im getting discouaged by talks of mage weakness and starting to notice at lvl 20..i made a sweet high elf wizard but as i lvl up i notice how enemies eat more fireballs and the staff is almost useless. its lookin like i wont be able to use my mage the more use him as he's pure magic in robes

Yeah, destruction svcks pretty bad. Get conjuration, summon dremora lord/s, gg because they don't need mana to pwn forever

There definatly seems to be some problems with the destruction school.

Personally i am lvling a new mage focused on Conjuration/Illusion/Alteration and stealth, and I not have to much trouble despite my lack of armor.

Charming/furying enemies is ALOT of fun especially when you can just reanimate which ever enemy dies first to finish the battle for you.

I do how ever have to say I really wish there was some sort of magic penalty based on armor type.. there does not seem to be alot of incentive for using robes other then the alteration perks, which unlike light or heavy cannot reach armor cap..

not to mention alot of the magish cloth gear looks completly silly.. archmage robe is a freaking poncho

Yes destruction has taken a blow. I still like mages they have always been my favored build in any game. Just try not to focus to heavily in destruction. Conjuration and illusion are to really powerful schools of magic.

If we had spell creation back it would have opened a lot of choice for the mages but sadly they seen fit to remove an excellent element from the game.

I wouldn't mind destruction if it didn't just keep getting less and less efficient as you go. I can get like 3 points of damage per magicka from early spells now but expert spells barely give one without specializing perks. Pretty lame being 90 destruction level 30 and going oom before killing a snow bear that two-shots me

I had a lot of trouble with my mage as well. I feel like I'm not kicking as much ass as my warrior was at this time, though at times I feel more powerful.

I found a good technique to mix spell selection and adapt to what type of opponents I'm facing. Using stone flesh and wards depending on melee or magic combat is essential, I used to use conjuration to get a follower but now one of my classmates at the college come with me, so I don't need to worry about help. Mixing lightning and fire with a bound sword to dish out damage while using healing, stoneflesh and wards for defense.

Yes.

There are ways to make destruction work but you have to be willing to utilize enchanting.

I said all I can really say about it in this thread:
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1286612-guide-to-40-spell-scaling-stop-asking-for-changes-until-you-try-this/

I Don't know why people complain so much, i use conjuration + destruction and i deal good ammounts of damage with both, with stagger the enemy dosn't even move anymore

Not that it is an incentive to use robes, but with the master alteration spell dragonskin you do hit the physical mitgation cap, without any armor.

If you are really willing to work enchanting destruction is okay. Not great mind you, but okay. You will kill anything, it just will take a while.

Overall though mages are powerful.
1. illusion if you keep that up and perk it, you can frenzy/calm tons of enemies in the game. Once you master it you can do it to virtually all the enemies in the game.
2. Alteration, it mostly svcks but paralysis is pretty cool.
3. Conjuration. Um damn they are powerful. Some enemies you have trouble denting with your magic, get dropped quick by a summon. And as a plus it scales with difficulty.
4. restoration: Cheaper than drinking potions all the time, and the turn undead spells are awesome in the early game. There are tons of undead in this game and unless you keep restoration up to par it will quickly hit the point where no turn undead spells work for you.

The only weak point is destruction, it just has low DPS especially if you don;t work the enchanting skill.

I'm massively disappointed in the variety of spells and how some of the spells work, but they are powerful.

I think that with some Conjuration in the mix, you will be fine offensively. Throw in some Alteration for armor spells, and you should be able to take a bunch of hits, and even throw some paralysis/mass paralysis in the later game. And, as I just learned in another thread, using a staff in one hand and spell in the other DOES count for the dual-casting perk.

Personally, on my level 25 character, I use Destruction (level 48) mainly as a complement to a One Handed (level 60), but I recently felt the urge to focus on leveling Destruction more so stopped using my sword for the most part. I get by just fine, thanks to liberal use of Alteration and Restoration for protection, and the occasional summoned atronachs for crowd control.

I disagree, detect life and detect dead are the two most useful spells in the game imo. Nothing works better at increasing your survivability than knowing there are 5 enemies around the next corner.
Also having a passive 30% magic resistance and 30% magic absorb is beyond useful in combat.

Paralysis is just cake.

->Take conjuration, and have a breeze. 2x Dremora Lord = lol. +Its extremely easy to level
->Take illusion, lvl it with muffle, it owns at high levels. Again, another breeze skill that requires no over-relliance on other skills.
->Take enchanting as your saving grace for Destro spell cost reduction, yeah its cheesy, but if you don't have mods you probably will need to do this on master.

Yeah this required build/support for Destro goes against what TES is known for, but oh well. It's funny how conj/illusion can hold their own on Master, but Destro needs massive over-relliance on support skills.


Yeah in the end it only has 2 good Spells the whole game, paralyze and shield. However the perks make magic mobs on Master much muuuch easier.

I can't wait for a mod that makes telekensis a dps contender, nothing crazy of-course...just not as useless as it is now. I hit someone with a plate for like 5 damage!

You have to go deep into the trees to get those resists, but sure they are useful if you go there. as for detect life, not that impressed. Nothing moves fast enough to get the drop on you so knowing there are 5 guys around the corner saves me less than 1/2 second at most. Go around corner see bad guys, hit favorites key note they are X creatures and there are Y of them adjust spells from this handy dandy paused favorites screen, shoot them. And besides just don't kick in doors and barrel through them and you are fine, go around corners from stealth and you will see them before they see you anyways.

Telekinesis given its mana costs should be awesome, it svcks though. The things I'd consider to make it better just more damage, if you target a tool using enemy you can disarm them, allow pickpocket/pick locks at range, move bodies once they are dead, flip switches/trigger traps, maybe if you dual cast it lift living enemies under a certain mass. As is outside of a few gimmicks it is pointless.

If your game, and decent at restoration you can also use equilibrium and a heal at the same time to gain mana in drawn out fights.
Equilibrium = 25 mana for 25 health per second + fast healing with heal boost and spell cost reduction gives you a net mana increase of about 50 mana in 3 seconds.

Yes light spells and telekenesis are lame, but with detect spells you can set up an ambush (rune, walls) regen your mana back to full and then open with an AOE and get the drop on groups EVERY TIME.
You can even use it to know when to sumon your dremora into the next room, automatically gaining agro on them and keeping you in stealth.

Yeah but rune spells svck and I can get the AoE every time without detect life and once my stealth cracked 40ish I pretty much got the drop every time, now not only do I get the drop but they never find me. And even without stealth again it only gains you a half second, that just does not impress me. There are corner cases where it pans out but I stooped using it along time ago since it gained me so little.

As for equilibrium, yeah there is a net mana gain, but with my 100 health I never find it worth the gamble given how small the net gain is. Its main point seems to be for battlemages with decent health pools. Well that and as an exploit to train up restoration which levels kind of slow.

There is no mana in Skyrim

personally I don't mind it, I switch it around. Sometimes I even just heal my companion and let him do the dishing

Destro svcks on the whole, but still, its a viable use of runes in a way that eliminates the mana cost.
I never use equilibrium myself, too risky as you say, but with a larger health pool and the apropriate restoration perks you should be able to turtle pretty much any fight indefinately.

IMO magic on the whole has been watered down severely in TES V, with the lack of spell making and such little spell variety, but alteration is still a useful school imo, if only to support the others and provide defensive options.

Hey if it is working for you great. For me detect life just does not pan out. Alteration is useful sure it provides solid defense for the caster turning what would be a one hit kill into a 2 hit kill, and paralysis rocks. And given how narrow the other schools are it isn't that bad. As lame as the other spells are to me, they have at least a little cool power. It still needs a lot of the spell effects that were dropped to really be rounded out well, but oh well. If it weren't for the illusion school which is too narrow as well mages would be glorified archers with a free companion. I don't have much in the way of power complaints just versatility, in fact I'd happily get weaker if we would gain some breadth.

thanks for the tips but whats the destruction/enchanting thing u speak of? i wanted to make a fire mage as i like the effects but fire gets weaker as i go

The fortify destruction enchant lowers the mana cost of destruction spells.(other fortifies to the same for their schools). You can get the cost down to 0 so you can spam spells endlessly, or get it down to a cost you think is appropriate. While the spells are not more powerful than before since you can throw them endlessly the DPS ends up being okay.

endless destruct spells..how is this done?