My first character was a mage who repeatedly had her head handed to her. Enemies would simply waltz through the flame, frost, or bolts and smack her down. I wondered why people on these boards were saying playing on adept was easy. That is until I rolled up an archer for my second character. She'd cut through mobs like butter - definitely easier.

Since then, any character I've rolled gets the first 10 perk points placed in old school combat skills - 3 or 4 each in sword and bow. The remaining points go into alchemy or illusion. Then I switch to primarily magic perks. That way my character can survive the "in your face" fighting at the low levels and live to become the monster mage.

Like others have said, destruction in combo with another school like conjuration or illusion can be quite helpful and more fun.

Pretty sure you can get by with just illusion. Conjuration as well.

I've played a destruction mage to 50, and you're crap until you get Firebolt, and once you get the second "Augment" perk, your effectiveness starts to deteriorate.

Destruction mages are probably the most fun mid-game, over level 15, and under level 35-40.

stop calling magic weak when you are only talking about destruction

Indeed.

I dont think you have to not kill people to be a pure thief.....you can always loot the body afterward.

I tend to agree with CCNA in that one school of magic will not be good enough in Skyrim, especially Destruction. IMO it is best left as a supplemental skill only...for instance; frenzy your opponents while you hide around the coner, or somewhere out of sight, then when you've only got one man standing, kill him/her with fire (or your preferred Detructo spell) Or, send in your conjured minion to do your bidding, and again, when the last man is left standing, kill them with your destructo spell.

I've tried using Destruction a my primary (not only) skill without the use of exploits and regularly got my ass handed to me (I had to abandon that strategy). When I run out of magicka and am left running for my life, my opponent literally has an endless supply of it. I've noticed this with shouts as well...ever notice how those draugr can spam the hell out of Fus Ro Da, and yet you can't? Yeah, it's pretty annoying, and pretty unbalanced, but then Bethesda aren't exactly well known for their balanced gameplay.

I've never quite gotten the complaint that magic is weak in Skyrim. I mean, I haven't played as a mage, but I've faced mages, and some of them were pretty damn tough. My next character will be a combined magic/arms character, so I suppose I'll see.

Have you joined the thieves guild yet?
They generally don't like you to kill people,allthough they do make exceptions.

npcs mages use different magic. actually high lvl frost mages do a whole lot more dmg than a playermage could ever do.

the problem is... npc dmg scales, player dmg not. only with perks and only for 50%. it should increase with every perk in novice, adept, etc. for like 15% to make the dmg keep increasing till you get 100 in destruction. mod of mine added this to the game and made destruction as the main dmg source a lot more viable. actually, i can easily play a mage that uses only destruction and alteration.

Yeah, this is the real issue here. It's not that magic is weak, but that all the other combat is easily more powerful. I used to agree with most of you guys that magic was fine, until I made a redguad ansei (basically a ninja that uses conjured weapons) and realized how extremely easy things were compared to my breton. I was demolishing enemies with my bound bow, meanwhile my breton was barely surviving with the stagger exploit.

Don't get me wrong, you CAN play as a pure mage, even without exploits, but if you put the same amount effort into the other combat disciplines things will be much easier by comparison. The different core playstyles (thief, mage, warrior) should be different, but one shouldn't be inherently better than the other. This, of course, is just my opinion but it's a problem I personally have.

NPC magic scales(like it should), PC magic doesn't(Like it shouldn't). Thats why they're really powerful(Like they should be).

Oh I know. But they always have a reason for it. Most thieves only cares about money, and wouldn't hesitate to kill UNLESS it would make getting what they want harder in the long run. Exceptions exist of course, but many thieves are not above
killing.

Edit:
This.

I have heard other people say that they believe enemies have endless supply of magicka, so I paid close attention to how enemy magic users fight. In my observations, I have found that enemies have finite magicka reserve. For example, take a magic using draugr, who summons a frost atronach and shoots frost spells at you. If you have a drawn out fights with him, you will see him summoning the first frost atronach, and after you kill the first one, he will summon the second one, after waiting for his magicka to regenerate enough. And after you kill the second one, it will take him a long time until he summons a third one. If you fight mages or dragon priests, sometimes they seem to have infinite magicka and casting fireballs nonstop. High level mages do have quite high magicka pool, but also they carry around powerful staffs. For example, an Arch Pyromage (EncWarlockFire07BossHighElfM) would have 659 health, 576 magicka and is guaranteed to carry a fireball staff. And he has ward absorb and is pretty good at using ward. I once had a very drawn out fight against one of the dragon priest. The fight was so long that he eventually ran out of charge on his fireball staff. Once that happened, his rate of attack dropped dramatically and was much easier to kill.

About Fus Ro Dah, they do seem to have significantly shorter cooldown than us. But Draugr Deathlords are pretty manageable despite that.

This is not true. Higher level mages get more damage because they are given extra damage perks in the destruction tree, and use stronger spells. Their damage does not scale. An arch pyromage has 2 perks in augmented flames and use incinerate and fireball spell. And of course, if you are playing in master difficulty setting, the damage is doubled again.

This.

If you work your Perks right, Magic is just as powerful as it should be.

Rubbish, you obviously haven't tried it or are playing on easy. Archery, just like destruction magic becomes less effective at higher levels. Just using base damage bows and the archery skill and perks is difficult, although i didnt pick the slow time and paralysis perks. You definitly can't one shot anything at high levels with just the basics.

Where do you get this belief that NPC magic scales? This is not true. You just unlock tougher enemy mages who knows stronger spells and have more perks. You can test this yourself if you are on a PC. You can look at it yourself in the Creation Kit or do a simple empirical testing. Dig up an old save, Level 20. And a new save Level 40. You can summon an arch pyromage using the command player.placeatme 1091CC And measure the damage. It's exactly the same.

Oh come on, people. I always play as a puremage, and destruction's always been powerful. ;P

No at certain points range npcs can really screw your life if you don't have a bow.

if your good with enchanting and have archmages robes you can have infinite magicka with 2 spell trees.

Of course it's more difficult if you dont have the slow time or paralyze perks......and just use regular bows.....

The point is, with the SAME amount of effort, other combat skills are more effective than destruction, because there are more ways to scale it, customize it, and improve it.

I used to agree with you, until I played a non-mage haha

Actually the point you made was "Archery needs no other skills AT ALL". The only way you can improve it to make it viable is using other skills, smithing, alchemy etc.

Augmenting destruction with alchemy makes it very powerful with just two skill trees.

I find it funny launching pots at bandits with telekinesis.

I used to be a bandit like you, til i took a plate to the knee.