Bingo!

After 40 all pure builds break down and need to hybrid somewhere I agree completely.

Mine is. Level 55, master difficulty, no problems. I die far more with my assassin and my warrior than my mage.

See, I understand what you're saying, but there's something I still don't get:

Do you think my warrior is one-shotting every enemy he sees? No, he isn't. He's taking plenty of hits. He's blocking them with his shield, or absorbing them with his armor. Sure, I one shot low level enemies, but higher level and bosses? I give and take hits. I just have the ability to do that.

Archers/assasins are using stealth to get that bonus to their first hit - and to the next, as an archer, if the enemy still hasnt found them.

I don't think that using illusion/conjuration/alteration is such a bad thing. It's using complementary skills. You use them to deflect attention while dealing damage with your destruction spells.

I fully get that people think destruction spells don't deliver enough damage per use when facing higher level enemies. But nothing should be one-shotting EVERY enemy, even destruction spells. If it takes 2 or 3 hits to kill an enemy, why is that such a huge deal?

Destruction isn't weak (except against some of the post-50 NPC enemies that still scale, bandit chiefs of the apocalypse or whatnot), its more that the other weapons got massively powered up, especially if you opt for both smithing and enchanting. I think right about now my level 24 warriors using a smithed Skyforge axe that does 140 damage a hit with my 4-set of two-handed boosters. Comparatively, a semi-limited supply of 50-90 damage attacks is nothing.

I have a 40 Breton with 90 Destruction.

I still haven't got the adept perk for destruction so I'm still using fireballs since they still do some decent damage and have a big impact range.

Incineration is ok, but fireballs are where its at.

Don't know why they bothered having frost, a quarter of the creartures in the game are resitance to it(including Nords) since its skyrim and everything which makes it lore effective but screws over frost.

Also take the stagger perk for destruction and well. Move back, spell, enemy flinces, move back , throw spell, repeat.

Using only destruction magic with positive results does not prove that destruction isn't underpowered. Your whole argument is counter-intuitive to the discussion of whether or not Destruction is 'fine.'

If destruction is the only combat skill you're advancing, your level isn't increasing as quickly, thus the level of opposition isn't increasing as quickly. So you're making rapid advancement toward Adept and Expert spells, but the opposition is not growing in power to the point where those spells are no longer as potent. Using only Destruction is actually helping you. It's also going to keep your Level capped if you don't introduce other skills.

But you're riding an extremely narrow train -- use only Destruction, select only magicka on level-up, and spam the 'Reduce Cast Cost' enchantments. Not only does this mean you'll have to try really hard not to get hit, it also means you're approaching the game in a way that many players do not want to approach it.

A lot of players are going to pick one or more other combat skills to supplement Destruction, whether a weapon skill, an armor skill, stealth, or another school of magic. As those skills advance, Level (of both player and opposition) increases more quickly. Destruction spells quickly fall behind. Conjuration and Illusion seem superior. Grabbing a bow that's been improved with Smithing seems superior, with no magicka cost to boot. The damage output of backstabs seems vastly superior, without being terribly difficult to achieve (especially when using the aforementioned bow). The point of using Destruction becomes lost more and more as Level increases.

So if you're a "pure destruction mage", how come you reach (much) higher levels than 10 in the first place? I'd have my ass handed to me if I played a "pure sword fighter", as I need other skills to rely on as well. If I absolutely needed to play this level of pureness, I'd simply lower the difficulty and enjoy the game. You seem to play the game in a fashion that is not intended by the devs, then complain about the difficulty at upped difficulties when you level up way beyond that of a "pure build" can achieve? People that play "pure mage builds" rather than "pure destruction builds" seem to have no difficulties at all, even on master. If destruction was upped the way many suggests, the only way to play a "pure mage build" and have a challenging game is by start nerfing the play style. I thought that was something we wanted to avoid. Am I missing something here?

The destruction damage seems fine to me. It's the other arch types that need to be brought down to avoid forced nerfed playstyle and instead play the game as it appears intended to.

Edit: What if the "three stones" you get early in the game also provided damage boosts for that class? Destruction mages would pretty much be limited to this type of class throughout the whole game, and fighter builds could use it early on to make the game slightly easier (although I'd like a general increase in difficulty overall). These kinds of "pure builds" would benefit from these stones more than "combo builds".

You're missing the point.

SUre you also have to use alteration and restoration...these make the mage playable. But the problem with destruction....the skill your meanto kill with, you end up having ot cast 30 spells to kill something at high levels....when any other class would have them down in a number of arrow or weapon swing.....destruction doesnt scale, but enemies health does....hence the problem.

All we need is destruction spells to scale up with our skill, the same way all the other weapon skills do.....

No offense, but if that's true. Then you're doing something wrong with your assassin and warrior builds, and I'm doing something wrong with my mage.

I haven't died once yet with my Khajiit assassin, lvl38 on expert. To illistrate this point my archery is 68, sneak 86, lockpick 74, pickpocket 76. Yet my light armor is still 48, because I hate paying for training and I very rarely take damage. With just over 500 kills (human, undead and animals etc) and 426 sneak attacks. You can see I rarely am in any danger at all.

As for the warrior dying more often......how? From what I could tell a good Sword and board build is practically invincible regardless of difficulty.

For my mage (robes only) I gave up by level 25, just felt like I was getting weaker rather than stronger, it's pretty sad when it takes 5 fireballs to drop a lousy bandit. The whole time I'm running for dear life screaming "die damn you die" halfway across The Reach!

Just seems weak IMO considering my assassin would've dropped him with one well placed arrow from 100 yards away.

So I have been wondering about the destruction magic not scaling with level. Was that just a major oversight? Or is that really how it's intended to be?

It's like I said in my first post. You either think melee and range is overpowered or destruction is underpowered. You can't possibly think both do equal damage. Does anyone?

4 enchants, all smithing, damage perks and 100 skill

Daedric Mace 203 Sword 187 War Axe 195 --Dagger 63, one handed enchant doesn't work with it--
Bow 226
Destruction 90 (Unless you count super slow master spells)

Other classes have sneak attacks, poisons, enchants on the weapon and critical shots. Heck even the perks for the other weapons can stagger and paralyze.

If you say that's with abusing enchanting then I say no it's not. I didn't do any loopholes, I just worked the skills the way they are. Also, in my opinion, getting super magicka pools or 0 cost spells is also abusing enchanting.

I don't think anyone says it is difficult to play a destruction mage, it is just very BORING.

You have to have another skill like enchanting or conjuration for it to be viable and it should be viable on its own.
Impact in this game is cheap, it should be percentile based where you have a ten to fifteen percent chance to stagger.

We should just have back spell creation to fix this lackluster system.

pretty much this destruction doesn't have these options so you can't really change DMG therefore since destruction does not have these options it should deal more damage than other builds (other than sneak) due to it's limitations

I also do use enchanting to enchant my gear. Sorry for not telling you all that earlier.

And sneak....

Im not spammnig destruction magicka cost the only enchantment I use is to boost my magicka. I dont use those % enchants.

I just wanted to keep using that cool default flame spell. I don't care for fire ball *sigh* I miss spellcrafting.,

That is my favorite spell....I kinda miss spellcrafting too.........

Wall of flames is similar.

But I know what you mean.

yeah alot of my friends were playing spellswords and they quit due to flames being so weak at higher levels

I just started using incinerate on my spellsword character.

Yes spell crafting is the backbone of magic creation, we should be able to use anything we want with restrictions or without restrictions depending on what we wanted and spell creation gave us that as we could create any spell we wanted.

Yeah I agree the starting spells look the best. I tried to edit frostbite to do the same damage as the higher ones but it kept crashing my game. Hopefullly not long for the CK though.

For those of you that think destruction is boring, that is your opinion. For me, swatting something dead with one swing of my sword/mace/axe is boring. Playing my mage has made me approach battles tactically and has been a lot of fun to play so far. I dual cast a rune before I enter any room and this has saved me a time or two. I have to decided sometimes if it's worth it to use chain lighting or dual cast lightning bolt. When facing dragons, I have to allow a little bit of time between each dual cast for my magicka to regenerate slightly so I can squeeze every last bit of damage out of my mana bar. When fighting bears or sabertoothed cats I have to time my casts perfectly and pray I don't miss or I'm dead.

Now I realize I have not reached level 50 and you can bet that as soon as I do I will decide for myself whether or not destruction is too weak or strong. But for now I think it is just fine. The only enemy I have had trouble with was the first dragon priest I encountered (around level 10) and I didn't have the impact perk yet and he shot lightning magic at me which killed me in two hits and was pretty much undodgable. The second dragon priest I fought I got lucky and he got himself stuck behind a rock where I could blast him all day long and not get hurt. The third one I fought I was prepared and used a magicka regen potion and a fortify destruction potion. He went down quick. So that made me feel like I was actually getting stronger.

So far I'm level 25 and I haven't even gotten to the expert level spells yet. I've been leveling alchemy and alteration and I plan on using a lot of paralysis spells at higher levels so I can unload with the master level destruction spells. Also I plan on leveling illusion once I get to around level 40. This, in my opinion, is MY idea of a pure mage type and I expect absolutely no difficulties what-so-ever when the enemies are fully leveled.

I should also mention I play on the default difficulty because I feel like the game was balanced (I use the word loosely) around that difficulty. If you crank it up to master you are just asking for a pain in the butt experience. I think destruction is just fine, I think mages are versatile and a lot of fun, and I think that smithing is overpowered. For those of you that think stun locking with impact is cheap, try fighting a snow bear using only destruction magic with around 150 health.

I have a level 41 destruction mage. My health and stamina are at 150. My Magicka is at 556. I use a few other spells like conjuring a flame atronach at times. But I primarily rely on destruction. Didn't have any real issues with enemies until the late 30's when the damn archers suddenly became superpowered .50 cal killing machines. So I can die in one shot at any time now but I was always pretty easy to kill so it wasn't really much of a surprise. I have a tiny bit of armor (15 to be exact) due to some scaled boots I found that up my carry weight by 40. I'm a pack rat so I gave up some other stats for that. The rest of my gear is magicka based with either regen, extra magicka, reduced destruction cost, or some combination of those. I use a variety of destruction spells depending on the situation. For heavy fights, Dragons and boss characters, I usually rely on spamming the low cost double fire bolts for the stun and the fact I can cast them for a very long time without using potions. For easy kills or groups of low level characters chain lightning is amazing. For intermediate enemies incinerate or thunderbolt are fun. I like wall of flames if I have room to kite or if I can trap an enemy somewhere and let them burn. I also use fire or lightning runes at the opening of a fight. The fire rune can set them on fire which increases the damage of my other fire spells. I also equip Lydia with a sword and bow that will set them on fire. That helps as well.

I use distractions as long as possible. A summoned helper, zombie, or Lydia work ok for a time to distract the enemy while I put on some damage. Slow time is immensely helpful as it holds them in place so they can neither dodge or attack back. It is my primary combat shout. All of the others only stun them for a short time, toss them about making them harder to target, or do minimal damage. Slow time is dependable, works on every single enemy, and keeps me safe against pretty much anything for the duration of the shout. Where there's room I run and dodge quite a bit. When overwhelmed turning and running is often a very good strategy. Once early in the game I ran casting fire runes as I went. My enemies killed themselves in the chase. I'm a squishy cloth wearer with no real tank so that is to be expected. The companions go down to easy to be reliable so I do what I have to to survive.

My biggest disappointment with magic is that the upper level spells give very little damage increase for the increased magicka they require. There are a couple of spells where if I double shot them they will drain nearly my entire magicka bar but the damage they do is barely more than that of a double firebolt. I really don't understand why they made it work that way. Those upper level spells should pack a real punch or they should require way less magicka. As it stands there is a major imbalance in the ratio of magicka to damage output with the upper level spells. All the lower level spells seem to be perfectly fine to me. I still use them routinely due to their low magicka consumption combined with the stun ability.

That said I've really enjoyed playing my mage. I have to really think about each battle and the game has not become overly easy which is a relief. I still have to be careful when facing enemies and fights have remained challenging. I don't think it's boring to take many shots to kill a dragon. It is a dragon after all. If you could all 2 shot them with massive fire balls you would then complain they are too easy. I'm not sure how anyone could make some of you happy with this. What would be the perfect ration of shots to kill that would satisfy you without it being too easy resulting in complaints about that? Personally I'm happy with everything except the scaling of the upper level spells which should either do more damage or cost less magicka. It would also be nice for casters if the companions actually scaled to a point where they could effectively tank for use. Lydia going down in one to 2 shots during every battle makes her practically worthless in that regard.

i made a destro only mage then i got about 35 destro, stopped upgrading it and went to a conjorer illusionist but i use destro in case i get bored...i summon flame atros and have them do my work lol

I really miss spell crafting. And the wall of flames is pretty much an upgraded flames spell..