Be a full blown mage not simply a destruction mage and you will be ok. If all you ever did was swing a sword without wearing armor, using a shields, smith or enchant you would think sword kind of svck. Destruction is the same way. Make a couple of people fight each other while you and your summons hammer away with spells.

I'm currently trying a Mage that can't use destro at all. I use illusion conjuration restoration sneak and alchemy. Only lvl 2 though so it's still just a test

Actually, my focused Destruction mage kept his simple old Flames spell hotkeyed even into the 20s. Fully perked and dualcast, that was a very Magicka-efficient spell, great for finishing off opponents who were close to death.

I think a lot of peoples' problems with Destruction involves precisely that expectation: that your spells are 'useless' past a certain level. If that's true and you ditch your lower-level spells, then you're left casting Incinerate all day... and of course you're going to find that cumbersome and difficult to cast repeatedly in battle.

Part of the strategy (and fun) of playing a Destruction mage is knowing when to use your most powerful spells, and when to hold that power back.

It's similar to the strategy involved in playing a dual-wielder. Yes, your dual power attack is your most powerful option, but sometimes a quick slash is better for the given situation.

What difficulty level do you play? And what damage does your axe do? What's your armor rating?

That was my previous character, so i don't really remember details, but it was a legendary ebony. Initially played Adept, but raised it to master after i got tired of one hit killing everything. After that i had to hit them twice And of course that made destruction damage even worse. Which meant i didn't use destrcution apart from cloack spells, which meant my skill increased even slower than usual, which meant i didn't have access to higher level spells, which meant i was stuck with adept level spells whose damage was ridiculously outmatched by ebony weapons. A whirlpool of svck, really

Need to try another magic overhaul mod next time i play my spellsword character. And not use smithing

Magic is more than viable, it is extremely powerful.

However there appears to be a disconnect. Magic is not the same as destruction. Magic is much more than destruction.

This.
My magic character is more of a necromancer,I use destruction to make the first corpse then rely on conjuration to reanimate those corpses.
I could have chosen illusion to do the same thing that destruction does but destruction sounded a bit more necromancy-ish.
I use alteration and restoration as much if not more than destruction.
Destruction is just one of the many tools a mage has to use.

You don't even need destruction to play a pretty good Mage, frezny+atronach is good so far for mine, hell he just cleared halted stream camp by making the chief kill his own men, then summoning an atronach to kill him. I could also have used necromancy, but I like atronachs better

I would just like to say that many people "get this", but what some people are not "getting" is that some players would like to specialise in a handful of schools to RP a particular style of mage. Much like the way the NPC mages are. Trying to do this with destruction leaves many to consider it of a lower quality of gameplay when doing so due to the amount of backpeddling involved on higher difficulties.

Though that is not to say destro is not viable, its always been viable. It is just not as "fun" or has as high a quality of gameplay as other schools/styles.

The idea with magic in my opinion is to use more than one school to compliment the other, ie.
Destruction/illusion ect.

Have you played this style yourself? How would you fight a fire ancient dragon using this style?

For my non destro Mage I haven't started the dragons yet, but I assume maybe summon a atronach and hide. That is the only enemy I was worried about

EDIT: I might summon a bound bow now that I start thinking about it

There is more being then a mage then using destruction all the time which will become boring and not being all round mage.
Conjuration: Summon up something like weapons if you want still use melee. Also summon a atronachs or a zombie for distraction or help. With conjuration you can raise a npc you just killed and fight for you. Later on in you can raise the undead if you keep working on it. Also soul trapping in the school of conjuration.

Illusion: Is one of most power school of magic. Being a puppeteer for I as a player is fun. You can calm if you are a animal lover. Or you can calm a bandit who wants to you to pay a toll. You can cast a frenzy spell to one bandit and he/she fight who is near him/her as long they don't see you.

Alteration: If you don't want to wear armour but want protection alteration is the go. Cast Stone or Iron flesh before a battle and it just like wearing armour. But you can wear armour but there is a perk in alteration 'Mage Armour' that stone flesh is x2 stronger if you not wearing armour. You can go out there naked if you want to. Also cast it before battle.

Restoration: For the spell drinking wards that will refill you magicka so it last longer. As for restoration you can repel the undead.

What I done when I level up I only update magicka not the other two. So what my health is 100 all the time I have my stone flesh to protect my character. Stamina? Why my character a mage uses a sword or a bow.

This what I do. My chacater see bandits. Cast a the stone shield first. Then I go to sneak, my character sees five bandits so she cast frenzy so they fight themselves. She keeps casting frenzy spells until one left. Then she goes for the kill. Fire ball until dead.

My character sees a dragon. Stone flesh, fire balls and cover until dragon is dead. When using fire ball, time your shots, leave 2 to 3 seconds between fire balls.

Make sure bring potions with you for refill magicka and health. But I played in adept because it is 50/50. I went to hard core, too many sponges.

That what I done.

Your talking out of your ass, four fireballs = 240 damage+DoT. The damage is more than enough, 4 dual cast incinerates will drop a deathlord on master, it's magicka that's the problem.

Not as fun? This is completely subjective, I completely disagree.

I hate, hate, hate everybody's argument for lack of destruction scaling. "Oh, use these other skills like Illusion and Conjuration that beat the game for you without ever lifting a finger, then Destruction is good!"

No, Destruction is still bad, you aren't making destruction any better by throwing skills on top of it that literally do all the work for you. Hell, you're technically making Destruction weaker because you're throwing so much more skills into the mix making your max level higher, with destruction doing the same damage. Nice arguments, though, really.

Destruction is bad. Why? It lacks a sense of progress.

Your spells stay at the same strength as you level the skill up, while enemies continue to scale up, effectively making Destruction weaker as you level it.

Your weapons get stronger as you level their skills up, while enemies continue to scale up. Both are scaling properly and balance is achieved.

It's all about the sense of progress, feeling stronger the higher you level up, a very easy concept to understand. It's there in almost every RPG. Destruction lacking that progress is the problem here.

The damage is already high, 60 damage for the expert spells and 90 with the damage perks. You can take down a draugr deathlord with 4 dual cast incinerates on master, have you even used destruction?

The problem is clearly the magicka cost, it's ridiculously high, so you have to compensate for that when using the higher level spells. But arguing the damage isn't good enough is utter bull [censored], the damage is plenty.

Your argument about scaling is such a non-point, as you level destruction you gain access to higher level spells, which deal more damage. As you progress the skill the spells become less to cast, and perks that increase damage become available, but that's apparently not progress?

I sort of get what you mean about a lack of a sense of progress with Destruction.

Part of this is due to the lack of spellmaking and the really unforgivable lack of spells in general.

But I don't think people are complaining about a lack of a sense of accomplishment, really... they seem to be complaining that Destruction spells can't one- or two-shot that draugr deathlord on Master difficulty.

Well, that's hyperbolic - some people are complaining generally about the high Magicka cost inherent in Destruction.

Nevertheless, you can overcome those problems - without crafting skills - if you use some strategy.

Yes, it's true that, after a certain point, you don't need any 'strategy' when playing your uberdeathknight melee shredder. But if balance is screwed up, I rather think it's melee that needs some toning down, rather than destruction needing toning up.

Playing my pure Destruction mage, I found that I was able to pretty nicely match the scaling curve of my power to enemies' power by focusing almost exclusively on Destruction. I dedicated my perk points to Destruction, my level-ups to Magicka and a bit of Health, and just played it carefully. Managing your Magicka pool may not be fun for some players, but it's a strategic element of the game, especially when playing a Destruction mage.

Anyway, what I found was that I actually did get a sense of accomplishment as I worked up the Destruction tree and gained access to higher level spells.

How so? Destruction damage levels with the type of spell and perks + alchemy. Enchant just lowers cost... I personally think it should boost damage.

One hand, two hand, archery.... the damage levels with the weapon, skill/perks, + enchant + smithing + alchemy. Your damage doesn't just go up because you leveled up, it goes up with your skills and gear. Destruction goes up with your skills and spells(instead of gear).

The difference with the damage scaling is smithing + enchant.... that is exactly what the difference is.

I agree with you, and yes, it's quite frustrating when someone insults you for pointing out the obvious deficiencies. Destruction spells do scale, for enemies. Why not you? The scaling should happen in addition to the perks you can choose in the destruction tree. As it stands, you are forced to take them just to keep destruction from becoming obsolete entirely. This is not the case at all with physical attacks, with any grade of weapon. Those keep up nicely with your character's progress, before you invest scarce points in perks to improve them further.

I have no problem with someone taking on the extra challenge of becoming an effective destruction mage despite the issues. But let's not pretend there aren't any.

I think a lot of people are a little too harsh on destruction magic. Sure on Master difficulty it doesn't do a ton of damage but it does enough damage on Adept and Expert to work just fine. I love destruction magic and use it for many characters including pure mages, battle mages and assassin-mages. And I have had a blast with all of them. Sure if you don't get better spells and get gear to increase mana pool, regen speeds or spell cost reduction that its really quite useless but comon, you gotta commit to it and it works fine.

As mentioned by several people it works really good combined with other schools of magic ( I have a mage that uses all of them) and its great!

So just go for it.

Destruction should be scaled, it is awesome with any mod that scales it. Not all of us like jumping through hoops to play the game - just because the hoops are there doesn't mean it is just fine.

For those who don't know:

Hoop A: make fortify destruction potions and chug 1 every 30-60 seconds to put out a decent amount of damage.

Hoop B: Put massive perks into enchant, drop your cast cost to 0, and use impact to whittle everything to death.... slowly.

Hoop C: Pre-poison EVERY enemy you plan to use destruction on with a weakness to element poison (requiring a melee/bow weapon for the poisoning (or the poisoner perk) and alchemy perks to make a good magnitude potion).

Combine hoop B with either [ A or C ] / [ A and C ] and then destruction can actually hope to compete with melee.

**But melee users are not forced into enchanting, nor do they have to chug potions every 30 seconds, nor do they have to poison enemies to be effective... The difference is IF a melee or bow user does these things they become MORE effective whilst the destruction user just becomes viable.

This discussion keeps arising because of the obvious need for scaling. The problem is so apparent that every first time poster on the subject says the same thing. The hoops are there, but the threads keep coming because of a shortfall in balance.

Tell me how to make runes viable without scaling, because they aren't and there are no loopholes to make them viable. You know what makes runes viable and fun? That's right - any scaling mod.

Almost every negative comment I read about destruction says ,it either doesn't do enough damage or it cost too much magick.

The damage is there.
How many perks do you have to spend to get a war axe to do 90 damage per hit without crafting skills?

It's fairly equel to what you have to spend on getting a fire bolt to do the same.

The differance is that you can still swing your war axe even after your stamina is depleted and still do good damage.

In every rpg I have ever played a mage has a certain amount of magick.
Once that is gone you are left with nothing,that is the way mages are,or just magick in general.

How can we compare a war axe that you can swing an unlimited amount of times to a fire bolt that requires a set amount of magick that is fixed.
Sure magick regenerates over time,very slowly while in combat.

I don't know,but does an unenchanted,unsmithed war axe do the same amount of damage that a comparible fire bolt spell will do with the same amount of perk points installed?

@ angry orc-

How many perks to get a waraxe to 90 damage?
ZERO. You can smith and buff smithing with mundane shop gear and potions and you can wear one hand damage enhancers. You can easily get well over 100 damage without any perks spent on smithing or enchanting.

The discrepancy is there are boosters to damage for melee in perk and enchant and skill form and destruction lacks those

Unless you jump through the hoops i listed above.. "the damage" is -not- there.

Destruction alone will get you killed. Any good mage knows this. At least use Conjuration as well, as an atronoch or zombie can really work, even if only as a distraction. Restoration's important, as is at least some perks in alteration (even if you don't like the spells, the perks are must-gets).

Race also helps...

If you wanna go offense, I suggest High-Elf. More fuel for your fires.
If you wanna go defense, I suggest Breton. Innate 50% magic reduction.

Go for regen and school boosting with your enchants. Basically, get to the college, find your school of choice (in your case, it seems to be destruction), and get that robe on! Focus into enchanting as well, and get a ring and necklace to help you out.

OP's question: Is destruction viable now?

Answer: Everything but the OP's question.