After http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1307527-fire-stormblizzard-does-more-damage-than-stated/page__st__20 I realized that what is very likely a bug in the game along with the behavior of Blizzard makes it achieve by far the highest damage potential. I have now officially tested this and the results are below in the results section. I put the summary first in case you didn't want to read through the rest

Summary
Mage does the most damage out of anyone, achieving 160,232 damage, requiring two attacks to apply the poisons, drinking of three potions, two of which are in a specific order and then casting Blizzard. More work than other characters to achieve that damage but it is incredibly high. If anyone wants me to try something else let me know. I left out a lot of details but enough is here if anyone else wants to try it and verify it.

Apparatus

• Apprentice stone
  
• Weakness to Frost poison: Ice Wraith Teeth + Fire Salt
  
• Weakness to Magic poison: Salt Pile + Scaly Pholiota
  
• Potion of Fortify Heavy Armor (self weakness to Frost): Ice Wraith Teeth + White Cap
  
• Potion of Regenerate Magicka (self weakness to Magic): Dwarven Oil + Jazbay Graqes
  
• Potion of Fortify Destruction: Glowing Mushroom + Nightshade
  
• A weapon to apply the poisons (Bow works)

NOTE: For the potions to apply weakness to self you must NOT take the final Alchemy perk which would remove harmful effects. In this case you want them!

Gear to craft potions:

• Falmar Helmet: Potions are 29% more powerful
  
• Circlet: Potions are 29% more powerful
  
• Ring: Potions are 29% more powerful
  
• Amulet: Potions are 29% more powerful
  
• Gloves: Potions are 29% more powerful

With the above, you create the following potions:

• Weakness to Frost poison: Target is 110% weaker to frost damage for 30 seconds.
  
• Weakness to Magic poison: Target is 74% weaker to magic damage for 30 seconds.
  
• Potion of Fortify Heavy Armor (self weakness to Frost): Increase Heavy Armor skill by 74 points for 60 seconds. Target is 88% weaker to frost damage for 30 seconds.
  
• Potion of Regenerate Magicka (self weakness to Magicka): Magicka regenerates 184% faster for 300 seconds. Target is 59% weaker to magic for 30 seconds.
  
• Potion of Fortify Destruction: Destruction spells are 184% stronger for 60 seconds.

Participants
Whiterun Guard at the entrance to Whiterun with 200,000 health. Use console command "setav health 200000" to achieve this.

Formula
Blizzard (with +50% perk, applied twice and likely a bug)
+ Apprentice stone
+ Reduce Magic resist (potion to self, multiplied by Apprentice stone weakness)
+ Reduce Frost resist (self, multiplied by weakness to magicka for even larger boost)
+ (Weakness to Magic poison (on enemy) - Enemy Magic resist)
+ (Weakness to Frost poison (on enemy, NOT multiplied by reduce magicka resist) - Enemy Frost resist)
+ Fortify Destruction
+ Fortify Destruction (due to bug or intended?)
= 45 + (100 + (59 +100% = 118))% + (88 + (100 + 118)% = 279)% + 74% + 110% + 184% + 184%
= 45 + 218% + 279% + 74% + 110% + 184% + 184%
= 45 * 3.18 * 3.79 * 1.74 * 2.1 * 2.84 * 2.84
= 15,983.9 per second AOE
= 159,839 damage after 10 seconds AOE

Procedure

• Activate Apprentice stone on self
  
• Find target, increase their health via "setav health 200000"
  
• Hit target with magic weakness poison
  
• Hit target with frost weakness poison
  
• Drink reduce Magic resist potion, exit inventory screen to let potion apply
  
• Drink reduce Frost resist potion, exit inventory screen to apply
  
• Cast Blizzard

NOTE: Order of 3. and 4. can vary as they do not stack in the same way as applying to self. However, applying Magic weakness to self before Frost weakness to self is necessary as the Magic weakness further boosts the Frost weakness. i.e. 88% Frost weakness to self becomes 279% Frost weakness to self if you have Apprentice stone (100%) and Magic weakness to self (59%... which then becomes 118% due to Apprentice stone). Thus Frost weakness to self 88% + 218% = 279% which you can verify in game UI.

Results
After performing the above procedure on the Whiterun guard I brought his health from 200,000 to 39,767.44.

My test was predicting a result of around 159,839 damage but the real test showed 160,232 damage. I am not sure what could be the reason but it is so close that there could just be some margin of error in that the spell runs for slightly less than intended.

EDIT: With correction to base damage and Testing on Adept rather than Master difficulty.

If you need all this mathematical mumbo jumbo in order to get a mage to have some decent output without tinkering in Enchanting/Alchemy, it failed still in my eyes. Too much effort when my Argonian Battlemage can deliver that blow with one power attack.

Other than that, impressive read nonetheless.

You could do all that BS, or just use a dagger for x30 sneak?

So many glitches and exploits involved it makes ones head asplode.

imagine if people put this kind of effort into solving the worlds problems...

Im pretty sure someone is, not you, or me though. Since we're to busy playing games.

He's not saying that this is the practical way to use blizzard, he's saying it can be the most damaging.

When I play I don't bother with the 'weakness to magic' poisons and that crap, but I still hit like a truck with blizzard.

Erm... It's ok to be too smart "for your own good" sometimes OP. Don't take it too hard.

nerf mages

Strictly speaking, using poisons is not a mage thing, it's a thief thing. Yes, anyone can use them. Yes, alchemy is traditionally a mage-type skill. But poisons are the traditional weapons of assassins, NOT mages.

Your method may be fun for a moment, but you would get a lot quicker kill just sticking a blade in someone. Unless you consoled them to have an amount of health that no in-game bad guy has.

Ever tried using weakness to... potions with an appropriate weapon? As in weakness to frost with a frost-dmg weapon? Seems that would be a better use of poisons.

Your method DOES help mages score better kills with elemental damage.

or fix this glitch and buff master spells.

I was going to let that mage cast a spell on me, then he took an arrow in the knee.

And another in the head.

I can cast invisibility and hit for 30 X (dagger damage) it takes about a second. There is alot of setup for this style, and.. well nothing has that HP. Good read though.

I still don't see how you achieved that kind of damage with blizzard.

Has anyone else been able to reproduce this and see exactly what is causing that amount of damage? (cause I'd like to avoid it)

Let's see here, legendary blade of woe upgraded with 100 smithing and bough a few potions from alchemists around the world, in addition to a few pieces of armor that enchant smithing further, 200 damage. 200 x 30 is 6000 damage. If you do a power attack instead of a normal attack it'll be of unknown power, most likely closer to 8000 damage. With two daggers (the other slithly less powerful than the blade of woe) you can make three power attacks in one movement. That means you are now up at 20.000 to 25.000 damage. It's far easier to use and will kill anything on master difficulty.

What will you do against enemies with 100 resist poison?

lol imagine if a enemy mage finds you while you do this glitch

So far the responses are a bit disheartening. The OP has demonstrated that the Mage can, under certain conditions, output the highest damage. But the OP receives one liners about back stab and hit the I win button

While I wouldn't personally use poisons as a Mage I do use fortify potions. I see no difference here to a mêlée build using alchemy smithing and enchanting to boost their output. So if it's OK for mêlée types to utilise all the available tools it should be OK for a Mage too.

Thats not even the most powerful, you can reach around 600 damage with chillrend using smithing/enchanting/alchemy (you will need fortify one handed x4). 600 x 12 = 7200 , swords aren't as stealthy as daggers though. Then power attacks, or dual wield power attacks will be crazy high damage.

You can also add in fortify one hand potions, and the orc daily power, and you will be sneak hitting for at least 25000. Which of course makes the game very fun.

The more potions you add, the more base damage blade of woe will do. Another two potions of smithing would have boosted the damage to above 220-230. You can reach a lot higher than that though. The 200 damage with blade of woe is very easy though. And you won't need any enchanting skill or alchemy skill at all. Just buy the potions and gear you need to make god weapon boosting.

People are critiquing this as if he actually does this. It's an intellectual excersise... not an application. No one needs to do that type of damage, and after a point any extra damage you might do is wasted anyway.

poor whiterun guard

Well no, I assume you mean +29% smithing x4 enchantments and +130% smithing potions, which with the armsman perk x5 will give you a blade of woe with ~190 damage IIRC. Swords are affected by fortify one hand enchantments and potions, so they will do more damage even with a x12 sneak modifier rather than x30.

If you take two +130% smithing potions, you will have +130% smithing btw, they don't stack.

Well, look at it this way. Mage has the highest damage potential? Not so. It takes an enormous amount of setup to do that kind of damage, where any thief just poisons his weapon and hits. The thief wins in the dmg per second of combat category.

Drink a different potion and they should stack. One +20, one +30, one +40 etc. That's what I did to get an ungodly amount of base damage to blade of woe. No idea if they truly did stack, but I know I didn't create my own gear or potions, all was bought from merchants around Skyrim.

It is lethal either way, against anything, even at master difficulty.

Too much work IMHO. While you're picking all of your potions... I would've already killed the target O_o