Plus, mages don't need to wear robes, there's no penalty for wearing armor

Not quiet true, alteration magic penalises you for wearing armor by cutting the protection of skin spells massively.

Weapons scale alot and they get alot of "extra" damage through perks. Does magic get any extra damage through perks?

Also, people are arguing that mage needs to employ all schools of magic in order to do well. Let's do a comparison to melee then. Does a 1H+shield character need to bother with dual wielding, 2H weapons, archery, light armor AND heavy armor, all to do well?

Not really, I did very well with my thief using only dual wield + bows. I'm not even going to mention the armor since mages need to use robes just as melee needs to use either light or heavy armor. But again, light+heavy armor is increased via perks... what about cloth armor? Do you get any perks that increase the effect on worn cloth armor?

To me, being mage seems like alot of, as others mentioned, hoops to jump through just to be even close to competitive with straight up melee.

Magicka is eaten up too fast.
Need to rely heavily on crafting (enchanting / alchemy).
Need to use every school in order to be comparable.
No way to scale up the damage as there are no perks that alter it.

Overall it seems to be a gimped playstyle which is best used as an accessory to your melee build. Using restoration for healing yourself and companion, or fearing undeads and so on can be useful.... but by the end of the day the mobs die by the sword (or axe, or mace). Everytime I tried to use destruction the damage is pitiful. If I blow away half the magicka on destruction spells on a fairly tough mob they might be at half health... then I slam a mace in their face two times and they die, at nearly no stamina cost. Why would I go through all the hassle of having a dozen favourites slotted when a simple mace does a more effective job at killing the enemies?

The whole point is... why bother with the destruction when other methods (bows and melee) are clearly more effective and nearly effortless (compared to all these hoops you have to jump through to make the spells do their job properly).

And to be honest, sometimes when I'm fighting Hagravens, even with Resist potions active, it feels like their fireballs are doing twice the damage that my own does. What gives? Dunno if anyone can confirm or figure out how much damage they do compared to player fireballs... but would be fun to know.

Are you serious?
You are trying to compare a one handed shield character with destruction.
One handed and shield is two skills plus the armor you are wearing makes three skills.
Destruction is just one skill.
Many people including myself add other skills to destruction such as conjuration.
How is that any different than useing one handed,shield and armor.

I agree the cost of magick is alot,but the cost is easily reduced with perks and or other gear.

Which of these are going to "win" in a straight up comparison? Will dualwield outdamage destruction? ... will Light/heavy armor provide more defense than alteration?

. . .

Also, alot of us don't want to level Conjuration and Illusion. Both schools beat the game for you without you ever lifting a finger. Want to test it? Make a character that uses ONLY Conjuration. Dremora Lords and ranged damage pets will beat anything in the game for you. Illusion will make quick work of any room full of enemies without you doing anything. How does this change the state of Destruction magic? It doesn't. As for those saying they don't use enchanting/alchemy to make Destruction viable on Master difficulty. You're obviously not at a high level yet where enemies out scale your skill. You're supposed to get stronger as you level, but by the time you're in your upper 50s your Incinerates will only tickle the strongest of enemies. Nobody wants to sit there and whittle down a mob for 5 minutes straight, that's not fun, that's torture.

. . .

. . .

There are four main direct forms of damage in this game:

One-Handed
Two-Handed
Archery
Destruction

The first three not only scale up in damage as their corresponding skill level increases, as well as having a plethora of perks to boost their damage, but other skills benefit them greatly as well. Sneak allows them to do more damage. Enchanting/Smithing/Alchemy all allow them to do additional damage.

Destruction's means of boosting damage? Alchemy, and 1 perk per elemental type, damage unaltered by skill level.

I guess you can use heavy armor as a mage if you prefer to have no magicka regeneration, or no resists on your armor.

Anyways, if someone actually believe that Destruction is damage wise comparable or a viable option to melee weapons then I guess we shouldn't burst their bubble of happiness.

Would advise those people to actual try swinging a 2H or dual wield to figure out exactly how much more effective it is.

Also, several people have already gone over the numbers for destruction vs melee and proved that the damage is inferior.

I would have expected a mage to do significantly MORE damage than a melee at the cost of taking significantly more damage if getting hit, especially in melee. If you can two-shot something with an axe, I would expect the same mob to be oneshot by a fireball. But in this game it seems you throw your armor away so you can start using a mechanic that offers you less damage output.To me that is just completely wrong.

Sounds like a complete lose-lose scenario to me, or a win-win scenario if you go from mage and destruction to melee and actual armor.

None of those are needed, the only requirement is fortify magic enchantments for higher tier spells, which you can find without investing in enchanting. 90 damage spells do more than enough damage, considering how fast you can fire them.

You have no idea how effective destruction is, you clearly haven't used it for long, you just jump on the hate bandwagon blindly. How strong do you want the 90 damage expert spells to be? 150 damage? If it was 150 damage you could probably kill a deathlord in 2 dual casts on master, if they increased damage they would overpower it.

The problem is the magicka cost, not damage.

The cost is the problem, yes. But as I explained in a previous post, there needs to be a sense of progress. You get weaker as you level, instead of stronger. I personally do not lower the cost of schools by more than 50% so Magicka actually matters for me. I'm playing the game as it's supposed to be, not lowering the cost of spells to the point where every increase in magicka you ever used is rendered useless. So on Master difficulty, my magicka runs out much quicker.

As has been pointed out, Destruction is viable on any difficulty as long as you have alchemy in the early stages to support it and enchanting throughout. But the thing is, that doesn't apply to any of the other schools. Just taking the cost reduction perks in Illusion, Conjuration, etc. is enough to support the skill without having to grind the crafting skills. Before I started enchanting the daylights out of stuff with my destruction characters I was having to take along 40+ restore magicka potions per mission. That was ridiculous. If someone's saying they don't use any of the crafting skills to support their Destruciton mage on Master difficulty.... I have a hard time believing that.

40+ restore potions - that is ridiculous! What kinds of spells were you using, man?

I won't say I never used restore potions, but I found that by going slowly through dungeons, letting my Magicka recover, casting runes strategically, and using spells of varying Magicka cost in different situations, I was able to go very far without needing to chug. The exception would be boss fights, which only makes sense - I'm able to fling damage at a bad guy essentially with impunity and dodge his attacks easily, so it makes sense that the game would make me burn some of my resources during an intentionally tough fight.

And if all else fails, that's why you have shouts, scrolls, staves...

Thanks... so basically, unless you mod it, building a character around magic is pointless.

Welcome to hoop B bob. Aka whittling enemies via the stagger perk and severely reduced magica costs.

oh- 150 damage does not kill a deathlord on master, (let us remember that our damage rates are halved on master bob) not.. even.. close..
I have a great idea of how effective destruction can be (with and without a scale mod) clearly you are not in a position to judge me, and you just jump on the "destruction is fine" bandwagon blindly. I love ad-homenim arguments.

Asking us for what we would consider a set damage for the spells is missing the point again. Scaling is what is needed, scaled systems slide, you are just suggesting another cap - which is the current problem.
What is overpowered? isn't that for the user to decide with every other weapon form except destruction? Overpowered is not for you or anyone else to define, it is a reachable number for the single player to decide for any form of melee/bow damage, but not fixed damage destruction.

The main problem is the cost, with cost reduction equipment at high levels destruction usage is fine. But you shouldn't need those enchantments to use it at higher levels, the destruction expert spells cost the same as the conjuration expert spells, this is ridiculous considering you need to continually recast the destruction spells. I've never said "don't do anything to destruction" like you claim I have, I've said the damage is fine, a small boost wouldn't be the worst thing, but too much and it will be overpowered.

I think the best change would be to change the formula for determining the destruction spells cost, add a fortify destruction damage enchantment (so everyone's happy), limit fortify [magic school] to 50-75% and reduce the effectiveness of the stagger perk. But I'd rather they just increased the effectiveness of the perk to +35% then +70%, which I think is good enough combined with reducing the cost of the spells, any more and you will be one hitting everything on adept, I can't see how strong you want it to be.

Who says you can't make Destruction OP? 100% cost reduction and Impact. Done.

Who wouldn't love to see higher-level rune spells? But does the fact that they don't scale mean that they're useless? Not really.

I have already shown many times that mathmatically destruction is inferior to all other direct damage skills, this is fact. It the crux of why people dont like the damage and magica usage of destruction because its mechanics are terrible. Your point is that you dont want strong magic, and no one else should have it, thats it. There is no logic behind this statement. Mages are the definition of glass cannons, able to deal out insane levels of damage but fall to pieces when in physical combat. However in Skyrim is the complete opposite. The no longer dish out the damage that melee or ranged combat does, even WITHOUT exploitation of broken mechanics that weaponry has.

By every measurable way Destruction is inferior not only to combat skills but to other schools of magic. The thing the majority of gamers want is BALANCE not uberleetness. One way of adding that is to give the players the SAME scaling destruction damage that the NPC's already have.

So it boils down to;
1.) Desctruction isnt balanced proprely ~ PC vs NPC
2.) Destuction isnt balanced properly ~ school vs school
3.) Destruction isnt balanced properly ~ damage per magica
4.) Destruciton isnt balanced properly ~ Combat vs magic

So no Destruction magic is not OK.

And explain how a damage increase or scaling would negatively impact YOUR gameplay? If you dont want to do more damage you can easily handicap yourself as you clearly do with melee/ranged combat since you consistantly say that anyone using crafting skills to increase damage/resistance as they are intended to be used is exploiting the game.

Thanks... so basically, unless you mod it, building a character around magic is pointless.

Guess I'll stick to a regular hack'n'slash build with some accessory magic then.

Scaling is the least of Destruction's problems. Or I should say, Magic's problem in general. There is a serious lack of spell variety, and we can only hope that DLC will add new spells because the variety in this game a joke. When I heard they were taking away spellmaking in Skyrim, I was 99.99999% sure they would have a huge amount of spell variety to make up for it. Then I played the game and after a while I got all the spells and realized how lackluster Magic it is.

Magic is still my favorite thing in TES, and I will continue to make my main characters magic based, but Skyrim is very disappointing in that aspect, and everyone who has ever had love for the Magic aspect of TES will surely agree with me on one thing: We need more variety.

Agreed! The loss of Spell crafting is a massive loss, and made a lot worse by the fact that that we have very few spells. The lack of spell variation has led to another thing I dislike and that is a ABC spell system, where if one enemy is uses Ice you use fire. I think they did this to make up for the fact that magic has been butchered in Skyrim. If they did not want to put much effort into the magic side of the game, and it shows with the College of Winterhold as that is short, then they could have at least gave us a spell crafting alter. It would have allowed us to keep this magic system at least slightly fresh from playthough to next. I have found my self playing more battlemages then pure mages as the magic system is horrible and makes it hard to play a pure mage, just based on that fact my mage has to be dump as hell not to be able to summon a scamp.

I have a mod for scaling magic but it really is needed in the default game.
Spell crafting is needed, desperately!
A LOT MORE SPELLS! LOADS, never spot making them Beth as right now we have about 9 lol.

Because whittling down an Ancient Dragon with stun locks for 5 minutes is fun. The only OP part about Destruction is unlimited stun locking. The damage isn't OP, Impact is.