Magic isn't underpowered, Destruction is. To fix it, all Bethesda has to do is make destruction spells scale and/or bring back spellmaking.

"Destruction magic is fine, just dont go burning down any buildings"
Random Guard

Destruction magic's fine - just don't go burning down any bill-dings

No it isn't.

my best tip is to focus on story and RP and balance your game around it, the game i enjoyed most so far was playing the Priest of Mara.
one hand mace darkelf, i walking only with priest cloth and did only quests i feel is against evil. (like fallout 3 cowboy sheriff cloth i play from start to the end)
i pick my talents as i see its fit for a priest and this was so much fun!

btw your ice form shout that come from the first mage main quest can be very cool for mana break. 10 second freez to every one near you!.

I see a little amount of users actually lying about mages. Mages ARE overpowered. My test is with 1.3.10 and yes they are.

I am playing in normal difficulty just to enjoy how the game was made. Changing the difficulty should not matter for what I am about to explain.

As a warrior, fighting dragons, giants or dragon priests (bosses for that matter or big amount of enemies) is very tough. You have to block, drink potions, run away, avoid spells, use the environment to your advantage, etc.. Basically you need a strategy to work against different enemies and battling bosses is no easy picnic.

As an archer, sneaking and having A LOT of skills in archery and sneak will help you overcome some enemies but battling bosses is still difficult. Fighting enemies, specially mages and other archers is difficult. If they go in groups then an archer will most of the time run away or keep a very high distance to attack or watch their attacks. Basically, an archer has to be more careful than a warrior and not only that but traps tend to kill it quickly.

This is the experience for a warrior from level 1 to 42 and an archer from level 1 to 35.

Now lets talk about mages and the "not overpowered"

My brother started playing skyrim. I told him to play mage since I already had the other two. At level 10 he was killing very strong enemies like they were crabs. They could have been chickens for all they mattered. He could throw 2 or 3 fireballs and heal at the same time. 5 seconds later you could see 3 enemies dead and he was full health.

After level 20 it was ridiculous to see him. He could go against a dragon, a giant a huge pack of humanoids, a dragon priest, etc.. with one hand in a healing spell and the other one with a fireball or lighting. He can kill any dragon quickly and without any much effort. Correct me. without ANY effort. He even stood in the same spot he was shooting and if the dragon attacked he would just heal. 3 to 5 points in restoration and the rest in destruction and you are done. Top that with a 50% to 75% robes that grand faster magicka and you get a super overpowered mage. The mage actually can go anywhere, does not matter the difficulty, shoot fireballs like crazy and if they actually hit him he just heals like crazy and starts firing again the fireballs.

He is right now level 51 and the game is very easy. Going against a dragon priest or 2 dragons is a piece of cake. There is no difficulty. He can kill them the same as the crabs or foxes you see running around. Fun factor and difficulty = 0%.


This continues forever.

I actually started playing as a mage just to make sure. 2 days later at level 22 and I could go anywhere, fight anything and the feeling of scared over an enemy was not there. Look a giant. Giant dead. Look a dragon. 10 seconds later, dragon dead. Dragon priest... dead priest.. etc..

For what I have seen after a little more than 100 hours of playing is that yes, mages ARE overpowered. Whoever says otherwise is lying to prevent skyrim for patching this evidently known huge bug. This existed in Morrowind. This existed in Oblivion. In Skyrim the mage should once and for all be leveled to other ways of playing like warrior or archer.

And on the same note. Enemies should be somehow immune or have a resilience level to magic in general. As it looks a dragon priest can take 4 to 5 powered fireballs but as an archer or warrior you have to pray to kill them with less than 30 hits. A mage should be weaker to physical attacks. A mage should be weaker to poisons or arrows. Maybe not much for magic spells but at least not make them so easy to kill anything. A level 20 mage can take a whole city if they wanted to.

If the 1.4 or following patches could solve this. Or if the Pluto mod could attack this problem, the fun factor and the difficulty in knowing an enemy has to be taking more seriously than others would take Skyrim to better critic responses. I for one make several critics about the lack of AI for several mobs that eventually do not see or take into account if I hide behind a rock and start shooting like crazy or for example I attack an npc and run away. Heal myself and come back to see that the health of the attacked npc is the same as I left. This way I can kill them slowly. Takes away the reality of it and the fun. A tough enemy should be tough. Making the player think of ways to defeat it not just "attack, run away, heal, come back, attack, repeat...".

Conclusion: Mages are VERY overpowered for anybody that plays with them.

what's with people magic is overpowered oh btw I'm using a mod. this stuff should stay in the pc mods forums I mean us vanilla users who have UP magic are getting made fun of

None of the methods of damage dealing are necessarily overpowered, it's the support skills that make them overpowered. Sneak and/or Illusion can make archery or one handed(dagger especially) extremely overpowered - Illusion on its own trivializes most enemies. Then there're the crafting skills which can increase the damage of any weapon or spell potentially more than full perks related to that weapon or spell do, and/or make spells cost nothing or give you practically infinite power attacks(stam absorb enchant).

Lol. Awesome!

Turn the mod off.

You read "complaints" that magic was too difficult and so you downloaded a mod which makes it easier. You give up all rights to complain about balance, since you never established a basis for comparison. No one cares about you, or your opinion. An informed opinion, comparing the two states of the game would at least be interesting, but you've simply blown it.

"I used to be an adventurer until I saw that destruction could do nothing but shoot myself in the foot.

Sorry Kostresa but I have to quote you because this is the most precise description of how I feel.

mages are called weak by players, that play on expert/master high lvl mages without mods

you play on adept, which makes it already easy, and also use an mod to increase your magic dmg.

of course you are strong... this thread is a total fail. how can you say mages ar eoverpowered, while playing with a mod?

Then something's not right. Dual or even single enchanted Deadric or even Ebony Axes will [censored] just about anything. I had a dual wield nord warrior and she was WAY better than my Destruction mage that's pretty much maxed out at level 46. My mage is a pure mage AND I'm playing on Master (did with my Warrior as well) and I find that Destruction magic scales extremely poor, if not at all actually. The payoff for using Adept, Expert and Master spells is virtually zilch. They don't do the damage that you expect high level spells like that to do and the svck up way too much Magicka to be effective. You end up quaffing potions left and right. Now, I have several items that raise my magicka regen rate through the roof when not in a fight, but as soon as you're being targeted by an NPC that regen rate gets turned to slag.

I've heard that an Illusion and Conjuration Mage is much more fun, but I've yet to get my Conjuration skill up high enough to make it count. At this point I'm only able to get the Frost Atronach. (I have 68 in Conjuration I think...?) At this point, my level 46 Mage, when she conjures a Frost Atronach, the Atronach pretty much gets demolished in one or two hits by the Bandit Leaders from newly acquired quests. So, really of no use other than to take aggro for a few seconds.

And I do have to agree with some of the responses by folks. You're playing on Adept, you're using a magicka damage mod. What did you expect to happen?

to be honest this is what i read:

''have a mod, increases regen and the like on adept and its all way to easy''

i see it as you have two options:

1) upgrade to master difficulty
2) delete the mod and perhaps still upgrade to a higher difficulty.

infact i challenge you to: delete the mod and play on Master.

This


and this. When people talk about mages being underpowered, they're generally talking about pure nuker mages. I'm able to easily kill things with very little difficulty as a warrior or assassin on Master difficulty. I even backstabbed a blood dragon and killed it in one hit When I play my pure mage though, I oftentimes have to lower the difficulty to prevent me pulling out my hair.

You're wrong. Difficulty matters a heck of a lot. Health scales up at higher difficulties, that means it takes more spells to kill the bad guys. Weapons have tons of ways to scale their damage. Destruction spells? Just a potion type which lasts a minute and a perk that provides half the boost of weapons. This means at higher difficulties you'll be running out of mana a LOT and at higher levels you're damage won't stack up well compared to what non-magic users can do (especially if you toss in sneak attacks and such).

For what it is worth, then I was playing, just starting out on Master, I found one-handed weapons to easily outdamage Flames. So I have to disagree with your general assessment here too.

Seriously??? Changing difficulty shouldn't change what you're about to explain...???? How much sense does that make? You're bit***g everything's too easy, but yet you play on Normal? That is why it's called "D-I-F-F-I-C-U-L-T-Y"!!!!

Your whole argument is useless. Play on Master, don't wear armor, and then jump into Sightless Pit... then talk to us.





Abso-friggin-lutely. My one-handed Deadric War axes with a single enchantment r a p e d! Hell... Ebony and Glass as well.

Exactly! Without mods or at least enchanting you aren't going to be casting jack at high levels if you don't outright die from having to stand in place casting master level spells. These people have no idea what they are talking about and I sense bs frankly - or ignorance... You want to talk about "overpowered". Take a warrior or archer with all the perks, enchanting and smithing. THAT'S overpowered! It doesn't sound like he did any of that and yet he claims that playing such is "soooooo much more difficult" than playing a mage?! I'm also sick and tired of d-bags using MMO terminology in a SPG!!! There is no such thing as something being "overpowered" in a spg! There is only what YOU are comfortable with. Please stop using such terminology for this game.

Magic is not overpowered. You are using a mod to buff magic and complain about it, turn it off then you will experience the poorly done magic system.

For what it is worth, I use Better Magic (master/adept/etc perks increase magnitude or duration of spells and some other tweaks)*, Deadly Dragons on hardcoe (makes dragons and a few other creatures more deadly), tSSSSS (enchanting increases damage/duration of spells, potions decrease cost). Looked better to me than Balanced magic.

*Dual cast spells do 2.5 damage and cost 2.5 as much.

Though, honestly, all this has just emphasized to me that the game has some deep combat problems regarding resisting incoming damage. Largely, imho, stemming from the fact going from 0-20% of magic resistance or physical damage resistance is just as easy as going from 60 to 80%, but the results are massively different. This makes balancing monster damage almost impossible, imho. Balance it for the people at 60% resistance and those at 80% laugh. Heck, even 70% is noticiably different from those two.

Most of thew posts complain that destruction doesn'tscale; my complaint about destruction is that it gets stale, you stunlock and destroy, you use enchantments to lower costs. If Beth reversed potion fortifications with enchantment fortifcations and removed 100% stunlock chance (changed it to 50%-75% or some other arbitrary percentage) the game would be much more entertaining and balanced.

The comparisons are invariably Destruction versus 1H/2H/Archery, and you will never face someone else's character in game.

Destruction versus Skyrim? Different story. It's easy enough without mods, except that Destruction does not scale and therefore becomes somewhat tedious at high level and on Master difficulty (against a very few enemies with high HP.)