Understand I am not here to give you blatant issues without giving statistical calculations. Before coming here and saying that "your just not using Destruction right" Please understand the following stats and the reason why Destruction pales in comparison to it's counterparts. As well as how Destruction gets weaker as you level and enemies start to scale. Not to mention a warriors DPS is much greater than Destruction's, not by a little, A LOT.

One handed Perks: Armsman(100% damage), Bladeseman(20% chance of doing more critical damage(assume 100% extra damage, so equates to 20% damage increase), Dual flurry(35% extra damage) dual savagery(50% extra damage), Savage Strike(25% damage), Fighting Stance(25% more efficient power strikes). Oh, and they can also do power attacks, that about doubles their damage while they can do them.


Destruction Perks: Destruction(50% more efficient), Augmented Fl/Fr/Sh(50% damage), Dual Casting(20% damage boost, 25% less efficient.)

Culminating in...

One Handed: 400% damage, 1200% damage when using power attacks, and 75% normal stamina usage And did you know you can power attack with even one stamina?


Destruction: 180% damage, and 70% stamina usage.


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One Handed Novice Weapon Stats(first perk used): Iron Sword x2: 17 damage per dual strike with no stamina use, ~25 damage per dual power strike.

Destruction Novice Spell Stats(first perk used): Flames x2: 16 damage/second with 12 magicka/second. No power attack available.


Add a second perk, and we get this:

One Handed Novice Weapon Stats(first perk x2): Iron Sword x2: 20 damage per dual strike with no stamina use, 30 damage per dual power strike.

Destruction Novice Spell Stats(Novice Destruction, Dual Casting): Flames x2: 19 damage/second with 17 magicka/second. No power attack available.


Now, let's jump to the endgame, and no enchantments(single skill only.)

One Handed Mastery Weapon Stats(All Perks): Daedric Sword x2 (100 damage per hit, 300 damage per power strike, power strikes now take 75% of previous stamina and stamina meter is much larger. Assume 500 stamina(most points into stamina) Assume 10 power strikes before depleted: Total damage before depletion: 3000 damage, then damage drops to 100 damage per second)

Destruction Mastery Spell Stats(All perks): Lightning Storm Dual Casting (112.5 damage per second, 59 magicka per second. Assume 500 magicka(most points into magicka), lasts for about 10 seconds, for 1125 damage. Magicka regenerates at 3% per second, base, resulting in 28.125 damage per second once magicka is depleted.)


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Now Include Support Skills(Armorer, Enchanting, Alchemy), but all separate(to avoid absurd alchemy/enchanting stacking)

One Handed Boosts: Legendary Daedric Sword+Smithing= 75% damage boost = 175 base damage, 525 power attack damage. + Alchemy = 30% damage = 220 base damage, 680 power attack damage, + Enchanting = +75% damage = 370 base damage = ~1.1k power attack damage.

Destruction Boosts: Smithing: None. 112.5 damage per second. Alchemy: +30% damage, = 146.25 damage per second, Enchanting = zero magicka cost, making this damage perma.



Final Conclusion, with all forms of enchanting:

One Handed: 370 constant damage, ~1.1k power attack damage every ~3 seconds. Average: 613 damage per second.

Destruction: 146.25 damage per second. No power attacks. 146.25 damage per second.


Final Conclusion, without (possibly broken) enchanting:

One Handed: 680 damage for 10 seconds, followed by 211 damage, with 680 power attack damage, average 367. With stamina potions stabilizes at 680.

Destruction: 146.25 damage per second for roughly six seconds, followed by ~28 damage per second indefinitely. With magicka potions, stabilizes at 146.25 damage per second.

As for people who cannot understand numbers-

"Numbers are the tools sane people use to argue. Others use knives. And nobody uses destruction magic, because it svcks and there are knives laying around.
Knives>Destruction magic. Bandits get stabbed and feel hurted. Bandits get fire balled and get upset, and stab you with their knife. Magic needs magic to work. Magic makes less damage than their was magic originally! Bad guys have many times more not dying than I have magic, so I stab them with my knife, which does many more damage than fireball! And knives only need sharp to work, and knives are always sharp, but can also always be sharper.Why throw fireballs at bad guys when there are so many knives laying around? Also there are also Fire Knives!

This is what happens when I argue without numbers. You see? It's terrible."


OK before you post saying how many topics there are of this, I must reiterate the idea of repetition is important to prove a cause.

Destruction is nothing compared to Archery and Melee.

Now you might say that Destruction is "overpowered" or that its absolutely fine regarding effectiveness and stop posting threads like this.

However, times that miniscule the actual effectiveness of this skill is being shunned and after 6 patches and Dawnguard most likely wont do anything to recompense for such damages that were sustained.

But again, like insensate Nords, you will all argue that the magic system is not flawed. Most will say that Destruction isn't that bad, or its simply exaggerated in terms of usefulness.


But I take this quote from someone.

"Actually it IS that bad. It is a spell school that offers nothing other than the ability to deal damage. No utility at all, unless you want to count the "side effects" of certain spells like draining magicka or stamina, which BY THE WAY, you are more likely to just straight up kill your target rather than deplete his stamina/magicka reserves. And who uses frost spells when a majority of the enemies you will fight have large amounts of innate frost resistance. Anyways, this is a school which offers only the ability to deal damage, and yet, schools of magic such as conjurations, or my favorite, illusion, offer the ability to do way more damage and have some killer utility applications as well. The dremora twins have FAR more damage potential than a destruction mage with limitless magicka. They keep going until their time is up or you're out of targets. Oh, and lets not forget that they'll take all those hits for you. A frenzied briarheart can wipe out an entire forsworn encampment by himself, and if it was one of the caster briarhearts, possibly more if you could lead him to them. And then if he ever did set his eyes on you, lol calm and walk away. You can't do that with destruction. You'll simply be left out of magic running around a table wishing you picked something other than destruction to hurt things with.

Now you could go into the whole enchantment thing, but that's putting a band-aid on an amputated arm. Even with 0 cost destruction spells, it does less damage than those other two schools. If there were damaging restoration spells, I have full confidence that THEY would be better than destruction spells. Hell, they'd probably have cool side effects like healing you to boot.

Wait a minute, isn't there like a guardian circle restoration spell that fears and burns undead while healing you? "


Enchanting to help you as a mage? Slightly?

"at 100 skills and perks it costs 101 mana.
your talking about a legit ENCHANTER.
yes, for a master enchanter it can be quite cheap. Still terrible though. Because now i can make +160 damage archery gear."


"Not only that, but why the [censored] do I even have to wear magicka cost reduction gear to be an effective destruction mage in the first place!? It blows my mind, so every mage in TES is basically has to rely on a crutch of stacking magical items to even be able to function well in combat? Seems odd, wasn't like that in Oblivion, and there certainly isn't a precedent for that in the lore. "


"And it's excruciatingly slow and ineffective compared to other playstyles.

I think we all here recognize it is possible to play as a pure destruction mage. But the argument being made here is that it's not fun, it doesn't feel powerful, it's not as good as other play styles, and Bethesda has done it right before in Oblivion but really messed up in Skyrim."

Make sure to read the OP before posting!!

Haven't I seen this before?

no

hmm interesting...

Most people agree that Destruction is quite lacking at the moment, I believe a while back someone actually posted graphs which showed that Destruction falls way behind. You have to quaff +Destruction damage potions or poison your enemies (lolmage) with a weakness to fire, frost, shock or magic to keep up.

All Bethesda has to do is make it so Destruction spell damage increases by 1% per skill point you have in Destruction. It would make it less tedious to play but wouldn't make it a facerolling experience like Archery + Sneak.

I dont think Beth realizes that Destruction pales to its counterparts, and we need to show them

Otherwise this problem would have been fixed in dawnguard

hmm

It's pretty obvious that Bethesda simply does not care about gameplay balance so I wouldn't hold my breath for improvements.

I think it is better to compare destruction with archery. One handed is not a fair comparison, as one handed needs melee contact which means an armour skill is needed (light heavy or alter), while a pure archery character is feasible. Also how many second does a duel strike last.

As to end game, remember the best destruction mages are never in a world higher than level 20. One handed character with smithery enchanting armour and all other stuff are in much higher level worlds.

Cloaks are runes are useful. When in dangerous areas always have a cloak on, I like frost cloak as it slows down melee characters. Cast runes before combat. (Edit: I mean always have cloaks on when out of combat in dangerous areas, when your cloak runs out in combat you aften have better things to do.)

It is just one of those facts of life, if you want to be a powerful mage, you need to focus on your art to the exclusion of all else. Played right they are extremely powerful.

Finally.

I think they are gunshy to tackle destruction because when you're talking about weapons vs destruction, many enemies in the game have a way to reduce melee damage. Not all enemies have a way to reduce magic damage. Remember, the idea above to give 1% boost per point ends up being a 25% boost right at level 1 for Dark Elves, and a 15-20% bonus for others. That would be like giving every newly created character in the game a melee damage boosting perk for free. And at low levels, Destruction is actualy pretty balanced. I made a character I kept at 1 one for 500 skillups and Flames/Firebolt works perfectly.

They should just add two perks to each "Augment" line, and lower the requires to 25/50/75/100 for each one, giving 25% boosts for each perk.

Really we just need spellmaking. And the touch, target, self kind of spells. And the damage per seconds. And more spells effect.

I've played my destruction mage for a couple weeks now, all the while on Expert difficulty. Until about level 20, I was able to beat up on everything easily enough. Slowly however, I started to notice that on some enemies, my fireballs just wouldn't do much at all. I had to start dual-casting and stun lock them.

The game is still playable, but I can see what people are saying.

Yes, you have, because the OP was just cut and lasted from another thread of the same name. I don't remember if it got locked because the OP kept bumping his own thread to keep it on page one or what, but it's recycled...and recycled more than once. The OP is just determined to make a lot of noise and keep this page one whether others choose to discuss it or not.

Let it die for a while, dude.

I don't even know where begin to start on this flawed math. Pretty much every perk you quoted has wrong numbers attached.

Your completely right about smithable weapons, the damage they do can far surpass destruction for regular use. This however is not a valid argument for why destruction is 'weak', I for one don't play the game with 200 damage weapons. I often play the game using destruction, on master and I absolutely never feel I'm too weak. If you really want to you can use poisons of weakness to magic + element, drink a fortify destruction potion and hit a dual cast thunderbolt for 3000 damage, but you don't need to.

Once you sort out the magicka problem, the damage is more than enough needed for master. I'll shove some maths in your face now, bandit marauders have the equivalent of 900 health on master, so that's 10 single casted expert spells (or 9 single casted perked incinerates), which you can fire off in less than 5 seconds, tested and proved.

Let's look at a draugr deathlord, they have around 1200 health on master (i'm unsure of the exact number), but they have a fire weakness and they are undead meaning the necromage perk boosts damage against them. You end up killing that draugr deathlord on master in three-four dual casted incinerated, taking mere seconds to fire.

The damage is fine, the spells fire incredibly fast, much much faster than shooting a bow. As you can fire the spells so fast, you can hit some very high damage numbers over time, more than enough for regular gameplay on master.

You also do not need enchanting to reduce the costs, sadly you do have to reduce the costs for high level gameplay. I'll quote a post from another thread where I offered tips on destruction:

finally someone with a good rebutle

But I completely agree with the 'why should I have to have fortify destruction gear to use destruction' point, it's a disgrace.

I'd much rather have a system where the perks and skill level is enough for regular use of destruction at high levels. Remove all the [fortify cost magic school] enchantments and replaces them with ones that boost the actual school, like melee and archery get.

Conjuration - boost summon time.
Destruction - boost damage.
Restoration - Increase spell effectiveness (wards, healing spells, turn undead etc).
Illusion - Increase the level the spell can affect.
Alteration - Increase the duration of the spells.

Then change the formulas to something like this:
Destruction cost reduction = 1.3 - (skill level x 0.01)

Then at skill level 100 you have 0.3 times the magicka cost, just an example. But they'd also have to reduce the cost of the spells as it would still be too high.

Bobjim made all those points on another thread, and they were all countered pretty well by another poster. Can't remember the thread for the life of me though.

It is however fact that you do need a support tree to make Destruction worthwhile, as it's the only damage-dealing tree which requires enchants to be effective in combat. No cost reduction enchants = two shot wonder. You NEED -cost enchants for expert spells, or else you're going to get screwed over. I shouldn't have to min-max to be decent in Destruction.

EDIT: I meant you first post here, not the one directly above mine.

Likey

They weren't countered at all, people just said bland statements like 'if you want to play on novice use destruction'.

I repeat you do not need any other skills for destruction to be effective, you can find sufficient items for cost reduction, you don't have to make your own. Read my above quoted post if you want to know where to find such items.

You are correct though, you do HAVE to have reduction unfortunately, you just can't play at high levels without it.