So he's wearing a dress and waving a stick....and you wonder why a dragon eats you?


sarcasm people, sarcasm

Get your enchanting up to at least 80 take all the center line perks and when it hits 100 take the end perk. Throw in a potion of fortify enchanting before you make the items and each enchant will be above a 25% discount. There are 4 slots where you can put the enchant which means one you can ignore the reduce mana cost perks and 2 it is over a 100% discount on the mana cost. Personally I am taking the perks, and with the archmage robe and non-boosted enchants i am at 87% off to every school which keeps magicka management in the game but reduces the costs of higher tier spells to a level where I am willing to cast them.

Mages are a
MAGEJOR waste of time.

Well as archmage I beg to differ. My mask only is regenerating 100% magica plus I got heavily enchanted armor (from black and grand gems). I can dual cast on expert with little effort and enough to take down pretty much anything. So let's compare. One lightning bolt does 75 x 2 = 150 plus dual cast bonus (not sure how much) and 4 - 5 zaps makes for at least 750 damage and this while "keeping a safe distance!". Dual cast also stuns everything "including dragons preventing them from shouting".

So sure keep whining on destruction being too weak. For me however destruction alone is almost making my battlemage too powerful

For 30 seconds. After spending how much magicka? >_>

i got 100% destruction and 100% conjuration cost reduction so all my skills are FREEEEEE. put that on light or heavy and im good on the defense. <3

A little bit longer with the duration improving perk. My main complaint is that it does not work with the armor improving perks. When I got it, I was like why the hell did I put 3 perks into making my armor spells 3 times more powerful?

Here is an improved destruction magic system mod: www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1245

I use this and Destruction definitely got a little more powerful. There are different versions both for the normal player who wants destruction to be useful and for those who just want to break the game.

For Destruction, just make the damage go up as your skill level does. A high-level melee fighter can get extremely good mileage out of even a basic iron or steel weapon because their skill and bonuses all contribute damage. Destruction doesn't, however. There is a clear point at which Firebolt is obsolete except for mopping up random mudcrabs, and once obsolete it is irrevocably obsolete forever. The reason people say "OMG ENEMY MAGES ARE INSANE MAGIC IS OP", is because enemy spell casters get a damage bonus to spells as they gain levels.

For Alteration, just add back in some missing spells and you'll have a poweruse skill:
- Slow: Enemies who are are Slowed have their attack speed reduced and lose fatigue at a constant rate leaving them unable to power attack if the fight lasts long
- Weakness to (Element): Weakness to Element followed by an elemental attack was a mage's bread and butter in TES4.

If you're on PC - get a rebalance mod that increases the Destruction spells power.

If you're on console - abuse the enchant system and put 25% mana cost reduction for spells in Destruction on 4 apparel items - casting all your spells for 0 mana. Get the Impact perk (broken design) and spam any tough enemy till he dies. Preferably use a full suit of armor instead of robes (their mana regeneration is almost useless anyway).

The mages are fun... but some poor design choices are very annoying.

Spellmaking in Oblivion was everything else than "excellent".

The power of magic spells should simply scale with their skills.
I don't even understand, why that's not the case.

Spell making is the only thing that keeps mages "up to date" with the leveled mobs. They removed spell making, but not leveled mobs. The master destruction spells are more likely to get you killed trying to cast them than kill your enemies, and if you do get to cast it, your companions get blasted as well.

I get the feeling that the designers didn't want to make a situation where a mage on a higher level could one shot kill a dragon or higher enemies. Instead doing things this way to be effective you have to use your noodle (brain) and work on balancing other magic schools alchemy and enchanting together...in the end if you are not power gaming you will enjoy it.

You don't need enchanting at 100% to put some fortify destruction spells on items and you definitely don't NEED to 0 mana the spells.

Example....make a mage disenchant item for fortify destruction spells to enchant other items with fortify destruction. Make some garments and bring down costs to 50% 0r 75% mana or whatever feels comfortable for you. Learn to summon some fire antrioch or whatever learn to raise the dead.

So the next time you get attacked in a dungeon... boom... bring in the fire antrioch...switch to spells and help the summoned creature kill an opponent then resurrect the dead enemy or resummon the antrioch again or both if you are able to. To me that is a lot more fun than hitting all three enemies and killing them instantly....that would get boring real fast.

The problem is a lot of people thought you'd be able to use SOLELY destruction in this game because you could in Oblivion. Oblivion's magic system was so hardcoe you could make spells that decimated everything in a huge area of effect after leveling up your spellcraft skill. In this edition they attempted to balance the magic a bit forcing casters to be creative and inclusive with all the schools of magic or off-setting a bit with some melee mixed in (see battle-mage type builds).

End of the day, destruction is fine, but if you try to beat the game focusing on ONLY destruction you will have quite the challenge in front of you. Then again, if you try and beat the game ONLY leveling any one skill you will have quite the challenge as well haha, being your character should have about 6-7 skills maxed/perked out depending on the type of build you want to go with.

I personally made a spell-assassin (as I like to call it).

I use sneak/archery/1handed/destruction/restoriation/alchemy/light armor.

I do very well dropping fire runes and sneak attacking or shooting from a distance and including poisoning into my arsenal. When a dragon or spell caster is attacking me I quickly throw up some wards to mitigate the damage and throw fireballs back at them until I can close the distance and melee them down. Usually mana damage/drain poisons are my fave to use in these situations.

Again, be flexible, don't one-trick pony build.

Compared to other methods of dealing damage, such as archery, Destrution is just flat terrible. Conjuration's bound bow just straight out puts most of the destruction spells available to utter shame. Lack of AoE with a bow? So what, two dremora lord in addition to you're bow and you'll never be overwhelmed.

Cant confirm that, I made one in the hope that it would be difficult but it sadly is not.
If you use Conjuration and/or Illusion that is, if you only have Destruction as a matter of dealing with multiple strong enemys at once you are obiviously screwed, but who would do that.
It would be nice to see some specs and used spells of other people, maybe that would give a hint to where the problem is.
Mine:
Level 30
Conjuration 75
Destruction 70
Illusion 52
Restoration 35
Light Armor 28

Common used Spells and Shouts (Combat related) :
Lightning Bolt
Wall of Thunder
Storm Atronarch (until recently Fire Atronarch Instead))
Dremora Lord (until recently Ice Atronarch instead)
Revenant
Frenzy
Novice Healing thingy
Whirlwind

Perks:
All the 50% Magicka reductions for the spells above exept Illusion
+50% Shock damage
Staggering for Shock
x2 duration for the summons above
x2 summoning range
Dual casting power up for Conjuration and Destruction
+25% Magicka Regeneration
+2?% light armor

Items:
-35% Destruction Spell cost
+50 Magicka
+20% Sneak
20 Armor total
No potions usually, rarely magicka potions if any.
Mouse and Keyboard (I suspect that to make a huge difference)

Note that this is not a recommendation for how to spec a Mage, for example I took shock because it looks cool, use crappy equipment so it dosent get more boring and summon undead a lot because I love Zombies

Edith Edited: Oh, and 180 health, 100 Stamina and around 280 Magicka. Difficulty is Master.

Iw was excellent, you could create spells designed to suit your characters needs.

Its been that way at least since Daggerfall.

With what we would have now even if the spells scaled mages would still have limited spells casting options.

So yes it was probably the best magic feature besides pretty effects.

We could still have pretty effects with more spell options and spell creation.

Also the spells should scale, but if they put in spell creation we could fix that problem for ourselves.

The way it was done, it was a lame mechanic.
With all those "crafting/spell-making/enchanting" things there's always the danger of killing off a lot of other game-mechanics and especially the appeal of collecting/finding/exploring.

Ok, but that's not the way it should be.

In an RPG you should be able to play:
- pure destruction spell mage
- pure conjuration mage
- pure sneak/assasin
- pure warrior
- etc. etc. etc.
- and a lot of combinations between those styles (of course, they should make somehow sense)
And none of those should be over- or underpowered.

It's cool to combine "classes" and playstyles. But it's also cool to be able to specialise on just one style if you like to.
I'm not saying it would be easy to balance all those styles and style-combinations out, but it's possible.

I find the mage alot of fun to play. As for damage dealing theyre great too, except in my opinion you cant properly mage at higher levels without having high enchanting. And WITH enchanting it is abit too easy since it wont cost you any magicka anymore with 4x destro enchanted items, and with the impact perk enemies are just sitting ducks.

I don't agree UHU. In nearly every RPG ever a pure "dmg" wizard is neither optimal, ideal, or even "realistic" in regards to game mechanics.

Take Dungeons & Dragons table-top for example. A wizard that could ONLY cast evocation spells would never be ideal. Ever. Simply put, a "wizard" is one trained in the art of magic. He/she may specialize in a certain school of magic, but practices MANY forms of magic. So a "pure mage" as you put it, would focus on a couple schools of magic and ignore melee weaponry/armor.

A "pure warrior" would ignore schools of magic but focus on melee weaponry AND some form of range attack, like a bow. It seems to me a lot of people complaining simply don't understand balanced builds, and where they claim that mages aren't "balanced" in this game what they really mean is, "I can't dominate everything with fireballs".

My destruction can do things my melee can't, like kill two trolls at once without taking damage, thanks to the impact perk.

lol seriously how [censored] bad are you guys?^^

I am level 30 and i only skilled illusion (because i wanted invisibilty for DB) and destruction. And it's [censored] ezzzzzz mode. Seriously the enemies don't get even close do you because of impact^^

I agree they should all be equal. If they addded back in spell creation with restrictions it would make the entire gameplay of a mage far more enjoyable, at least for me because of the options it would open up. As a mage, spellsword,nightblade or a battlemage I use several and schools of magic. I use all magic for pure mages. Can you not agree to a balance spell creation system where the spell schools are treated fairly and not grossly overpowered. With what exist in the game right now, some magic schools are weak such as the entire destruction tree and alteration minus the shield spells and some passive traits.

Yes but we should not have to rely on one perk in any skill tree to make that skill set worthwhile.

Excellent post.

Don't let the haters and omplainers get you down.

Imagine that One-handed and Two-handed skills did not add damage to your weapons, and that the damage-adding perk only went to 50% and you had to buy it for every individual weapon type, and that Smithing, Enchanting, and Poison did not apply to your weapon, and that there was no such thing as "+n% damage" equipment.

Because that's the real comparison.