agreed, everyone should power level enchanting and use that exploit. the game is fine.

.....



You can solely rely on Conjuration and/or Illusion for high level Master. Physical characters can use bow as your only damage, or 2H, or 1H. They don't have to switch weapons. Each of these can use the remaining Spell Schools as utility, or not. And do it more efficiently than taking destruction.


Destro has this extremely strict over-relliance unseen in all other combat skills, apart from pure utility like alteration, restoration, pickpocketing and lockpicking.

This results in extremely pidgeon holed builds for Destro, compared to any other skill.

i ended up leaving my high elf destruction mage alone and started rockin my 2h barbarian nord..i might come back to my mage if i have the patience to max out enchant and alchemy to make him useful, hopefully bethesda will fix the destruction problem before then so i can lvl up normally and play without tricks like im currently doing with my nord

It's not that mages are a waste, it's that destruction is a waste. Once you reach that revelation things open up in whole new ways.

If you absolutely HAVE to blow [censored] up with magic. Conjuration will not let you down. Once you master it... Oh boy. Ok you wont be blowing [censored] up. But you'll be blowing [censored] up.

Also Illusion perks double your destruction damage.

Mage is more fun to play then warrior and stealth-archer.

Destruction is underpowered on lvl 30-40 but other mage specs - i.e alteration,restoration,conjuration etc doing great.(especially conjuration)

U can play destruction on 1-25 lvls withtout problems, on 30 lvl u can switch to 1handed weapons,bow, or staffs which doesnt req mana. You dont need tons of health and heavy armor since mage have restoration+alot mana and npcs usually going attack atronachs instead of player.

(master diff)

Get enchant, lower cost to 0 magicka, get alchemy, drink 180% damage buff potions.

Profit while dying from boredom!

Make warrior get alchemy,conjuration,smiting,and enchanting = become immortal on master difficulty

Profit dying from boredom

Hi everyone! I've been reading a lot of the complaints about magical combat (especially destruction!) and made a mod to address the issue. Here's the short description: All destruction spells now scale, magicka in-combat regen and spellcost reduction with proficiency in the relevant school of magic have been adjusted, protection spells have been adjusted, dual casting has been made beneficial (now amplifies damage more than cost.)

This mod should NOT make you super overpowered. (You can read more about the specific damage numbers in the comments SkyrimNexus), but it should make playing as a mage a viable choice.

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2275

Yea it's real bad... then you try it with enchanting and suddenly it's OP.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11Hdp_Fc1m8

Destruction is seriously underpowered. One of my characters swapped out destruction for archery and it is amazingly more fun. Sneak around, summon draemoras (illusion perk so npc's dont notice casting), summon bow, crit shot almost every time. It does so much more damage than destruction spells, which is ashame really as magic is just fun to use. If there is such a thing as an overpowered class in a single player game, this would be it. But mages aren't a waste of time, you just are forced to be more creative to work around the destruction weakness (lvl 35 plus mostly) until the mod kit is released and people fix it and make it more like Oblivion.

mysty, just checked out your mod. It makes me want to buy a PC, too bad i have to stick with the PS3 version I think bethesda should take a look at it if they are thinking of rebalancing Destro

Master Illusion and Slteration (don't have master destruction quite yet) are BROKEN
they hit your own damn allies AND they are point blank AOEs, WTH?! I want stuf I can fire at enemies at range :/

if it has ot be point blank AOE, it mus tbe FAST ACASTING! what the hell use is a point blank spell it takes so long to cast the enemy kills you and you cannot have it pre cast because master spells precast prevent you form moving? GAH!!

what they hell use is master Fury if it makes your summons attack you, or mass paralysis ganks Lydia and your two dremora?

Awww.. wish I could sent it to you as DLC.

Kind of the same problem with all destruction spells, they have AE effects that either kill your summons or companions or upset them enough to make them want to kill you. So you are stuck using flame atronachs if you are a pyromaniac and they are weak so die fast.

If anything, the biggest problem for mage is how pathetic the expert leveled single-target destruction spells actually are and the fact that the master spells are all massive massive AoE spells that all take about 3 seconds to actually cast.

The problem with the Expert spells comes down to their damage:magicka cost ratio. Just to use fire magic as an example of their effectiveness against a single target (and fire spells have the BEST damage:magicka cost ratio of all destruction spells)

Spell : Base Damage:Base Cost : Magicka damage efficiency (%)
Flames: 8:13, 61.5%
Firebolt: 25:36, 69.4%
Fireball: 40:117, 34.2%
Incinerate: 60:262, 22.9%
Fire Storm: 150:1257, 11.9%

With full perks, the efficiency of spells is increased three-fold, so Flames would have an efficiency of ~184.5% (nearing 2 damage for every 1 magicka used). Skill also reduces spell cost, but I do not have the formula to get the specifics of that yet.

Reduced magicka efficiency isn't a surprise, but the surprise is just how much it is reduced. While Incinerate may have 2.5 times the damage of Firebolt, it also has over 7 times the cost. Now it's expected that for being able to kill faster you might have to pay a bit more, just like how a warrior has to use stamina to power attack or a thief has to use poison to make their attacks a bit more potent, but the amount being paid is just too high. At most Incinerate should cost 4 times more then firebolt, not 7 times!

Now later on you can get the magicka regeneration or spell cost reduction to make up for this but at that point you'd be about 3~4 times more powerful as a melee or an archer which is more down to Smithing + Enchanting being OPed then it is mage characters being broken. There are other issues with mage but I thought I'd bring this one up here since it shows just how bad mages currently have things.

Also Dual Cast is a bit of a joke, again I get a reduced efficiency for a faster kill time but it's only an extra 20% damage for a 25% additional cost. That costs a perk and works to reduce efficiency by 5~3% whereas the warrior and thief trees have perks that increase damage 20% without ANY additional costs, it should have been one of the following no perk requirement, no additional cost or a much greater damage then cost bonus (like a 50% damage bonus for a 25% higher cost)