Whenever the game gets too hard/tedious for you:
- Raise enchanting to desired amount and then enchant your gear to reduce magicka cost. I would cap at 95% - 97% reduction, since above that makes the game too boring.
- Raise alchemy to desired amount and then make potions of fortify destruction and poisons of weakness to fire/frost/shock. For role-players, the best way to add the poison is to conjure the bound bow and add poison to it, and fire one shot before putting it away. That way, you are still using magic to do what you want.

You can get decently high destruction damage. Without glitches (but doing everything the game designers allowed), destruction does very decent damage. Calculations are pretty simple.

60 (Incinerate) * 2.2 (dual-cast) * 1.5 (augmented flames perk 2/2) * 2.77 (best fortify destruction potion I believe) = 548.68 That would be the highest damage you can get per 1 shot.

Note: I didn't include the DoT from incinerate because I didn't know what it is, but it is negligible.

For an even higher value, put a weakness to fire poison on the enemy, which makes the total 548.68 * 2.06 (best weakness to fire poison I believe) = 1130.2808.

And that is the highest you can get, I believe. Through legit methods. I understand why everyone is complaining about destruction (nobody wants to keep chugging potions), but, meh, it's not a huge deal. And I don't find chugging potions takes significantly away from roleplaying a mage. I mean, potions themselves seem pretty magical (they were in Harry Potter now weren’t they? lol).

Destruction is nothing compared to melee or archery (to say nothing of those two each combined with sneak perks), as these run up into the multiple k's per swing/shot, but it'll do when dealing with what the game throws at you. Easily.

I got potion values from here: youtube, /watch?v=HPjylMugGbA

EDIT: Corrected small mistakes.

INteresting, but where's the role-play factor? A mage being an archer just to inflict debuffs isn't very role-play.

Do you know what roleplaying means?

The bow is magical.. You can think of it as shooting magic which just happens to be in the form of an arrow. If it was with just a regular bow and arrow (or a dagger, or whatever) then I wouldn't approve.

I mean it isn't great... but I can't think of a better way to apply poisons.

---

I'm not a hardcoe roleplayer by any means, but I do like to roleplay in a casual way. For me, this seems like a good compromise.

EDIT: If it really gets to you, the poison isn't necessary anyways. The ~550 damage is more than enough by itself.

A large portion of players don't role play. I do, but many friends of mine don't.
As for the Mage archer thing ... My archer is also a heavy magic user, and it fits into the role play perfectly well.

This is nothing that hasn't already been repeated before and still does not address why mages feel shafted.

My mage is a spellblade. He uses Conjured Blade. And weilds destruction magic and he does quite fine.

I'm going to address why mages feel shafted.

-lack of spell damage and mana cost scaling for offensive magic.
-combat mana regeneration is barely noticeable.
-You need to invest heavily in potions and alchemy for damage and magicka, because you WILL run out very quickly. Not everyone enjoys chugging magicka potions by the ton; I certainly didn't need to in vanilla Oblivion.
-Master spells svck.
-You need insane amounts of -% mana cost to not run out of mana in 2 - 4 casts. Actually, the enchanting system, period.
-lack of spell options. Where are all the weakness to x spells?
-Dual-casting isn't worth it. 10% more damage for 40% extra cost? What?
-Mages depend on magicka for everything - armor, healing, summoning creatures and offensive magic. That is a LOT of magicka eaten before you can get into fireball shenanigans.
-Dremora Lord does everything better.

Yeah, I know. I was reading all those past threads. Just wanted to sum things up I guess.

I noticed a common mistake, though: People keep saying destruction magic is underpowered because a skill level increase doesn't increase damage, but only decreases magicka cost. This isn't really the prime reason, although it does contribute. Even if destruction magic damage scaled with skill increase, the same way melee/archery does, you would only get an extra 50% damage at 100 skill level. That still leaves destruction weak, and isn't enough to make up for the damage difference.

Your max would be (without alchemy/enchanting): 60 (Incinerate) * 2.2 (dual-cast) * 1.5 (augmented flames perk 2/2) * 1.5 (100 skill) = 297. That still isn't great. You'd still need alchemy/enchanting.

The main reason something like melee is so powerful is because of its perks, and the fact you can have unlimited power attacks.

Edited: blah

It's fine! It might be tougher to play as a pure destruction mage anyway, bows can help if your out of mana and mana potions.

I use a Breton Mage with the Atronauch stone and I certainly have not run out of mana when casting magicka. Usually because I put a low cost in one hand and a high host in another hand. But I haven't found myself needing to chug down potions. I haven't even invested in alchemy or enchanting.

Mods.

Magic is overpowered, the 100% stager makes every boss fight to easy. Im only level 28 tho but can easilly kill pretty much anything with mage

No, Impact is overpowered. There's a difference; it's why most magic mods add spell damage and cost reduction scaling while slapping impact with a minimum 50% nerf.

I only use the Arch-Mage robes or the master robes of Alteration on my high-level mage. No need for other enchantments really. I use one enchantment that raises my health a little bit but that's it.

If you're keeping your health low and putting all your points into magicka just wait until you get to the higher levels where most mobs can one shot you. That's what my experience was with it. Yes lower levels are just fine. I didn't really experience any issues in my 20's and 30's. But there was a point where all of a sudden the random archer could one shot me and that was a huge game changer. It becomes especially problematic when facing multiple high level foes. Where my thief can sneak in unseen and one shot things and my warrior can just walk in and smash everything to a pulp my mage is forced to send in conjured help or face instant termination. It's a difficult class to play at high levels and most of this is because there is no damage scaling. It just takes too many shots to kill those high level foes, especially casters who tend to put up ward and take almost no damage from magic while they pommel you with spells that easily one or two shot you. Something about it doesn't feel fair and considering how the other two classes play out there is a huge imbalance where mages are concerned.

The biggest issue is the lack of damage scaling for mage spells. There is none other than potions which are nearly impossible to apply unless you resort to archery and some mobs are 100% resistant to poisons anyway so that isn't always a help. I also don't count the alchemy potion for destruction damage as a solution because not all mages are alchemists, they are nearly impossible to find from the vendors, and no other class has to rely solely on potions for damage output increases. No there should have been damage scaling just like there is with melee.

Mage gear should have damage modifiers on them or magic damage should scale up with level. I've already come up with a solution that would work fine which would be to have all lower spell levels scale up 10% when you take the next highest perk. So when I take the destruction perk to make Adept spells cost 50% less magicka I also get 10% more damage to Novice spells. When I take the expert perk, I get 10% to adept and 10% more to Novice bringing novice up to 20%. This way by the time you top out the low level spells are still useful and the upper spells do not become overpowered. As it stands the low level spells become totally useless by the time you reach 40 or 50, maybe even sooner. It shouldn't work that way. In the end we are only left with a small handful of spells that are actually useful and that is boring and not a good way to play a mage.

No destruction is not fine. It needs work. And not all of us are on PC so mods are not an answer for us unfortunately. I'm hoping Bethesda will do something about this in the near future. It really should be addressed.

And then some.

I will never understand why Mages are nerfed so hard. It's not like they need to be balanced; this isn't a MMO/PvP game.

Doesn't really bother me. If they scaled it I believe magic would become a bit overpowered.
It's very noticeable.
In the beginning I carried a lot of magicka potions. Now I don't have any use for potions. I've never invested in Alchemy so you don't need that at all.
If you actually manage to cast one their pretty decent. Takes a very long time though. But that's the challenge.
Just raise your Magicka and wear some good robes. Problem solved.
It would be nice to have more spell. Not a deal breaker for me though.
Dual casting rocks. More damage, heals more, armor spells last longer. What's there not to like?
You're a mage so of course you're gonna need magicka.
At low levels, yes.

I wouldn't call them nerfed. More like rebalanced.

..I just..always shake my head whenever someone mentions doing this.

Makes the game to easy in my opinion. I want to have some challenge when exploring.

Funny how when mods do it, it isn't overpowered at all. Then again, mods nerf impact shenanigans. Magic also doesn't benefit from smithing abuse, so mages aren't going to go around dealing 5k damage with an incinerate.

It's hilarious that people say magic would be overpowered, as if smithing shenanigans don't turn warriors into murder-machines.


Not really, unless you stack them up the wazoo and kite like nuts. Combat regeneration is roughly 33% normal regeneration, so once the mage runs out of magicka - especially with high-health enemies - you start running and the whole thing becomes some twisted whack-a-mole game.


So either you kite like mad or have huge cost reducers.


No, not at all. Being a sitting duck and hoping you don't get one-shot by that angry Forsworn isn't a challenge. About the only decent one is lightning storm.

But hey, maybe your definition of challenge is different than mine. Master spells aren't worth their magicka and do poor damage.


I can raise my magicka all I want; two extra shots of incinerate isn't going to help me any.


Damage per mana cost ratio is 10% with a 40% magicka increase. Armor spells are universally horrible, with the almighty Dragonhide coming in at a whopping 30 seconds.

Of course, the lack of spells means that the mage archetype is also reduced to every cookie-cutter fantasy mage out there.


Obviously.

The issue is that you need mana for everything, since your armor, healing, damage and meatshields all operate off the same resource. Magicka means a lot more to a mage than stamina to a warrior. By the time you've pulled out your defensive spells, called out a meatshield and have a ward out, you're not exactly going to be able to function in any sort of magical damage dealing.


Dremora lords only become obsolete much, much later. Then you have Dead Thrall, which can be abused very easily.

Role-playing a destruction mage at high levels is aweful without mods, you only use 1 spell for 90% of your game.

Its beyond pathetic actually. Thank god for mods though. I don't think I could play 100's of hours with just spamming 1 spell.

I made a character based on my of my favorite rolls from DnD (Baldur's Gate, NWN) days. Arkan, the fire elfe. He's always been a regular elf in previous games, this game his a dunmer, for obvious reasons.

He's a fighter/mage type character who only uses fire based spells. One thing I've noticed is that, like with most of the other skills in the game, destruction is much better when used in tandem with other skills, such as alchemy. I don't do any enchanting, but I have plenty of + Destruction Damage potions to make it through most large dungeons. He's having a pretty easy go using mostly fire spells, plust a little help from Aspect of Terror...not even using dual-casting or Impact perks.

I don't like the argument that warriors and thieves have it so easy comparitively. Without smithing/block skills, is your warrior going to be as effective in combat? If you don't poison bows/daggers, or invest in archery perks is your thief going to be able to one-shot most enemies from afar? Why is destruction the only skill held to the "Only Skill" test? Granted, even a +.5% increase per skill level would help damage scale a bit, it certainly isn't needed.