Master level destruction spells are worthless. Most of the master level spells are worthless in combat.

Destruction spells can never be equal to Melee or Archery for a number of reasons.
1, Archery and Melee damage increases as your skill increases.
2. Archery and Melee damage can be increased with the Smithing skill/perks.
3. Archery and Melee damage can be increased with Enchantments.
4. Archery and Melee damage can be increased with poisons.
5. Archery and Melee damage can be increased with perks 2x as much as Destruction magic.
6. Archery and Melee users can keep attacking if Stamina runs out, Magic users cannot cast without enough Magicka.
7. Archery and Melee users do more damage innately without perks, weapon improvements or enchantments.
8. Magic Users need to invest in Magic to do damage, Archery/Melee users can invest as much as they want in Health and Stamina, making them virtual tanks.
9. Especially at lower levels, Magic Users have to use robes in order to keep a spell up for long, making them much more vulnerable than a Weapon User who can wear armor.
10. Melee and Archery Users can get a sneak attack bonus, Destruction users cannot.

I really hope destruction gets some love in the near future, an appreciable degree of scaling will go a long way in appeasing many fans of the series and reduce the angst caused by the removal of spell creation.

edit- sorry
uh... Throw in a destruction-damage-enhance item! That would fix the issue for most people - at least bandage it enough not to be the sore wound it is now.

Exactly. A Fireball spell will do the same amount of damage whether your Destruction skill is 10 or 100. Increasing Destruction skill only reduces cost, and I think this is one of the biggest problems (if not the main one) with Destruction.

It makes perfect sense to me. I mean if you've gone so far as the degree in network administration, chances are you picked up DOS somewhere along the way!

If you’re a mage who has attained knowledge and understanding enough to cast the top-end destruction spells, you should have picked up a few other "tricks" to supplement with. Specifically I would say conjuration is almost a requirement. No other skill has you just max out one perk tree for your chosen path. Blades also spec block or armor, sneak specs archery and possible pickpocket or illusion.

Yes, if you gimp yourself into a single tree the game will seem imbalanced, but that is because it was balanced more to a dynamic multi-perk tree standard, not an "I am the beefiest single-spec jack of one trade in the realm!" Mix it up a little!

With conjuration or illusion to do crowd control, destruction makes a lot more sense.

I've heard a lot about destruction issues. My only 2 characters so far are 1h shield warrior and archer thief. I just started a High Elf mage that's around level 10, and I don't think I'm far enough to be able to notice anything. And the main spells I cast are the dual destruction (after conjuring atronachs and going stoneflesh and courage for my companion)

I guess I'll have to wait and see for myself once I get higher level.

exactly...master spells take too long to cast, in battle the enemies aren't going to wait for you wave your hands around.
I can cast 3 dual thunderbolt/incinerate blasts in the time it takes to cast 1 master spell and the master spells aren't that much stronger then expert...master spells are disappointingly useless

That's not entirely true. If you use enchanting to get free casting, then you do not need more than the 100 magicka you start with. But I agree with your point overall and the fact that you can be an uberpowerful mage (or at least as uberpowerful as mages get in this game) with only 100 magicka kind of bothers me.

I had the same feeling at level 10. At that level, it seems perfectly natural to rely most on the apprentice level spells. When I hit level 38 and was still relying primarily on the apprentice level spells because the adept and expert level spells were too magicka inefficient even with 75 Destruction skill and all the perks taken. At that point I put the destruction mage aside for a while and got distracted playing other characters, but when I pick the mage up again, I will definately be taking up enchanting, just to keep the magicka cost of those higher level spells within reason.

Lower damage output can be offset with reduced or ZERO cost mana. Who needs dps when you can sit at range and spew forth endless destruction?

That fireball at skill 10 will do 40 ranged AoE damage. A 2H Daedric Greatsword at skill 100 will do 35 single-target melee damage. That's 69 on a power attack, but the fireball would do 80 if you cast two without the dual casting perk.

With destruction 75 and augmented (3 perks), the fireball does 60/120. The sword at skill 75 with (4) perks does 58/116. At skill 100 with full (5) perks the sword does 69/138. The damage is still lower because the fireball has DoT burn and an increased damage debuff. It also has range and AoE. The mage won't be outclassed until the warrior adds smithing, enchanting, and poisons.

Now, I'm not saying destruction is balanced (I don't know) but if it is unbalanced, it's not because skill doesn't increase damage. If the magic skill affected spell strength, scrolls would be useless. I'd much rather see balance accomplished through +damage enchants.

What would be really cool would to use staves to amplify magic. Taking the "double cast" perk would make staves of that school cast the spell for double damage but would drain both charges and magicka (as if you were casting the spell and using the staff from the same hand).

Use enchanting to make your spells cost less mana, avoid making them use no mana at all, I have a guide in my sig for avoiding 0% mana usage.

5% original mana cost is a good spot. You can achieve this with 2 schools by wearing archmage robes and doing 3x 25% fortified to reduce mana cost to a good point.

Use your expert bolt spells and the adept aoes. Adept AOEs are sadly more useful than master tier aoes. Though firestorm from stealth can be a good opener.

Get fortify destruction potions, they give you the extra damage for those challenging moments if you need them. (I don't, even on master diff at level 64)


Your real complaint is that Destruction can't exploit smithing.

Try playing melee without improving your items with smithing. Then tell us how awesome weapons are compared to Destruction.

Destruction is awesome.

Good day.

Using your example though, you can swing the sword a lot faster than you can cast fireball and a mage with 75 Destruction is going to run out of magicka pretty quickly dual casting a fireball spell. My mage has a Destruction skill of about 75 and I have put a lot of points into Magicka as well as the needed perks to reduce casting cost, but I can only cast two or three fireballs before having to switch to firebolt (much less damage output but much more mana efficient) because I am out of magicka. Meanwhile the warroir is happly swinging away with his sword.

Dual-casted fireballs and incinerates are 1 per second, faster than a 2h attack and more powerful.

For mana problems, see my post above yours, or the guide in my sig.

It takes longer than a second to dual cast a fireball, but maybe not much more than a second. I was thinking one-handed sword, so yeah, you can probably dual cast a fireball a little faster than you can swing a 2H sword, although not much, and the sword may still be faster because you have to aim the fireball, which can take time with a moving opponent or if you are moving to avoid being hit yourself.

As for free casting with enchanting, yeah I am aware of that, but the point of the post I was responding to was what type of damage you can do with only destruction and only melee. If you start adding in enchanting, then you have to add that to melee too, which gives melee a serious advantage with the increased damage an enchanted weapon brings.

My biggest complaint about adding enchanting however is that a warrior with 100 magicka but a high enchant skill can make his own free casting suit and then can be nearly as good a mage as an Altmer with 500 magicka. That doesn't seem right to me.

EDIT: BTW, I am reading your guide right now. Useful info, as I don't really want completely free casting either and I like wearing the Archmage robes. I may go with a higher percentage than 5% though.

@Hoki

I am looking at your guide and I am confused. If you have three pieces of gear that each have 25% spell cost reduction (five points in enchant one in Insightful enchanter and no foritfy enchant potions) plus the archmage robes with 15% spell cost reduction, wouldn't that be 90% reduction, so a 10% casting cost? How do you get 5% casting cost, wearing the archmage robes without using fortify enchant potions?

I agree that destruction can't hold it's own by itself...now, anyone who thinks it should perhaps should try playing the game with an unimproved iron sword while only wearing a set of street clothes, because one-handed skill, on it's own, is no different.

The very simple basis of Skyrim is that NO skill, by itself, will get you through the game....you need to develop a range of skills, both offensive and defensive, for any character to be workable.

There is no need to compare destruction spells to melee weapons or bows, simply because this game is not a competition. If the argument is that someone can pump out more damage from a sword than a spell, well, the sword needs to actually be beside the opponent to do so, but the spell can pump out damage at range, and lock the target in place to do so. anolysis of the math is also pointless, because it essentially is meaningless in the greater scheme of things, because it's not a competition...cost effectiveness is only relevant if the player wants to go down that path...and if a mage player is so concerned that X spell costs proportionally more to use than a sword or a different spell, then perhaps they should use that different spell or the sword, because it ultimately doesn't matter...Looking at this another way, what do the people who use this argument do when they go to the greengrocers? Do they limit themselves to only buying apples, because oranges cost 20.8% more per kilogram, and that means that apples and oranges aren't balanced? It doesn't matter, if you want oranges, have oranges, and the same applies to spells and swords.

It's a non-argument to state that improved and enchanted melee weapons are substantially more powerful than destruction spells, when those improved and enchanted weapons require perks and levelling across three skills, while the comparitor, destruction, only requires them across one...which begs the question as to what the player has done with other skills and perks.

We should also understand that if a mage character chooses not to use enchantments to reduce the cost of spell casting, then they are nerfing themselves. Forget about what you have done in other games, because in THIS game your individual spells don't get stronger as you level...you have a couple of perks to boost them (same as melee weapons and bows), but the focus of the magick system is to decrease the cost of casting spells, and to provide you with stronger spells as you level up. If you choose not to work within the system, hanging onto concepts from previous games and complaining that it's no longer the same, then that is your problem...and the solution is simply to use enchantments to reduce the spell cost.

Arguing that melee characters can pick up a staff or a spell tome and that gives them an advantage is also a non-argument....because the other side of the coin is that spell casters can pick up a melee weapon or bow, and has access to the same range of skills as any other player.

The other non-argument is that repetitively casting the same spell at an opponent is boring...well, bashing something with a sword repetitively is no different.

Skyrim, like all Beth's RPG's, is about choices...how you play the game, within the parameters provided by Beth, is up to you. If you choose to gimp yourself by not wanting to use the enhancements provided for you, such as enchanting, that is your choice...but it does not mean that the game is broken, nor that the system is weak. If you choose to limit yourself to only one offensive skill, when the game is structured to rely on a skill set of multiple skills, then that is your choice as well. However, it isn't logical to then argue that your 'one' skill is weak or imbalanced in comparison with a melee weapon or bow that requires 3 skills to achieve the power that you are comparing your one skill to.

The thing that should be kept in mind is that in Skyrim there is NO class of character...you are not disadvantaged or limited to choosing a character that only does magic, or only does melee...it's up to you how your character interacts in the game, and it's up to you which skills you use and which you don't...but by the same token, your choices are yours alone, if you choose to put self-imposed boundaries on your character or playing style, then the consequences of that only apply to you, not anyone else, and it's certainly not Beth's problem if you choose to do so.

My two cents:

Destruction is indeed underperforming, but to be honest, that’s not a problem at all.

At the beginning and middle point, destruction spells provide much more damage than any other weapon skill. With a weapon skill you have to raise the skill to raise your damage, with destro spells just learn the spell and start nuking. Also to keep up, you have to smith the weapons, and maybe give them some enchants, destro spells can benefit from just enchanting to be free…fireball spam!. With weapons you have to carry the weapon with you, with destro, you carry more loot.

The problem is at higher levels, but think for a moment what takes to be high level: many skills mastered. If you just use destruction….you’re not going to be high level in your lifetime, you have to use other skills, like enchanting, alchemy, conjuration and restoration, and that will only take you to the middle level where destro is still viable….go even higher and what do you have? you are no longer a mage, you’re an hero of legend, and as such you have access to new tools like twin Dremora lords if still a mage, a multitude of shouts, and powerful enchanted gear…maybe even a suit of armor after a life using robes? yeah that’s the point destruction start to feel feeble, but you should be so powerful as to kill the enemy in any way you see fit now, even if your spells take longer. (and let’s be honest: spamming spells is fun like hell)

Also remember that not all players are power gamers, not everyone will try to master all skills while playing at master difficulty, that’s another game with a different set of rules. If you play on master you should not expect to play any way you like, but in the way that will let you survive, using every and each trick that can give you an edge over the increased damage and health of enemies. In that kind of scenario, ok, destruction is terrible, but also going in unimproved gear..

So just don’t worry, and enjoy the game, if playing destruction you will have plenty of time to enjoy it, and once you outgrow it, you will have the tools needed to go on. If you just want to have the best character possible, look the other way, otherwise, enjoy zapping, burning and freezing people to death…

I think im going to play my mage now if you excuse me…

Why do people defending destruction always massively underestimate the dps of melee? Ignore smithing altogether and an ebony 1h axe (common high level drop) does 45 damage with decent 1h skill. Ignore enchanting, and common jewelry and glove drops can easily increase that to 100 damage. A power attack boosts that by 200% as long as you some stamina regen. If a swing takes 1.5 seconds that's 200dps from an unimproved melee weapon. All of those figures are conservative and already that's doing almost double the dps of destruction per your calculations, before factoring in things like enchantments on the weapons you find and the bonus damage (critical hits, bleed, area affect etc) available from specific weapon tree perks.

I have a level 64 mage, destruction is primary offensive skill, playing on expert and playing Dead is Dead. I use Thunderbolt, Incinerate, and fireball. I am owning everything in my path... I should notch it up to Master but then things just take to long to kill and it gets irritating.

I keep a dremora lord by my side... he rarely gets a chance to hit things unless I get swarmed. Most enemies go down to destruction quickly. Now yes, my destruction cost is 0, but for most of my game my destruction cost enchantments were at -50% to -75% and I didn't have problems then. Eventually you need 100% just because level 50+ stronger enemies have 1000-3000 health.

Damage is not as much a problem as cost, unless playing on master. Dual cast thunderbolt does roughly 200 health damage, 100 magic damage, knocks the enemy back, and if it drops them below 15% health it insta-kills. Oh and it has no lag like an arrow or fireball, it is a point and click ranged attack. Now above spell costs a lot, so you need a lot of destruction enchantments if you plan on casting it a lot.

My strategy, Dremora by my side, I keep a dagger on me with a paralyze enchantment(and poison) and ice form is my shout. Against 5 enemies, I open up with ranged attacks, dremora holds 1-2 back, ice form takes a third, another is normally dead by now from ranged attacks, 5th if stun locked, and if one does get by.... well I have the dagger. Dragons are insanely easy, I can easily shoot them out of the sky with thunderbolt, and stun lock them once on the ground....

So tell me, if destruction is so weak how do I have a dead is dead level 64 character who relies primarily on destruction?

All of restrictions issue and all of the other schools issues could have been rectified with spell creation but sadly we do not have that feature. The removal of spell creation and the other spell types makes being a mage incredibly limiting.

1. Doesnt matter
2. Doesnt matter
3. Dremora lord + Paralyze

In fact, remove Destruction and the char will still stay alive. = Having or not having Destruction is irrelevant. = weak. Add invisibility and youll doing 30x damage with that dagger. Like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4L4WwR70eA

Its 90% from items and 50% from perks, bringing you to 95% reduction. With these you can defeat most encounters without using a mana potion. Free casting is easily achievable but just isn't any fun.

Also, I haven't found it necessary, but fortify destruction potions combined with weakness to poisons can make the most challenging encounters into trivially easy cakewalks on MASTER difficulty.

For those saying there is no damage scaling with destruction don't really have the right idea. With ALL spells, they all cost less magicka as you perk them and enchant them with fortify. As soon as you get the incinerate spell, I got mine quite early cause I used destruction primarily, you can cast incinerate until you run out of mana, destroying anything your level out of the water extremely fast, but using all of your magicka. As you become more adept at casting those spells, you use less magicka so you can use it more often and even dual-cast them all the time without running out of magicka.

Also, the game is balance around normal difficulty. Idk about you guys but normal difficulty with destruction is STUPIDLY easy.

My character uses 1 handed swords as well and I have smithing at 100. With exploited levels of enchanting (improved as high as humanly possible) and most 1 handed damage perks, I only do more damage than a dual-casted expert bolt when power attacking or sneak attacking. But if I use the right bolt against an enemy's weakness, like fire against undead, not even a power attack can out damage a dual casted incinerate. And I can cast those 1 per second from long range.

Also, lightning cloak + disintegrate.


Ultimately to those saying it should scale the same way weapons do, how about just giving a try to make it work first? Its different, it can't be exploited as horribly as weapons can, but that doesn't make it underpowered. Not as powerful as exploited weapons is not the same thing as underpowered. Exploited weapons are stupidly overpowered, and destruction is just very powerful.

Right, but this is so boring. Really 10-12 hits a creature can't compete with the melee alternative. And zero cost mana assumes a huge perk investment into enchanting.

It is almost like making enchanting manditory to make this build function at all near higher levels or at expert/master difficulty. If only the skill scaled damage when rising instead of only reducing spell costs..