Not true. Your effective magic power scales up as your magic school scales up. -- I was wrong.

No, unless you invest in the +50% damage perks (6 perk points for all 3 elements), the strength of your spells does not increase. Only the cost decreases.

That's fine, but here's the problem. You might never find the stuff you need or only one or two. And they might be useless anyway because they don't provide enough cost reduction. For example, say you find a circlet that reduces Destruction costs by 25%. That's nothing. Last night I didn't realize my characters helmet wasn't on and she began dual casting fireballs at a dragon. I think she got 3 casts off before the magicka ran dry. And that was with 75% reduction costs in place (75%!).

It also severly limits what your character can wear and therefore your armor rating. I did a robes-only mage once and it wasn't any fun because you have to constantly cast flesh protection spells, which eat into your magicka which causes you to have to bring along gads of restore magicka potions so that you can use any of your other spells. Even the Archmage robes did very little to mitigate the problem.

Using Destruction is my favorite way to kill things in Skyrim. But in order to do it consistently I have to have highly enchanted gear. That's just my experience. Everyone's MMV.

UM... NO, it does not. An icicle does 25 damage at 0 skill as it does at 100 skill...

If it isnt obvious that we are talking about --damage-- rather than an obscure concept of magic power (in your mind) then you need to read about fifty threads on this exact topic, just search destruction on the forums.

I would really like to see a patch for this. Most players that use magic in fantasy games are like me and want it to be an empowering experience. But that's not the case when substituting physical weapons for destruction is an all around better option. This and the summon absorb bug are the primary issues I have had with skyrim since launch. Really is an experience killer.

Some people have already pointed out the problem: if you increase the damage output of Destruction, that includes the output of people attacking you. For high-level melee fighters mages are already the most (and generally, only) dangerous enemy. Boosting thier damage output still higher would make the game harder for people who like it where it is for any given difficulty.

We're talking about destruction, so talking about alteration isn't really relevant, you can use armor when using destruction if you want. But I've never had a problem with the flesh spells, I always dual cast them before the fight, giving me a good 4 mins of protection (I wait for my magicka to regenerate before fighting).

I'm not defending destruction, the mechanics for it are terrible, I just know how to make it good enough for use on master. For the higher tier spells you have to have a good 80%+ reduction, 72% and the perk is good enough if you have a decent magicka pool. The items for a cloth mage that have fortify destruction, robes of master, peerless ring and peerless circlet aren't that rare, the Solitude shop will likely stock at least one at high levels.

You can also be a necromage vampire, boosting the enchantments by x1.25, so you can easily get 90+% reduction if you want, this isn't needed though, but my mages are usually necromage vampires depending on their morals as it boosts pretty much everything mages use. I'd never have more than 95% though, that's to much.

This is such a non-point, the expert level spells have twice the base damage of a daedric warhammer. The skill is for cost reduction, the spells damage is already high, remember the game needs to be balanced for adept, not master.

Melee just has ways to make it overpowered even on master, destruction doesn't have this luxury. I don't play with overpowered melee characters, so my destruction is usually stronger than melee.

My current character uses both 1h and destruction, and they are both pretty equal, probably destro comes out on top as I have high reduction and a decent magicka pool, so I can pump out 105 damage incinerates (necrovamp) at a very high rate of fire.

I think it'd be fine if they just added an item/spell/potion effect that boosted destruction's damage, rather than reducing its cost. It doesn't matter how many firebolts I can cast before i run out of magicka if the guy I'm burning has his axe in my gut.

People that say Destruction is fine, or is fine with enchanting/alchemy involved, watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPCj9zrFXoE&list=PL3E68DD4E8499434E&index=9&feature=plpp_video

And yes, he is using thunderbolt in that video, on Master difficulty.

Not to mention, not every pure mage wants to go the route of alchemy, or reducing their spell costs by 100%. So what about those people? Just roll a melee huh? Destruction is disgusting and needs to be patched.

The guy in the video used loops, as well as ridiculous potions and poisons and even had to pull out his weapon to apply said poisons and weaknesses. We mages should NOT have to go to so much trouble. And even after all the trouble that the guy in the video goes through to apply all of that, the damage is STILL pathetic.

And you're telling me you see nothing wrong with this? Other offensive damage dealing skills don't have to use alchemy or enchanting or even smithing to be viable at high levels on Master. However, Destruction is forced to use these at high levels and even then it doesn't come close to melee weapons. Bethesda advertised this game with "Be whoever you want to be." It isn't shocking that alot of us don't want to use enchanting or alchemy on our mages. I use enchanting on my Mage but I don't abuse it to get 0 casting costs, and it makes my Destruction pathetic and not viable in any way, shape, or form. I've basically buried him away in my save files because I just can't play him anymore, it's not fun. In Oblivion mages were all I played, and they were fun. In skyrim, it's the opposite. Don't even get me started at the shameful amount of spells we have. They took away our weakness spells but left them in Alchemy. That's real kind of you Beth.

tldr: We shouldn't need to pick up professions and abuse them to get 0 casting costs to make a skill viable. It should be viable without the use of professions, and the professions should make it better than viable.

1)
For melee users it is like this:
As long as a melee fighter has stamina he does extra damage (power attack)
when he runs out of stamina the weapon does only base damage (normal attack)

For magic users it should be like this:
As long as the mage has magicka the spell does extra damage (power attack)
when he runs out of magicka the spell does only base damage (normal attack)


2)
For melee users it is like this:
A melee fighter can use enchantments to boost the damage of his weapon (fortify one handed/two handed).

For magic users it should be like this:
Mages can use enchantments to boost the damage of the spells (fortify destruction magic damage).


3)
For melee users it is like this:
Melee users can upgrade the weapons to do more damage.

For magic users it should be like this:
Mages can upgrade the spells to do more damage (spell making?).


4)
For melee users it is like this:
Melee users can add extra damage to the weapon with enchentments (fire/shock/frost damage)

For magic users it should be like this:
Magic users can add extra effects (damage) to the spells (spell making?)


5)
For melee users it is like this:
Leveling up 1handed/2handed increases the damage you do with weapons.

For mages it should be like this:
Leveling up destruction increases the damage you do with a spell.

...


*please excuse my poor english*

i use a mod that buffs ALL magic schools(only wanted destruction buffed, but since the others schools don't rise in dmg and only rise in duration i'm fine with it) and the npc mages didn't change at all.

they use completely different skills, than the player does.

Oops I stand corrected. I just checked the wiki:

"Be aware that your Destruction skill level only decreases the casting cost and does not increase the spell damage. To keep using Destruction magic against tougher opponents you will need to either learn stronger spells, pick the damage increasing perks, or (preferably) both." -- UESPwiki

I could swear it felt more powerful at times, when I hadn't taken a destruction perk, but I had gained Destruction magic level(s).
Live and learn.

Please accept my apology, Udey.

Edit: Illl post some links to the old threads later, as all points have been discussed ad-naeseum.

Why does this type of thread keep popping up? Because the shortcoming is pretty obvious/apparent.

This. I see at least 2-3 of these kind of threads every single day, and it hasn't stopped since. Hopefully we are making enough noise for the devs to notice.

NPC already use different, more powerful forms of the spells the player gets. Boosting Destruction for the player should have no effect on NPCs or their spells.



Because Bethesda is doing nothing. It has been six and a half months of complaints and Bethesda is just sitting on their butts about the issues with Destruction. Some think gimping spells was intentional for one reason or another. Bethesda unwillingness to address complaints this far out sort of reinforces that line of thinking.

I use destruction on master, if I hit a dragon with a perked dual cast incinerate/icy spear I would hit it for at least 5-10% it's health. Mages don't need to do that, I've never made a destruction mage that uses alchemy, yet I've always played on master and reached high levels. Do take into account how fast you can fire those spells, with constent casting it wouldn't take me longer than 10-15 seconds to kill that dragon. The problem is cost.

I agree completely that the mechanics svck, but they are workable, you don't need alchemy, or even enchanting (see my first comment) for master.

I don't make my melee characters overpowered, so destruction is usually stronger, I'm used to a good fight when a dragon attacks me.

For me, I just like playing mage in pretty much every game because it's usually more complex and has more utillity then other ways of fighting. Destruction in Skyrim isnt necessary my favorite way of killing things, but being a mage is and thus I want to whole package - otherwise I would be a fighter with spells, or a thief with spells.

Also I was planning on using light armor this time - but decided that I wanted to go into most magic schools and didn't want to spend points into any type of armor (unless I get spare points) And after realising that the dragonfleshspell in alteration sets your armor value to max (80%) and I was going to use alteration anyay, I decided to just mix and match armor (thus skiping "mage armor" in alteration) as that pretty much becomes useless once you get dragonflesh. Same goes for actuall armor, more points into other stuff then having to pick a certain armor type.

I'm using alchemy and enchanting for non combat stuff.

I havn't played in a long time nor kept myself updated on Skyrim, plenty of patches have been released since I played the last time. I know people used to complain about it.

Do you now understand my reasoning behind the thread? I was trying to go through all the patch notes at first, I decided I might as well ask

Destruction is the best combat skill in my opinion. It is so simple to use and kills every enemy i come across. 4-5 shots on an Ancient dragon and its dead, its perfect.

Plus you made a few grammatical errors in your title and paragraph, well done.

I'm sure I did, as I'm Swedish.

Haha, sorry, I'm the type of person that likes to comment on this type of thing, sorry about that.

I never had a problem playing as a mage, but then again I only got to level 40 on my old mage.

I actually prefer when I have to min/max, make sure I research and do whatever is needed to succeed. Especially on master. This is also the reason why I normally play mage, as it just has got more utillity then lets say a pure warrior - and often requires you to use all your spells rather then mashing mouse 1.

The work it takes to make things viable isnt the problem for me - rpg's gets boring if you can't fail with your character. To few modern games lets you fail, nowdsays games don't hate you enough gothic 2 and 3 are still amongst my favs, and Morrowind ofcourse (best single player game that I played)

Reason I asked was because I heard that it was pretty much broken, as in not viable at all at higher higher levels (as mentioned, I only got to 40) - I love a challange, but not to the point where it's not doable. At all (without lowering difficulty) After reading all the mixed opinions in this thread I'm not under the impression that its very much viable, as long as you put some work into it.

IMO what the game needs is spell creation like in Morrowin however - being able to scale is not a bad thing. Physical damage should probably get nerfed as well.

The point was more about just finding things as opposed to enchanting for a specific character and how unreliable and inefficient that can be.

I think that I intended to mention how the drain caused by Destruction inhibits the ability to use other schools but I spaced out and didn't really make the point I wanted to make. Sorry.

At any rate, I enjoy enchanting anyway and don't wear robes (because they svck) and so it helps me enchant my gear for each specific character.

Shameless plug for my mod: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=13198. In vanilla on Master difficulty, the player only does 50% of the damage they do on Adept. For Destruction magery, that can potentially leave one overly gimped. With my mod, on Master you now output 100% of the damage you would do at Adept, while enemy output is still increased (by 200 - 300% depending on which version you select).

I agree that having Destruction scale would have been beneficial, but another method might be to bring back what we had in Oblivion (Weakness to Magic/Frost/Fire/Shock spells) as a way to increase damage. For example, the mod http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=10520 adds these spells (I have not tried this mod myself, though).