaps by a mod, to determine DPS?

I bet the OP is still using Novice perks which unsurprisingly deal no damage LOL.

Go on either Master / Expert and be level 70~81.

Anything below that and you should do OKAY as a Destruction Mage, as all of you are saying you're near 40 which no one complains about.

But when you're max in level and every NPC is max in level. You're [censored] as a Destruction Magic user because your damage does not increase after you max it at 100.

And i assume you're using enchantments then? Because considering how horrible the damage:manacost ratio is for expert level spells, and unless you have some godlike magicka boosts, dual-casted expert spells svck up mana like a sponge in water.

impact perk and added elemental damage are useful but the rest are wasted perks...reduce spell cost is a waste because you can enchant free destruction

I was struggling a bit to make destruction work until I got rid of my companion. Now I no longer have to worry about them getting in the way and getting killed and I can do as I please. This freed me up to use more spells to handle the different situations I get into.

I do use conjuration for crowd control where multiple high level enemies are concerned because there is very little method for controlling multiples using destruction. There isn't always room to manuever so having some type of control over enemies becomes very important. Chain lightning can be used when there are tight groups but that isn't always the case. I will agree that the stun is pretty much a necessity against more difficult enemies due to the fact that I am extremely weak against physical attacks. I can still be one shot by a lot of things. I put all my points into Magicka and I only wear cloth with no armor. My worst enemies are the high level archers who can easily take me out with one lucky shot even if I have magic armor up. Without the ability to stun or some other form of control I would be forced to rely on Conjuration in even more situations. However the stun does make Destruction overpowered against single enemies.

I am disappointed that certain spells, like runes, did not scale at all and have become worthless at high levels. They do very little damage to anything and aren't worth taking the time to put in place. None of the low level spells are useful at all either. I have equipment that reduces my magicka use for destruction to the point where incinerates only cost 12 magicka so it is no issue to double cast them constantly making killing any single enemy a piece of cake. If anything it's too easy in those situations.

I can't say Destruction doesn't have issues but I've found a way to make it work for me.

I am high level (50+) and a pure mage.

I use Wall spells for crowd control, Ice Storm for massive damage and stamina reduction/slow.

I have 60% reduction (and the people who are saying have no cost reduction perks b/c of items are grinding at best, cheating at worst .... anyone who remotely roleplays will need the reductions).

I am playing on Adept (normal) not Master.

It has been no problem at all. Some tough fights here and there (as there should be) but overall I rarely if ever use conjuration (I only have Frost Atro) and mostly use Alteration (no paralyze yet) and Destruction.

Ice spells don't control Nords in my experience. They just keep on coming like you hit them with air. Most of the humanoid types are Nords making frost spells useless for crowd control against them. Not to mention it's a pain in this game to do a lot of switching between spells. I wish they had a better interface that was more friendly to casters. But I've been wishing that since Morrowind and it hasn't happened yet.

This is no doubt true. I tend not to like followers as a rule. I found atronachs were more than enough. You just use the same element as the atronach, problem solved. That is a better solution to my mind than turning off friendly fire.

For runes at least I agree. Runes are fun, it would be nice to have another layer like you have with nukes. Or a perk that let you lay multiple runes, that would be even better.

The only one I really found I needed reductions for was Destruction, due just to spamming them on dragons. A circlet of peerless destruction is not too hard to find. I think my mage has maybe 60 or 75 reduction on Destruction with all items equipped. This is with a mage where all points went into Magicka.

EDIT: I totally misread the quote, sorry revjwh. What I meant was I only needed cost reduction items for Destruction. That mage has all the perks that reduce costs.

Wagon jump much?


Learn how to play and you'll do fine.

I don't use ice on nords. I use wall of flames - which I mentioned (wall spells of various types for crowd control). However I've found that Ice Storm works on just about everything else incredibly well (haven't tried undead since I stick with fire there as well).

J

=o they intend to fix balance issues!? WOO I don't care when but i'm happy knowing they will... I would like to know where you got that info though!

Alchemy = Fortify Destruction = More damage.

Apart from that, wtb more Destruction spells.... Or Spell Creator back.

O.o

I wouldn't say that....

My spellsword who enchanted himself a set of -100% destro glass armor simply OBLITERATES with destro....

Actually, it's kinda boring.... I'm putting him back into his mage robes, going back to relying on Alteration 100% for armor, and going to use magicka regen instead of freecasting along with fighting with a sword.

Impact... btw.... is how Destro simply destroys. I'll fight dragons and they'll never even get off 1 breath attack because I just zap em and stun em every time they try.

My Pure mage... level 22... just killed an elder dragon that way. No freecasting... I have the Apprentice perk and an additional 30% off or so in gear and high regen (2x regen stone and archmage robes).

"Quest and balance issues are usually data, and those will start rolling in a large way with the January updates."

http://www.bethblog.com/2011/12/01/skyrim-what-were-working-on/

what balance issues are you having anyway?

Destruction is weak until you get it to near the max levels. But even then, you had better have a lot of Magicka as your attributes points are used, so that leaves you weak in health. Adding armor/robes and jewelry that increase magicka and magicka regen along with other increasing health helps a lot. In a sense, that forces you to play a mage if that is your thing (which I consider a good thing) because you will be weaker with other weapons. Anyhoo, once you earn the ability to dual cast Incinerate (for example), you'll see how powerful that spell is. It will take down the heartiest of enemies in 3 or 4 blasts. The problem is, by the time you get to that level, you will have completed most of the game and cleared out many enemies. you won't have that issue with other playing styles as you can be pretty strong quickly with melee, archery and sneaking kills. Balancing needs to be fixed, or the ability to create spells that are powerful and don't gobble up a ton of magicka if you have your attributes needed for health.

If you have the PC version, there is a workaround to this with a mod that will allow you to battle endless enemies without doing much in the game for the main quest and side quest so you can rank up. The mod is called "War in Skyrim". What it does is add random encounters with necromancers, conjurers and daedra enemies fighting each other and they also attack you. Too bad this wasn't around when I first started playing it.

Are you talking about the perk 'Aspect of Terror'? That perk increases the maximum enemy level that a Fear spell can affect. Fear, not Fire.

yes... but it's glitched.

Actually, the Destro Elemental dmg perks are also glitched... they erroneously increase the same elements damage on your enchantments.... even worse, that bonus is also applied to a second enchantment.

So if you have +50% fire dmg from destro, and enchant a weapon with Fire dmg, not only does the fire enchant get 50% bonus damage from the perk that it shouldn't (stackable with the +25% perk in enchanting) BUT if you were to say, enchant Stamina drain on the weapon as a 2nd enchantment (1st enchant MUST be elemental enchant for the effect to bleed to second enchant) the stam drain enchant would ALSO get the +50% to it's strength (but not the +25% from the legitimate perk)

Dual casting is too costly per damage inflicted unless you take the enchanting perks, which breaks the game.

I prefer to paralyze with a single cast, then I can dish out damage in each hand individually providing me 2x damage for 2x magicka instead of 2.2x damage for 2.8x magicka.

That's one of the most broken things in all magic schools IMO. Make me spend a perk so that I can get WORSE magicka to spell ratio with dual casting? And it makes the whole "our game has dual casting, yay!" sentiment and turns it into "boy, I wish I could shoot fireballs while my claymore is equipped like I could in Oblivion."

Make dual casting 2.2x damage for 2.0x magicka. I'm spending a perk and dedicating both hands to make the spell more powerful. Why am I also being penalized so harshly in magicka usage?

As it stands now with the change in mechanics in this game, I feel like the interface now makes it too much of a pain in the ass to use a 2 handed weapon while being a spell caster. If you want to play a paladin style character that turns undead, casts shield spells and heals, you're so much better off going sword/board. I hate the "equip a spell in a hand" aspect, especially after going back to play oblivion. Keep a 2 handed sword equipped and instantly switchIng between 8 possible spells without ever unequipping your 2 handed sword or ever opening an inventory menu? Yes please! Totally superior.