So a few days ago I posted a thread "Why is Destruction broken?" and the feed back was enormous.
I'm making this short post about what I think the problem is after listening to what you guys think the problem is.

I think that the problem is that Destruction magic is either too high powered or too underpowered. There is no middle ground. This is because that being a destruction mage, you can totally dominate if you abuse enchanting to get spells to cost 0% and use Impact to kill everything. While I'm sure this appeals to some of you, it just does not seem right to get the full experience of an Elder Scrolls game. But to most, destruction is underpowered. The damage for destruction scales does not scale properly, meaning that bows and melee increase in damage as you level, but destruction spells don't. This is also hard because you are taking too much damage because you wear light armor, and you aren't dealing enough damage to kill enemies fast enough. My question is, is there a middle ground, or what could Bethesda do to achieve one?

I think that Destruction damage should scale with your level, but the cost of it increases based on your character's level. But, to balance the cost increasing with your level, every level in the Destruction tree will reduce the cost the same amount as your character's level. So if you are level 81 with 81 destruction not using the decreased cost, Flames will cost (I think) 13 magicka per second, making it unviable to use if you aren't using Destruction as a primary/secondary skill (out of your first 4 skills).

So apparently this isn't quite a short post like I expected, but what do you guys think?
I'd also like to thank you guys for the feedback, I'm not used to getting this type of feedback from the community on any forum.

Cap max reduction levels and get some scaling on spells so we have a bit of variety to choose from and get rid of the "obsolete spell" tree system in place now. Each spel l should be decent at a certain thing and remain useful throughtout (since we have no spell making.)

i currently am running a archer / dagger assassin, and i have 4 overdraw perks, and am not using enchantin, but am using alchemy and smithing, and my glass legendary bow is only doing 79 damage, plus the 20 for ebony arrows, and that is only 99, compared to the 180 damage i would do dual wielding (without impact ) with incineration, so yeah, its fine, yep. people who say they are doing 300 damage without sneak attacks or alchemy / enchanting / smithing loops are just talking out their asses.

My views on the subject is thus, give destruction mages enchantments which Fortify Destruction Damage similar to Fortify One-handed. Thus they have a choice, use your limited slots for cost reduction? Or more damage?

-this- is the only fesible option, otherwise the mages throughout the game that are enemies will become INSANE, and will kill everything unless you use enchanting to get 100 percent resistance to everything, hell, they already one hit me with 350 health and 40 percent resistance.

Bumped, because I will not be online tomorrow and I want people to read this one as well as my "How is Destruction Broken?" threadl

I think it needs to be like the other skills where it increases damage when the skill gets higher and the 25% reduction perks include have increased damage by 25% 50% Ect like the other skills
I think the problem with destruction is that it's a spam fest to kill anything not to metion that your magicka will run out quickly with little damage done

They are already insane, because their spells scale with your level

Unlike your spells. Which is ironic

I never understood this at all playing a Mage was so
much more difficult after I realized how much stronger enemy mages were they don't stagger with wards and there destruction damage scales

destro needs at least a 1 to 5 (10% to 100%) damage boost perk to start being fun
destro scaling with each level would eventually lead you to be a lasergun past a certain level so im not sure if scaling with level would do it (maybe with a carefully calculated formula that would only bring you to another 100% at 81)

Sorry for plugging a thread I created earlier, but it contains imo a decent way of scaling magic in Skyrim via a mod called Magi.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1336770-using-elys-uncapper-to-class-a-character/page__fromsearch__1

I just finished a playthrough (to the extent that a character "ends") with a level 50 pure mage (no armor or weapons), and I actually found the balance about right. I don't see Impact as an exploit, it's part of the core dynamic, in my opinion. A pure mage is a glass cannon, one shot from any melee kills you, even when you have your ward on, so Impact slows down melee enemies. And most spells get higher level versions. Incinerate is not really different from Flamebolt as a targeted fire spell. I'm not any more enchanted than the regular magic loot at level 50, but I've put almost every leveling point into magicka (I think I got my health up to 150 to help survivability a little). But even with a large pool, I do run out of mana in longer fights, but I think that's the way it should be. You dodge and use the combat space to your advantage to survive.

I don't have problems if anyone wants to tweak the dynamic to their taste - that's what's so great about Elder Scrolls games (yay single player!), but I wouldn't necessarily call it broken.

1. Half the base enchantment bonuses.
2. Make it so only apparel with 0 defense(basically, clothing and jewelry) can be enchanted.

Problem(s) solved.

You don't need any loops. Just get that bow you have and add in the +160% enchantment from armours, add in weapon enchantments, add in that practically every attack is a sneak attack, so 3x... and you can do 500+ hits just like that... who's talking out their ass, I wander...

THIS

Increase the cost and power by character level? No, I don't think that is the right answer. The power of the spells must be tied to the skill-level. The easiest way I can think of solving this problem is a patch/free DLC(or as a part of another DLC) that put the current destructionspells to a lower cost and rank, while adding new ones that are more powerful. Throwing in some utility spels like weakness wouldn't hurt either.

For everyone who do not use enchanted gear to reduce spellcost to under 10% destruction is weak because while it can do good damage and it ignore armor you will almost certainly run out of magica fast, especially against stronger opponents like draugr deathlords.

Also it doesn't help that enemy mages' spells scale while yours do not.

To be frank, I can't extract meaningful information from your post

First line says you have no idea what I said
Second line says you think enemy mages are powerful, which is what I said.

Which is it?

I took the spreadsheet I was using to compare vanilla damage numbers, and started playing around to see if I could make destruction a little more interesting. Through a combination of fortify damage enchantments, skill damage bonuses, and additional +destruction damage perks, I came up with http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii167/bl3count/rebalanceddamage.jpg. The idea was to make it so that every spell you learn remains powerful enough to still be useful late in the game - in fact flames has the highest damage of any spell, on par with two handed melee (my intention was to make it a short range, high damage spell, the magic equivalent of melee, if its possible I'll probably decrease its range once the CK is out, along with all the other changes.) I'd probably also rework it so that firebolt is the first spell you learn, rather than flames. Incinerate is no longer needed, since firebolt scales up enough to match the vanilla incinerate. I'd probably re-purpose it as something else, maybe a high damage, long cast time, low magicka cost spell that can be used for sneak attacks.

Or at least, the least armor, the more "room" for powerful enchantment there is on the apparel. Meaning a heavy armor has a limit for the enchantment efficiency and the robe (which can take the head slot as well), have this limit way higher...

Could be combined with one idea above : have fortify destruction damage enchantments, much like fortify one-handed...

I like the idea of flames being high level and firebolt low level. IMO continuous type magics should be at least apprentice or adept. They certainly don't look like the kind of magic that you can just cast and forget about

And they are in dire need of justification for use at higher levels. They look even better than the usual "balls of hadouken" from Oblivion, and here we have to cast the Balls of Hadouken from Oblivion at higher levels

As if those continuous magics are merely "proof of concepts"

Either buff up the damage tremendously and leave the magicka cost alone, or reduce the magicka cost such that i can cast a decent number of fireballs without enchantments. The magicka cost is just horrible. Cast a few firebolts early game, and DAMN im out of mana. Not to mention the horrible damage/manacost ratio for the expert level spells; i'd rather stick to shooting firebolts instead. there is almost no incentive for me to use incinerate.

And replace the master spells with something more practical, rather than something that's flashy and useless. Blizzard comes to mind. And the damage of firestorm aint that great either, considering the 5 second cast time.

Damage isn't the problem from my experience (on master), it's magicka cost. An expert destro spell costs more than an expert conjuration spell, that is ridiculous, you only need to cast that summon spell once.

I do 100 damage every single cast of my incinerate, that is enough for me on master (level 46 at the moment). I can take down a draugr death lord dual single casting (not dual casting due to magicka costs) in 5-6 double shots. You'd struggle to match those numbers without heavily using crafting, all I've done is take 2 destruction perks and a illusion fear perk to hit 100 damage.

I've had to use enchanting to reduce the costs of destruction to make it more usable, I have around 80-90% destruction reduction. With my 600 magicka pool I can cast a good few incinerates, not endlessly stagger though.

I make strong use of the slow time and become ethereal shouts, helps me cast master spells. Paralyse, fury and dread zombie are also the other main combat spells. You probably mean destruction on it's own though.

I don't think damage scaling is the answer, I think they should increase the effectiveness of the element damage perks to 100% when you have both (instead of 50% now), and then reduce the cost of adept, expert and master spells. Also make the dual cast stagger only 50% chance rather than 100%, it's to overpowered.

What made beth think this was a good idea? >_<

The best part of your first Elder Scrolls game is the experience of discovering all the new things.

Play too many Elder Scrolls games and it just leads to upset as you start to resent the new games for not playing the way you expected them to.

In fact you come to resent the new game for the very reasons you loved the original in the first place.

You're already a "master". Why should you have to learn?

So either the developers didn't know what they were doing when they made the game or people suggesting that Destruction is not balanced are incorrect.

While no game is going to be perfect I have more faith in the Developers.

I can see why some people are unhappy. I just don't see any real justification apart from "destruction is broken for not playing the way I wanted it to".

Azrael
The Nord with the Sword

You know what, killing a person with peashooter is entirely possible, and it's so challenging since it deals a lot less damage than the standard pistol!
Why don't people all over the world simply use peashooter instead of actual guns, I wonder? After all, it's not like guns are so powerful they replaced swords and arrows or make full plate armor null and void, right?

And come on, more challenge = more glory!