Yes.

The difference is that destruction is a mage's main way of causing direct damage. It's not like making a warrior that only uses daggers, it's like taking away a warriors weapons and making him rely on his followers and shield.

Within five or so posts, all I'm reading is stuff about the costs. Does no one consider that people who use Destruction tend to increase their magicka, get the cost reduction perks, and use the Expert level spells when their skill is around 75? Those base costs are the costs for spells when your skill is 0--in other words, it can never be that high since your skill is always at least 15.

Myself and enough others on the forums can make it through the day just fine using Destruction alone on Master without spamming Impact or reducing costs to some ridiculous degree. It's not unbalanced or underpowered, you guys just haven't been using it effectively, which is fine because not every playstyle suits every person.

But you are wearing the Nahkriin mask and the Archmages robes (or at least you were the last time I saw you posting on these issues), so it is not like you are doing it with only your Destruction skill and the perks. The point here is that you need some cost reducing enchantments in addition to the perks to be viable. You can find those in the game world, or you can make them yourself. If you choose to make them yourself, the perks become somewhat superfluous. I'd rather see a 75% reduction from the perks and no cost reducing enchants (or at least more limited enchants).

Well, cost reduction is cost reduction... I'm not sure why it would make a difference where it comes from.

But I'm a player who likes to really focus my characters. I'm usually happiest when I'm working on no more than 3 or 4 skills. In context of a Destruction mage, that means I play a Destruction mage - no other magic schools, maybe a little Alchemy, some Enchanting (more for resists and regen than cost reduction), and the inevitable Speech increases.

What I have found when playing that way (on Adept, like I do with all my characters) is that the Destruction mage actually has the easiest time overall.

I have to repeat this, because many posters seem to miss it: Abusing Alchemy and/or Enchanting is not necessary.

(Well, maybe it is on Master. I wouldn't know, and wouldn't care to know. I like to play pretty close to DiD, and some fights on Adept are still plenty challenging for me.)

What is necessary is a change in approach. You can't fling Incinerate all day long. You can't run through dungeons and blast fools without any forethought. You have to enter combat warily, use your tools, and be careful with your Magicka.

The payoff is that you can deal a great amount of damage in a short amount of time at range.

Is that damage equal to what you can do with a ubersmithed, uberenchanted ubersword of min-maxing? No. Is it viable? Hell yes - and then some.

My impression, though, is that lots of folks use lots of skills in their builds, try to cast a Fireball, find out that it costs a lot, and say to hell with it. It's probably true that unperked Destruction is way less effective than unperked Conjuration. But you've gotta give it a fair shot before you cry about how much it svcks.

It makes a difference because the current system allows enchant to make the cost reduction perks obsolete. Say you want to be at about 75% cost reduction (in addition to the 41% reduction you get for being at 100 Destruction). You can take the perk and wear two pieces of 25% gear. Or you can perk enchant and wear three pieces of 25% cost reduction gear (which also doubles your total enchant slots). With the perks you can save by not taking cost reduction perks in two schools, you can get the eight perks you need to fully perk enchant. It does not really make sense to take the cost reduction perks over enchant (other than for pure roleplaying purposes). You can call that min/maxing if you want, but the whole perk tree concept encourages that type of min/maxing by giving you two hundred and some perks to choose from and only at most 80 perks to spend.


Freecasting is not "abuse" it was clearly an intended gameplay mechanic.


Honestly the only time I use freecasting is when I have the HUD off and I don't want to have to guess what my magicka level is. Otherwise I run with a 75% reduction. I do however, believe that a fully perked destruction mage should be able to cast fireball more than three times in a battle without having to chug potions or wear enchanted gear. That is where people are having problems.

Not the sort of thing that happens by accident I think you would at least agree?

Yeah, I would agree with that. There is no yellowbrick road taking you by the hand and leading you towards making a 100% chameleon suit in Oblivion. And given the number of useful enchants in Oblivion, many players might not even think to make a chameleon suit. I made one once, but I was horrified with the outcome and never did it again.

But freecasting on the other hand, is something you naturally progress to if you perk enchant. You still have a choice whether to do it or not. But given that a fully perked enchant lets you create 25% cost reduction that can be put on four different articles of clothing, it seems like the game is beckoning you to do it.

Which, BTW, is sweet. I sit there and pop off six 'Thunderbolts' in a row and watch my Magica bar not even flinch... power.

heh heh heh

HAHAHAHAHA, loooool rofl rofl!

Oh, oh sorry i didnt saw you there, please forgive my laughter i so apologize dear sir, i've just imagined his face, when i would fireballed him up to his ass..

Now thats quite a story, bully!

The game beckons a lot of things, I agree... and often its 'beckoning' feels more like handholding, but I digress.


I'd still disagree that it doesn't make sense to take the perks. Couple reasons.

First, getting to 100 skill in anything takes a substantial portion of the game, unless you're grinding. I have played a bunch of characters since December, when I got the game, and have yet to see 100 in any skill. So, getting to the point where you are freecasting by playing the game normally, there's a big stretch of the game where you could benefit from those Destro perks.

Second, aggressively levelling your Enchant is a good way to make sure the scaled enemies start to outpace your ability to deal with them. I suspect this is part of the reason people have trouble with Destruction.

Finally, you can only walk around with so many enchanted effects, even with the double-enchant perk. And other passive effects, especially resists, are pretty nice.

It's fair enough to say that freecasting was intended; my real problem isn't with your argument so much as it is with others who complain that the only way to play a Destruction mage is by getting casting costs reduced by 90% or better. My own experience shows me that that's not the case.

Frankly, I'm really not that enthusiastic about the implementation of "perks" in TES. Because they are not really perks. They are nodes of a skill tree. Their limited number means you have to plan your character in a way contradictory to the natural skill progression that has been a staple of TES. The traditional leveling system is undermined because of Bethesda's insistence on using them a "balancing" mechanic.

Perks are best when implemented like they were in F3 and NV, they were creative gimmicks that added flavor or powerful but unnecessary bonuses. Bethesda has implemented it in a really counter intuitive way.
Bit off topic, but I thought it was worth saying.
New thread? Or should I shut the hell up?
(I wouldn't be complaining so much if I didn't love The Elder Scrolls)

This is the issue that causes so many arguments, I think. If you max out alchemy and enchanting and use them to create a massive pool of efficiently used mana, destruction is very viable. But not everybody is going to do that.

Each to his own. My first mage took the perks and refused to enchant and only wore the archmage robes. At about level 38 (destruction skill 70), I was starting to become disappointed because I was about to get my expert level perk and still could not cast my Adept level spells more than twice without reaching for a potion. I am too much of a subconscious min maxer (did not need to write down my scores in Oblivion to level efficiently, just did it subconsciously, couldn't not do it unless I made a real effort to gimp). Started a new mage and went for enchant in lieu of cost reduction perks and was much happier.

I did not "grind" per se but I did do a lot of soul trapping and enchanting, mostly for money so I could pay for some training (I trained pickpocket to 50, for instance to get extra pockets). I was 35th level with my second mage before I got enchant to 100. Yeah, there were times when it would have been easier with a couple of cost reducing perks, but those first 35 levels were not that hard.


Yes, and paying to train my other skills contributed to this effect also. Made the game more fun.


I think the 50% from the perk alone is not enough, but the perk plus another 25-35% from gear is probably enough to be a decent destruction mage. If I had an Immersive HUD option on the PS3 I would probably run at about 75% cost reduction for Destruction/Restoration with three pieces of gear and 50% in Illusion and Conjuration with two pieces of gear (one of those being a Falmer Helmet). Then I would have plenty of perks to do what ever I want, having saved 18 cost reducing perks.

But since I loose my magicka bar when I turn off the HUD, I usually run with free casting in Destruction/Restoration and a 25% reduction in Illusion/Conjuration. I don't cast many spells from those schools anyway (I have a different character who uses Illusion/Conjuration), and the only alteration spells I use with any character are candlelight and magelight (and very rarely detect life or water breathing). I don't particularly like free casting but I also don't like having to guess at my magicka bar either.

Guessing at my health bar is bad enough, but with free casting I can heal whenever I want, so it is no big deal to waste a few healing spells. I suppose I could just waste potions, but that seems like a waste plus I have to stop the action to take a potion, plus there is no drinking animation, so it feels really cheap to spam potions. At least with a healing spell I need to break away from the action enough to be able to cast it.

May be a little off topic but I agree with this. I was really disappointed when I heard they were going to a perk tree format for Skyrim. It turned out not to be as bad as I had feared but I am still not satisfied with it. They could have solved the problems with Oblivion's leveling system without going to a perk tree system.

I'll second or third the problems with the perk trees as a concept. In theory it might sound good, but there's not really much more variety than already exists by choosing different skills anyway - if you choose to use Archery, for example, you're pretty much guaranteed to take the same perks as anyone else using Archery. There are some differences - notably in Destruction's differentiation of element type, and 1-handed/2-handed's differentiation between weapon types, but these are not deep enough as choices.

OT - Turija, yeah, I guess just by using found enchanted gear I'm doing basically what you're talking about - running with 50% cost reduction via perks, and another 25-30% via gear. With that setup, I don't really have to worry about casting dual Fireballs as often as I want - or as often as it takes to end a fight (usually). If I notice my Magicka is getting low, that's when I switch to a good ol' Flames spell or a staff, scroll, or shout for a few seconds while the pool regenerates.

I definitely don't feel weak or underpowered doing this - it's actually pretty fun, and unlike my warriors, my Destruction mage doesn't take much damage at all, so he's much less likely to die.

I haven't done a ton of Enchanting/Smithing on my warriors, but I understand it can get pretty ridiculous. If this is the case, might the problem be not so much that Destruction mages are underpowered, but that warrior types can get overpowered? Especially since everyone seems to think the game is so easy at certain levels.

Yeah, a lot of the problem is comparing destruction mages to warriors and archers and the fact that in prior games destruction mages were much more powerful comparatively than they are in Skyrim.

I have not done any enchanting with my other characters. I have done some smithing but never perked past Scale on the left side and Dwarven on the right side.