Any tips? I'm ranking up conjuration and destruction. I get my ass kicked by other mages and warriors are annoying because they keep bum rushing me. Also what level should I be to do Labyrinthian? I'm doing the College of Winterhold and I played the Winterhold questline on my last save file as a Warrior (just to get the achievement) and I understand why it would be hard for a Mage.

Stay away from destruction. It's good at first, but like every Elder Scrools game, it begins to feel VERY weak. Instead, keep a sword in one hand (one can easily create swords that do over 250 damage per swing later in the game) and focus your spells on restoration, conjuration, and probably alteration to buff your magic resistance. Also, invest in enchanting. Once you get access to certain spells, you can make entire schools of magic cost absolutely nothing to cast.

So should I still invest in dual casting for Destruction? Also what does dual casting on Conjure _______ do?

Dual casting makes up for it. the interupt is great. I've got no problems with magic in this game aside from i'd like to see more spells.

As Kitchenman says, dualcasting does make up for Destruction's weakness. But the way that I look at it, that is just one more perk that is put into a tree that does the same thing as an enchanted weapon. Of course, it does have its benefits, such as its range. But if a bow, sword, or axe can do the same amount (if not more) damage, without expending the magicka, that is magicka saved. You can use that for conjuring, healing, paralyzing, turning invisible, etc. But that goes back to my previous post regarding the 0 cost for a magic school trick. You could make any destruction spells cost nothing. But in my view, a properly smithed and enchanted bow, sword, or any weapon has a greater potential than destruction. And without having to repair weapons, you can reliably deal more damage. That's the thing. For a while, I played pure mage. I quickly found that I was chugging too many potions, and that a spellsword build was better for a Breton.

Conjuration allows you to summon creatures (meatshields) to fight for you. At master level, you can summon dremora lords, and with the right perk, you can summon two of them. In my view, conjuration (along with restoration) are the two best schools one can invest in, with Alteration in third due to its defensive perks.

Don't listen to that guy.

You should be leveling destruction. At early levels a good strategy is to summon a creature, fear/frenzy/calm an enemy and then DPS the rest.

Destruction is a perfectly valid school of magic in Skyrim. People who think it's weak are relying on that alone for damage and just run out of magicka too fast. On my Breton Mage, I specialized in fire magic and had no trouble at all because I also conjured up atronachs regularly to help with distracting the bad guys and adding to my already considerable damage (Impact is SICK.)

Okay, okay. I honestly have no idea why everyone here likes destruction so much. I mean, yes, dualcasting does make it much more powerful, but there is a limit on its power. On top of that, it draws aggro from enemies. That makes the mage a target, which is generally a bad thing. Of course, stun would definitely make that better. However, a couple of Dremora, I feel, goes much further than any destruction spell. I've leveled both up to 100, and thus far, that is what I have found. Granted, I almost always used one handed casting. Furthermore, although I am not a big fan of it, sneaking will always do the most damage. I've seen players one shot ancient dragons via this method. I have never seen this done with a spell from the school of destruction. My point is that there are plenty of ways to achieve insane amounts of damage with a weapon, and it's possible to kill even an Ancient dragon with one hit, simply with the base damage of a weapon. The damage from destruction can only really be modified with perks, or using a ton of alchemy poisons and potions on a target before going into a battle. Destruction may be pretty, but there are far better ways of allocating perks. I am also not saying that destruction is "weak." It can be quite powerful, in fact. But there are more utilitarian ways of achieving the exact same results.

The nicest thing about Destruction is that unlike dual Dremora (which are pretty freaking awesome, I'll admit) you have AoE damage that takes out large groups. The worst thing about it is that friendly fire is entirely too easy.

A very good point. And one cannot really achieve that with melee. I will concede that, if a bunch of enemies are clustered, destruction can be considered dominant.

You've stated you want to play a Mage and you're getting advice on how you should use a sword. As long as you play on moderate difficulty levels and choose the right perks, as well as use Destruction spells that isnt resisted by hostiles (Frost on Nords, etc) you will be fine. If you use a mix of all magic, like a mage would do, it may even become too easy.

*sigh* There are all types of mages. A mage doesn't just have to use spells. What I am saying is that one should focus on other schools of magic before destruction. I play level 81, master difficulty, and I regret putting perks into destruction, when they would have been better off being placed in, say, restoration, illusion, or a combat skill. People are saying that I am incorrect in my opinion that destruction is not worth it, meanwhile I have invested in dual casting, and placed a perk in augmented flames. Now, I could have increased my fire damage by another 25%, but that wouldn't really be worth it. In tougher battles, my sword (which does 336 damage per swing with my armor effects/enchantments) can kill boss level creatures in as little as 10 swings (based off of an Ancient Dragon). A fully charged, two handed fireball, would have a tough time killing even a Dwarven Master Centurion in that many hits. On top of that, doing so drains my magicka incredibly fast (I did not invest in the perks to decrease the cost per spell). Although it may seem counterintuitive to tell a person who wants to be a mage to use a sword, if he is anything like me, it would most likely help out in the end. You can focus perks on other schools of magic, such as conjuration, or put perks into alteration to buff your magic resistance, which is what I did. Even in Oblivion, where you could actually make your own spells, most people, myself included, found destruction not to be worth it. The same, for me at least, is especially true in Skyrim, where you cannot even really level up your destruction damage to meet an enemy's level. The reason as to why I am telling him this is so that he doesn't get completely overwhelmed at a higher level. If he wants to play a pure mage, then he can thrown my advice right out the window. If he is open to the idea of using magic to bolster other areas, such as combat or stealth, then this info might be useful to him.

i think i did labrynthian on one character at about level 16. mage questline was the very first thing i did, so i wasn't that high. i was on expert or master, don't remember.

conjuration is practically essential as a mage. destruction spells eat magic very fast and you need something to distract the enemies and take some hits. unless you're carrying an absurd amount of potions, the mana regen is so horrible you will always be out of magic if you only use destruction, so conjuration is crucial to buying time.

try stealth. cast a spell from range undetected, hide and repeat. the enemies will search the location you were at when you cast the spell, so you have to move after hitting them.

level enchanting as soon as possible. while i find magic to be extremely boring when it's free, destruction desperately needs cost reduction to make it viable, especially against groups and tough bosses. combine free magic with the impact perk (i will never take impact perk again) and combat becomes trivial instead of something exciting and challenging. use both at your own risk.

I too am playing as a breton mage. However, Im at lever 24 and I just got my conjurationto level 100.

The cojuration is easy, if you dont mind exploiting a little. (SPOILER) Just cast soul trap on a dead body then wait one hour for your magica to rechage.

Destrution is useful, especially if you get the dual casting perk, and the impact perk.

Also, you will want to stick with one specialization in destuction. For the time being atleast.

Also get some summon atronach spells, after a while you dont even have to fight if you use them well enough.

Well if you think about it... attacking the guy who does the most damage, shooting fireballs and ice storms at you is what I do when im fighting mages... why shouldn't it apply to enemies?

What you need to do is level up conjuration to 100 for the dual perk as quickly as possible. Get the soul trap spell, find a dead critter somewhere than just spam soul trap on it. You should get 100 in half an hour to an hour. Than level up alteration and get paralyze. Your next step is to get the 3 Become Ethereal words. You now are in God-Mode. Any encounter all you have to do is summon your two lords, paralyze anything that comes close to you and if it becomes too crazy for a minute just pop your ethereal shout while your pets destroy everything around you. You will never need to buy another spell or level another skill, not even enchanting.

I find Destruction to be greatly inferior to conjuration, to the point that it's actually pointless to do any damage once you've got anything better than Flame Atronach (which is quite good at low levels). Especially after Twin Soul is available, and use Conjuration Dual Cast

Especially if you're fighting in a Nordic ruin (which usually sports small rooms and lengthy narrow tunnels). Conjured Atronachs (or raised zombies, even more if you have followers) will take up space, and it's almost impossible to shoot without striking allies. Not to mention the high magicka cost making it pretty much a must to have enchanted gears to reduce magicka cost as much as possible.

Btw, playing as a "Mage" and wield sword (even battleaxe) is a perfectly valid situation. Afterall, guess where does the Bound Sword come from?

Not from a forge, that's for certain

Once you get to master destruction spells make sure to get the slow-time dragonshout. master spells are great, but they take some time to cast and slow-time will give you that time.
And always get the Impact perk along with dual casting. With that you can stun-lock even giants and elder dragons even with the first cheap missile-type spell.
If you want to deal big amounts of damage fast, then combine weakness-to-something poisons with the marked-for-death dragonshout before peppering someone with lightning bolts.

Also: The damage of staffs is not influenced by the destruction skill but the amount of shots you get out of them is. Dual wield staffs for spamming fireballs or whatever when out of mana.

destruction svcks, damage too weak.
conjuration tree is buggy unless youre not already playing with 1.4 beta patch. Ash piles are permanent and will kill your save game size (and the game with it) sooner or later.

Consider using frostbite to stop the warriors from rushing you. That should work very well even though many enemies have frost resist. If they can't catch you then taking a little longer to kill them is fine.

No offense meant to Udey, but this is a terrible idea. Stick with fire for cheaper damage, and pulse the maintained spells like flames and wall of fire for maximum effect. Holding down the button will net you less damage than burst fire. Use lightning for easier targetting with one-shot spells, and against fire resistant enemies like Dunmer and fire dragons. Undead are weak vs. fire -- exploit this weakness, because there are a LOT of undead in this game, and destruction spells don't do a huge amount of damage on their own, especially on higher difficulty settings.

If you decide to keep using destro as you gain levels, you will need a backup staff for when you run out of magicka (and you will), and not getting atronachs and using them is just gimping yourself unnecessarily. USE ATRONACHS. Think of fire nachs as archers, frost nachs as bulldozers, and storm nachs as both. All of the atronachs have a damage aura appropriate for their element that does not hurt you, but will do 10 health/second damage to your enemies. If you plug a slender hallway with a fire atronach between yourself and a horde of charging undead, its damage aura will dish out more pain than its firebolt attack, and you might be surprised at how fast even the tougher Draugr fall to your little minion. Help your nach survive by shooting your enemies with spells... a fire atronach is immune to fire, so you can cast a flames spell through it (Flames is AoE) to help roast the enemies that are stacked up behind it.

-Loth

Don't listen to the guy saying destruction is weak, he is just terrible using it. I play on master, on xbox, as a pure mage and at the moment I'm level 56.

I just wrote how I play my character on this thread > http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1339716-pure-mage/ so if you are interested, scroll down and find my long comment.

I can take down draugr deathlords without to much hastle dual single casting (not dual casting) 100 damage incinerates. You can't match those numbers without using crafting heavily with melee. Destruction is not weak, it just has a huge magicka cost, which I use enchanting to reduce. I have around 90% destruction reduction, and that lets me cast a good few spells.

Again you are stating one thing, and actually arguing for another. Vampirism, enchant, restoration != destruction.

Me?

Not at all, I could quite happily clear out a dungeon using destruction as my only combat skill, at level 56 on master, because I know what I'm doing. I don't see the point of limiting myself to doing that though, I have levelled up all the mage skills so I use them all.

There is no logical connection, i can clear a dungeon using fists only. From physics, Work= power/effort. What you are looking at is plain power. What should be looked at is work, to estimate the efficiency of any given strategy. This is a problem with all destruction fans, they all ignore the effort needed or time spent to get it to work adequately.