OP, the focus here is damage dealing. Comparing 1 single skill to another, 1/2 handed deals better damage than destruction. If you're using Conjuration to prop up Destruction, it can be argued that a weapon skill would be more efficient.

And not everyone plays a pure mage btw


A simple solution would be an increase to Destruction damage based on the skill.

That too. Damn Lydia, always getting in the way. lol

Limp. No. You can only level pure destro up to about lvl ~20. If you start leveling other skills, you best need those other skills to compensate. There's no way to be a lvl 81 destro mage without other skills. Get it???

Not quite, because the stick could still be smithed to Legendary.

More seriously, if you don't use Enchanting to zero magicka costs you'll run out of magicka against a single regular opponent, which is stupid on the face of it when you can use a bow to one-shot the same opponent without expending any stamina at all. If Destruction spells scaled this wouldn't really be an issue, but unfortunately they don't.

Whether or not Impact makes up for it is debatable, since even though it gives you the ability to stun-lock at range you still need to be able to maintain said lock, which requires use of Enchanting to reduce spell costs to the point where you can actually do that.

If Enchanting increased the magnitude/chance/duration of spell schools instead, then I think the problem would be sort of solved

lol

Ok here is the thing you should not have to have enchanting to make magic viable and you pretty much have to as a master spells and expert spells take a lot of magic.
In saying that we still lack the options the other spells coupled with spell creation offered.
Also we should use enchanting to supplement magic but we have to have it that is not good.

As far as impact goes that farther cheapens the magicka system. Impact should be percentile based you should have a 15 percent chance to stagger them or something like that.
Then we would have to worry about how pathetic destruction damage is.
Spell creation could fix that.

Bring back the old spells that we lost.
Give us back spell creation.
That opens up our options, its not like nobody in the universe uses spell creation its still very used and practiced.

Bows are for Khajiit - if you get my drift. lulz.

To be fair, most melee characters use Enchanting to gain the massive bonuses to damage. Thats where the damage disparity comes in really:

1) Weapons get stronger as the skill goes up, whereas spells are static
2) Enchanting improves weapon damage, but only lowers casting cost for spells (while useful, it grows tedious to spam free spells. Its much more balanced for the damage to be improved instead)

You're framing the situation in a way that you don't understand the problem. It's not magic that is the problem it's destruction

Sure, you could say that someone using all the other schools of magic would be fine, but the fact is that a character using every school of magic would be more effective if he used archery or 1 handed instead of destruction, or if he just left destruction out completely and focused on his other magic schools.

This, I touched on that a bit, but well done

The problem is that mana regen is agonizingly slow in combat. While warriors can merrily continue swinging away with normal attacks when their stamina bar is depleted, mages are completely out of options unless they have some melee spec too... or if they drink magicka regen potions as if they were trying to get drunk off of watered-down mead.

Dual casting usually isn't worth it either. You get a 10% boost in effect over just double-barrel casting for 40% more mana. Not cost effective in light of the regen problem. I could do more damage by flinging off five fireballs (5x damage of 1 fireball, 5x cost) than I could by launching two dual-cast fireballs (4.4x damage, 5.6x cost). At the rate you can crank off destruction spells if you get a good tempo, the increased damage per shot is of little consequence.

The greater damage per cast of higher level destruction spells don't amount to a hill o' beans because their efficiency gets progressively worse as well. The base cast cost of Firestorm is over 16 (Sixteen!) times the base cast cost of Fireball, for 2.5x the damage at point blank. That works out to Fireball being 6 times more efficient on the mana bar for the damage it deals than Firestorm. Furthermore, point blank for the fireball is basically wherever the projectile hits whereas the point blank range for Firestorm is "Pulverize The Squishy Wizard With My Big Meaty Warhammer While He Tries To Rev The Spell Up" range

And even NOT considering Magicka (Assuming you free spells by Enchanting), its boring and imbalanced to spam free, weak destruction spells. Its much more balanced/fun to cast higher powered (but still expensive) spells to dispatch said foe

I do not care for just damage.
We need options with spell creation and old spells.
It is tedious, there should be lower magicka cost because you should not need enchanting to make magicka viable at higher levels, it should help improve you should not need it.
Balance means limits, I want options I want to be limited by my own will power and I can limit myself, right now we are very restricted we have no options as a mage.
As we increase in power we have to use the same spells over and over for a magic build to work.
Oh yes will spell creation w need to the option to delete spells.

balance...single player game....ok

It's not destruction that's the problem, it's your style of play. I played a 20 lvl destro mage, totally perked out, didnt skill in anything else, and pwnd.

If you want more skills, you better figure out how to live longer with them.

Migicka. LoL. Ever hear of staffs? Scrolls?

- Warriors use brawn
- Thieves use stealth
- Mages use intelect

Its possible to reduce magicka cost significantly without removing it entirely.

Get Archmage robes and enchant necklace, ring, and forehead jewelry with 25% fortify destruction, the result will be 5% of original mana usage, which is plenty. This only requires enchanting, no alchemy required.

If magic svcks compared to melee, what's the point of putting it in?

It's not just Destruction that's messed. Apparently Bound Sword teaches you loads more about Conjuration than summoning a Storm Atronach, even at high levels. Woo, grinding to get Conjuration anywhere useful. Ward burns through the aforementioned agonizingly-slow-to-regen magic bar and is basically useful for approaching one (1) mage to hack him to pieces with melee... if you manage to get it up in time. Otherwise, the enemy mage continually hammers you so you can't get the ward up to any appreciable charge level. Instead of magnitude, Turn Undead only affects duration (whooptydoo, duration... gonna help a lot to run off that mid-level draugr). The armor spells can't compare to a fully fleshed out suit of mundane armor and the Dragonskin spell doesn't last long enough. Two of the three ward constellation standing stones for the Mage have huge drawbacks to them; none for the Thief or Warrior have drawbacks.



Does stave usage boost the skill associated with its effect? Do scrolls?

The magic system is horrendously designed with a complete lack of options.
Most of it seems like an after thought.
It feels like its just basically a foundation to a system and that is it.

A staff and a scroll should be more useful you should be able to enchant each one.
You should also be able to use a staff as a blunt weapon and a magical staff.

I can decimate the entire army of Draugr that with only a few getting close enough to hit (while the Companion is getting knocked around and crawling on the floor)
I prefer using a spell in the left and a sword in the other and the spell does most of the work, quite handily in fact.

0cost gear does not require enchanting. So I dunno wth you're on about. My conjuration mage found himself a set of peerless conjuration items. (Though honestly why bother with going for 0? It's far simpler to reduce things to single digits or low double digit costs and let magicka regen actually do it's job)

My sorceress doesn't bother with followers(They're in the way). Instead I make sure everyone gets a taste of chain lightning(which when dual cast staggers each target) and then laugh at them running at me when they step on my rune then eat more lightning and usually they're all dead before they get halfway to me. For anything potentally strong enough to survive a few spells i just throw in a frost spell for the slow and done.

The only things wrong with magic is many of the effects are too situational(Illusion spells especially.),Perks have vauge effects(most of them you can't tell how useful they'll be till after you've taken them and in some cases still can't.) Some perks are limited,The atronach perk for example only affects atronachs but you can learn a spell to summon dremora(guess the dremora is just outta luck huh?), the elemental damage perks don't actually affect ALL spells.....elemental cloaks/runes/ and 'magic walls' seem to be unaffected by the perks unless they've patched it recently. The fear perks boost fire spells too since they have a secondary fear effect....but you wouldn't know that unless you read it somewhere or just happened to discover it. Made me wonder if alteration perks would affect frost spells(Since they have a paralysis secondary effect)...haven't tried that yet but if it does it'd mean shock got screwed royally.

There's no 'weakness' effects that can be casted so the elemental weakness alchemy effects are useless to a pure mage....which is the character who most needs them.

Another thing...People are focusing too much on magic's spike damage potential and not enough on it's DPS potential.....A flame cloak+wall of flames+a rune spell makes a pretty solid defense area and then you can throw out more spells at will and when the enemy rushes you they rapidly burn to death if the rune explosion doesn't finish them off and that's not taking into account the potential fear(Or paralysis/disintegrate if you choose to use another element) if their HP is low by now.

There are still(some) interesting ways to combine spells if you can get over the 'zomg must dual cast for most effect!' way of thinking. Destruction mages only actually need to dual cast when they need to stagger something....which really is only when it's about to attack.

(Note:I like overkill. I also like the magic walls for some reason....So all that probably isn't necessary.)

It's probably easy to see why I say followers are just in the way but really they are they're a shackle holding back your potential. If you bother with actually caring about their well being you wouldn't have brought them in the first place.In general a mage is a weapon of mass destruction. You wouldn't put your friends in the path of a weapon of mass destruction would you? But hey cloak spells don't hurt followers, Also of note:Since they fixed resistances atronachs are immune to their own elements like they should be now.....So you can summon one and not worry about it dying to your magic.....though you may piss it off and if you really REALLY insisted on bringing a tag along why not learn healing spells if you care so much about keeping them alive?

I use a mod... "Balanced Magicka". It rearranges the expertise perks for Destruction to, instead of reducing cast cost, stack more and more damage boosts (and cast cost for balance) to *all* destruction effects. It counters the increased drain on magicka by boosting the absurdly low 33% cap on combat magicka regen to a rate that's actually practical beyond one opponent. And it also rebalances the dual cast so its boost-to-cost ratio is more practical too.

I still have to wait a bit after spamming heavy destruction spells... but not to the point where Destruction becomes useless against anything beyond one similarly health'd creature to yourself. And there's also still some magicka left over for other stuff too.

Played my mage to lvl 60. Used master alteration spell for protection yielding 80% damage negation. With stability perk and dual casting lasts for 99 seconds. Plenty. Combine with ethereal shout and you can recast if you want to during combat without getting interrupted. Usually had two dead thralls with me and used destruction when I felt like it. Sometimes I used paralyze and wall of flames. Sometimes go solo and use invisibility spell to get into the middle of the room then ethereal shout followed by master level aoe destruction spell. Blamo! Hehe. Then for the fun of it, I would use dragonhide and dual bound swords. Who needs an armored up Nord, I could just do it myself!

Now I am playing an archer / 1h / light armor / smithing / enchanting type. Also fun. But I miss my mage.

No.

Why tho? I'm not saying to use staffs and scrolls to level. However if you have some beast mobs coming down on you, you dont need to use magicka.

Yeah, I'm with you. I don't like the nerfing they did to magic. But it is still powerful. Don't use destruction. Just like in Oblivion, I never level Destruction to master or even expert. It just get's you killed, in Skyrim and Oblivion. My robe wearing, no combat skill mage maxes out Illusion and Conjuration. And is MORE powerful than my warrior or my rogue types. Don't need armor, if you are never spotted.

I dont understand this conversation. I beat the entire game with firebolt and 6 perks in destruction, at level 67. Just run around stun locking things so they can't even get up to swing at you. dual casted firebolts I take out bandit muarders in just a couple casts and send them flying into walls, I leveled it up to 100 on my second playthrough and stopped using it because it was too easy killing everything so quickly when they didn't have a chance at hitting me, made level up any armor skills hard too.

Novice Destruction, Apprentice Destruction, Dual Cast, Impact, Augument Fire 1 and 2, Master Destruction Robes, Mage's Circlet 70pts, necklace of 50 magic, 650 total magic.
Only thing I ever had trouble fighting was Alduin and I just had to duck and cover.