I started playing again recently, mostly playing a mage. I noticed that "fortify" seems to increase skill value or increase magnitude, but fortify destruction reduces spell cost. I guess that means you can cast mor and more portent spells more often but it doens't seem like foritfying.

Yeah, some of the mage mechanics feel a bit neglected so far. Most of us are eagerly awaiting a patch/update to make destruction skill progression and perks actually make sense. And a damage enchant would be much appreciated as well. But be careful here on the forums. There are people who don't take kindly to numbers and math. They fear it like the nords fear sorcery. They will defend the current system to the death.

I think it comes from a focus of "Let's give them enchant's to do something kick butt infinitly!" rather than focusing on damage output long term. Which in a way if you choose to be an overpowered wizard and go free destruction then you can fireball things to death. But then you probably feel to powerful and just get bored of it because nothing is remotely challenging.

I'd rather it just boosted Destruction damage...then there would be a reason to get the perks that reduce costs by half, and max magicka would matter again.

Unlimited Lightning Storm much? Fufufu~

Fortify Destruction in enchanting reduces cost of the spells. Cost reduction is probably most desirable thing to have as a mage in Skyrim. And it becomes very OP if you get it to 100% with enchanting. Without enchanting, best you can do is 75% and that happens around level 50.

Fortify Destruction in alchemy increases damage of the spells. There are weakness to fire/frost/shock poisons that boost damage of your spells also. Dualcast Incinerate does about 200 damage with perks, then it goes to 500 damage per shot with fortify potion, and the damage goes up to 1700 per shot with poisons.

I use it for dragons... But as my favorite wizard said "No one ever expects the Fireball from the darkened corner.... Eheh heh heh heh!"

No, it isn't desirable at all for most people. Just because some people like to cast for 0 doesn't mean all do. I don't abuse mechanics like that and I think it's stupid, it renders some perks useless and every point you've ever put into magicka useless. I for one do not use enchanting because making spells cost 0 is just game breaking.

Also, as a pure mage character I do not use Alchemy or Weapons to apply poisons so that is all out of the question. Destruction should scale and it lacks any sense of progress. Not to mention, the fact that Alchemy has weakness to frost/fire/shock and Destruction doesn't have spell equivalents of those is a mockery of magic. It's a complete joke. Alchemy has weaknesses and destruction doesn't? lol.

Your math is also completely off, you're not calculating it correctly and Master difficulty lowers your damage by half. Here's what Destruction looks like after:

1: Applying 74% weakness to poison.
2: Applying another 74% weakess to poison and 74% weakness to shock. (Boosted by previous poison.)
3: Applying 74% weakness to magic. (Boosted by previous poisons.)
4: Using a Fortify Destruction 185% potion.

Master difficulty vs an Ancient Dragon (3k health)
Video: http://youtu.be/qPCj9zrFXoE?t=2m49s

Sorry, but if you compare that to One-Handed/Two-Handed/Archery sneak attacks nearly one-shotting Ancient Dragons, the damage is extremely sad, even AFTER abusing all of those poisons, having to use a weapon as a MAGE, having to use alchemy as a MAGE, etc. something a pure mage might not want to do from an RP perspective.

Destruction magic lacks any real sense of progress in that it doesn't scale. All other offensive damage dealing skills scale as you level them up, except for Destruction. All other offensive damage dealing skills have a plethora of ways to boost their damage (especially without going to lengths of breaking RP) that Destruction does not. It's quite obvious Destruction is the weakest link.

Some might argue that Destruction is balanced just right, and the other skills are simply overpowered. That may be. However, Destruction still lacks a serious sense of progress which is a key element that every RPG should have, and for some reason they forgot to apply it to this skill. Don't even get me started about how gutted down and simplified the magic in Skyrim is in general.

I wouldn't mind if the enchant stayed as is but perhaps make an enchant geared towards effect boosts?

Why don't you work for Bethesda? TT_TT

THIS^

Alchemy is a Mage's best friend. Always has been.

Have you tried playing Destruction without enchanting? It feels pretty good. Nice gradual sense of progress. You might enjoy it.

I'd really like to know what the fek people are doing to they're weapons to one shot an anchient dragon. Even with maxed weapon skils, smithing and some enchanted crafting gear I don't get a daedric blade much past 200. potion exploit much?

Yes, I have. It was quite challenging to pull off on Master difficulty, but fun regardless. I did eventually drop the character though because magic simply isn't as fun as it used to be in Morrowind and Oblivion.


Because being unemployed and going to college is much more fun!


I over-exaggerated a tad, but a dagger can pull it off without any loops/exploits. Anyway, the main thing is that the other offensive skills have so many different ways of increasing their damage, while Destruction's are quite limited.

Edit: Posted info on next post. Read below.

Yeah its as if they created Skyrim's melee and archery system, looked at each other, said "good job" and gave each other a pat on the back and called it a day just in time to meet their deadline for the combat system. Then the next day, they return to work where the lowly intern quickly runs up and asked them, "What about the magic system?" Then the guys just kinda stood there, looking at each other, and then in unison, you hear, "Awww crap."

The magic system in Skyrim (with the possible exception of the Illusion stuff) seems pretty much phoned in.

Edited this in to my above post. These are possible ways to increase the direct damage of the four direct offensive skills. (One-Handed/Two-Handed/Archery/Destruction) I didn't list Enchanting for Destruction because it isn't changing the direct damage output, Firebolt is still doing 25 damage with or without -100% casting costs.

Another downfall of Destruction is that there are no varying levels of spell effects. In Oblivion there were over 400 spells (not to mention spell making), in Skyrim there are around 90. Destruction only has 1 level of Flames/Frostbite/Sparks that do 10 damage whether you're level 1 Destruction skill or level 100 Destruction skill. The same goes to Runes. This renders these kind of spells entirely useless at higher levels and it only hurts more because there is no longer spell making to make up for these losses.

You would think that since they never implemented spell making in Skyrim, they would at least make multiple magnitude levels of the same spells to balance it out.

For example, Novice Flames/Frostbite/Sparks that do 10 damage for low mana cost/second. As well as Apprentice/Adept etc versions of the same spells that do increased damage for higher mana costs.

Meaningful progress with destruction without crafting is mathematically impossible. Enemy npc health goes up(way up), and spell efficiency goes to hell with higher level spells. At 100 skill the base cost is reduced by 41%. But expert level spells only do slightly over twice as much damage for well over 6x the cost. Destruction has to ride other skills all the way, and removes the ability for mages to have diverse enchantment like any other class. They are FORCED to use cost reduction, fortify attribute effects and resistances are largely out of the question.The other schools don't work that way. They mostly gain efficiency, which should be the point with any skill.

Interesting fact, the fortify enchantment for destruction has a much lower base value in gold than any of the weapon skill effects. The game even knows that -25% cost is nowhere near as awesome as +40% damage. Mages get screwed all around.

I know destruction is kinda meh, but people exaggerate how bad it is. It's not THAT bad. Granted I'm only level 52 on master so I have yet to experience it at ultra high levels. But as of right now, my redguard mage is doing just fine.

Actually it IS that bad. It is a spell school that offers nothing other than the ability to deal damage. No utility at all, unless you want to count the "side effects" of certain spells like draining magicka or stamina, which BY THE WAY, you are more likely to just straight up kill your target rather than deplete his stamina/magicka reserves. And who uses frost spells when a majority of the enemies you will fight have large amounts of innate frost resistance. Anyways, this is a school which offers only the ability to deal damage, and yet, schools of magic such as conjurations, or my favorite, illusion, offer the ability to do way more damage and have some killer utility applications as well. The dremora twins have FAR more damage potential than a destruction mage with limitless magicka. They keep going until their time is up or you're out of targets. Oh, and lets not forget that they'll take all those hits for you. A frenzied briarheart can wipe out an entire forsworn encampment by himself, and if it was one of the caster briarhearts, possibly more if you could lead him to them. And then if he ever did set his eyes on you, lol calm and walk away. You can't do that with destruction. You'll simply be left out of magic running around a table wishing you picked something other than destruction to hurt things with.

Now you could go into the whole enchantment thing, but that's putting a band-aid on an amputated arm. Even with 0 cost destruction spells, it does less damage than those other two schools. If there were damaging restoration spells, I have full confidence that THEY would be better than destruction spells. Hell, they'd probably have cool side effects like healing you to boot.

Wait a minute, isn't there like a guardian circle restoration spell that fears and burns undead while healing you?

Fix enchanting so you can't have 100% reduced mana cost. Have destruction do more damage with skill increases and level ups (with the level ups also increase mana cost). Buff mana regen in combat. Nerf impact or change it to something else completely. Reduce the mana cost of duel cast and reduce the mana cost of the some higher level destruction spells. Reduce cast time of master destruction spells.
Have 3 destruction spell types frost,fire,lightning end perks do something more interesting.

-Fire- after a npc dies while taking fire damage the corpse has a chance to explode in flames hurting others in an aoe.
-Frost- casting frost spells have a very small chance to cause enemy to be frozen solid for 3 seconds. If target is killed while frozen it will crumble in mess of ice shards.
-lightning- casting lightning spell on an enemy has a chance to cause overload, this increase the damage of your lightning spells by 15% for 3 seconds.

Sorry if these idea aren't all great I just thought them up on the fly, also Beth should add spell creation in the future.

Has any dev ever actually commented about destruction? Either saying that its fine as it is, or acknowedged that it needs some attention?

It's a shame that destruction has been so neglected. I would love to play as a pure mage, but I just can't justify running around in mage robes, with an armor rating of zero, with destruction magic as weak as it is.

Nothing scales past 50. Everything either scales with the player to 50 and stops, or has a fixed level. But you either have some good cost reduction, or are using some other form of damage. Perhaps conjuration. Cool fact- conjured minions are actually stronger on master because they get the same damage multiplier as enemies.

I can tell you how it is in any difficulty above apprentice: a dragon appears, and instantly eats you. I can't count how many times that's happened to me.