I know I am not the first to point out the shortcomings of the destruction skill tree, but as a console player (Xbox 360) I lack the ability to use mods to correct the issue and I feel rather alienated as an important aspect in my favorite pillar of gameplay has been seemingly neglected. The primary offensive skill in the mage gameplay style, destruction, lacks the amount damage perks available to other offense skills and damage boosting enchantments are completely non-existent. After adept level spells are available to the player the corresponding damage to magicka cost discrepancy becomes jarring and irrational. The fact is, higher level spells never make Destruction more efficient and this is a serious problem. Another painful realization this design choice throws upon us is that the various spells effects (sparks,fireball, cloaks, runes, ect.) are merely outgrown instead of bolstered and some are not effected by the associated perks at all! It saddens me that the robust spellmaking system of previous installments has been removed in favor of a few novelty spells whose usefulness rapidly diminishes. In actuality, I would glad sacrifice spellmaking for these unique spell effects if it meant my level 50 mage could effectively slaughter town guards with the impressive looking concentration spells. You see, for me balance isn't the issue, I don't care that warrior or thieves can reach insane levels of damage through smithing and enchanting, it only gives more room for roleplaying, which is the reason I play a roleplaying game. If mages are forced into a certain playstyle, no matter how "balanced" it is, the entire experience is compromised. For an Elder Scrolls game to function within reason, skills should essentially be able to excel in the area for which they are seemingly designed. Right now one-handed kills, illusion controls, sneak allows subterfuge (duh), but destruction (especially at higher levels) is just kind of "there". It has no real niche, but there is clearly one available for it to fulfill. Again, as I am restricted to the Xbox version of the game I can only hope that a future update or patch addresses this issue. In truth, it doesn't seem a resolution would be hard to achieve with a few variable and data changes.

Completely agree, all the would have to do is make the damage scale slightly with your destruction skill, like every other offensive skill does

I can't tell you how sad i was when I saw the patch notes for 1.4 and it did not show anything about destruction surely this cannot be to hard for the developers to fix right?

Destruction is fine. The only problem with destruction is if you use it on expert or master difficulty, it's really hard to raise the skill since your doing little damage, which means you might end up on a high level with a weaker destruction spell. But on adept, destruction packs enough punch.

The ice storm and thunderbolt spells are pretty damn powerful.

The issue here isn't that you can't succeed as a mage utilizing destruction. No, the reality is much worse than that, it's no fun! Few people imagine mages or sorcerors in a medieval times as essentially inferior archers with a limited number of attacks, and fewer player want to rely purely on attrition and illusion abuse(the only kind of illusion use, don't get me wrong it's my favorite skill alongside conjuration in both skyrim and oblivion) to be a viable spellcaster. But alas destruction damage is nearly completely static and is surpassed in the area it should excel by mere sticks and stones (swords and bows). It is devastating from a roleplaying perspective because what kind of person would hoard arcane knowledge if simple weaponry could exceed it in every way?

Don't forget you can also utilize the Enchantment Skill to create a full set of armor/clothing and jewelery that completely negates the cost of any Destruction Spell. You can also Double Enchant sets of armor to include cost reduction for Destruction and a Magicka School of any choice. I'll admit that the Master level spells are extremely useless compared to the Expert level Spells (Since you have to stand in place and comence a weird ass up and down arm wave, and stay in a fixed postiion) but arguably so. Despite the lack of efficient damage per cast, the double cast perk, alongside the distance availability, as well as the ability to cast at a quicker rate than sword swinging or arrow releasing, makes the Destruction network, rather formidable.

Don't you have sets of clothing/armor that allows you to cast spells for little to no Magicka?

Go pc bud, you're obviously at a point where your frustration at Beth and MS has gotten under your skin,the only way to fix it for now is the Pc route,there are some good mods out there for mages,if no pc then borrow one that's not being used,i can't see them fixing it anytime soon but then it's up to Microsoft to let any patches through not Beth.

If you could play the mod skyrim wars then you would work your mage hard just to stay alive against other npc mages that cast at lightening speeds.

Enchanting doesn't do enough to eliminate the tedium of spamming the same destruction spell 5-10 times to kill an enemy your level, besides those enchantment slots are much better served reinforcing a weapon skill to the point that daedric sword is more wicked than Satan's middle finger...no, my options are as follows: play a character with a "conventional" offensive skill, pray that the powers that be hear and answer my plea, play a different game, or set something important on fire. See Bethesda? Those are choices!

For the record I don't believe the people at Bethesda are dumb, obviously. They are visionaries who do weird and irrational things that many claim are dumb. Including me. In that respect they remind me of my brother and his odd obsession with psychedelics.

You're forgetting that swords require a close proximity in order for use.
Spells do not.

Even with top of the range weapons, boosted through smithing, and with the highest level melee skill, a melee character will not one-hit kill the toughest opponents in this game...but the 'destruction magic' folk expect to be able to do so with a spell.

Perhaps it's time to realise that this time round destruction magic is not the top of the magic tree...and that perhaps people have to change the way they approach the game to become effective at using destruction magic. Yes, the focus isn't on increasing magicka damage per spell, but it does increase per spell type (fire, frost, shock) and the system is designed to reduce the cost of casting spells, meaning that you need 'time' to do damage. As all destruction spells are ranged spells, that kind of makes a comparison with melee weapons illogical...melee users have to close with opponents and bash them, no magic user has to do this. Magic users, including destruction users, have area attack spells...with the exception of one perk available to two-hand wielders to allow a 'sweep' attack, all melee weapons are one on one.

The issue isn't that destruction magic is 'nerfed' in comparison to anything else in the game, nor that it is broken....the issue is that some people don't like what they got.

Essentially, just petition Bethesda to patch this. Simple.

Bows don't. And range doesn't matter much anyway...your pretty much going to get hit at some point or another you might as well make sure you have some defense and a big enough stick. I just wish destruction could serve as a stick but it does not qualify. It a very impressive looking but sub-par twig with pretty colors and [censored] all over it I forgot what I was talking about.

I wouldn't classify up close combat overall as, more effective than Destruction, and vice-versa.
They are both different methods of battle etiquette.
There are different situations that call explicitly for the use of each of these skills.
For instance, it's rather hard to cast an armor spell, then an illusion spell, before hashing out some effective Destruction spells inside of small areas (Like a cave, or small structure)
But then again, it's difficult to sprint eradically at an Ascended Sorcerer, as he casts powerful Ice Spells.
The effectiveness of any skill-including Destruction-is based purely on the ingenuity of the user.
Sure, the Destruction school this time around might be slightly less effective (cost vs lethalness) wise, but arguably said, close quarters combat can be equally innefective, depending on the environment and the battle situation.

Skyrim isn't a tight fixed labryinth, it's a landscape packed to the brim with loose variables.

Bethesda will hopefully get around to it, but I'm sure quest fixes and other actual bugs will take priority.

Melee has many inequalities compared to magic. For example, you do not expend any stamina to do normal attacks, whereas magic does not have a form of free attack. Melee power attacks also only require a minimum of 1 stamina to use, so they can be used repeatedly with even a little bit of stamina regeneration. And it's not like melee attacks have to contend against armor rating, as nearly all enemies have little or no armor stats when compared to the fact that magic must contend with magic and elemental resistances.

Exactly, Deel....

For a melee player to be effective they need a range of skill sets: A weapon skill, probably a block skill, and an armour skill...and throw smithing in there to boost offense and defence.

Magic users need the same: Offensive capability, defensive capability, and throw in enchanting to boost both of those. If they want to be really snazzy, they can use a shield instead of wards (not so effective against magic though), and they can even pick up a sword or a shield...or they can use a wizard stick which can be quickly and easilly replenished, and can pump out shots like a semi-auto rifle.

Edit:

I will point something out though...if the destruction is nerfed crowd think they have it tough, think how hard it is for the people that want to kill dragons with telekinesis and a spoon, they really have a hard time.

Different fighting styles are always a good thing - but currently you use bows for ranged and melee for close combat. I have yet to find a situation where casting destruction spells would have been more helpful or effective than either one-handed or archery. I have played 90 hours on my mage character. Sure, I have some control with illusion and my destruction spells are nearly free. The downside is on Master (which I play on) he takes 3 times as long (or more) to kill some of the bosses compared to both my Archer AND my melee characters. To top it off, my melee character can take one hell of a beating comparatively as well. The archer is a wet paper towel, but he takes things down very easily before they smack him. The only thing keeping my mage remotely competitive is +destruction potions.

Yes, while most demigod weapon users won't one-shot ancient dragons and the like, they are able to do appreciable damage that isn't directly tied to a resource. A two-handed character can easily kill a guard with a single standing power attack from a fairly early level, on adept difficulty destruction is never capable of the same, in fact, without extensive destruction reduction(regeneration is a wash), one or two leveled enemies will likely require you to expend all of your magicka and then some...this is made worse by the fact that this leaves you with little to no magicka for defense or summons.

Destruction spells are especially effective at a distance, because they require alot less aim, compared to bows.

The obvious answer is you use other skills then...conjuration or illusion.

What? Maybe if you're using lightning spells, but those are nigh useless against anything but casters, and even those usually die before you manage to drain their insane MP pool.

Again I feel I must point out a couple glaring issues...Destructions potential is limited primarily by the resource magicka, but expert level spells are no more efficient than novice spells, in that regard high level mages are hardly more effective killers until we take their other skills into consideration. My problem is definitely not the ease with which the game can be "beat", it comes from the lack of satisfaction and usefulness derived from a particular aspect of gameplay. With the amount of exploits and know-how the majority of us are capable of employing, the game's difficulty is pretty much irrelevant. Gameplay in Skyrim is formed by the application and growth of various skills and their synergy. Destruction is simply the inept wimpy kid on team "Magic". The rest of the team may win the big game through their collective effort or perhaps a member of team Warrior will drop out and play for them out of pity. Whatever the case everyone wins because its a children's ball game so no one gives a [censored] but the wimpy kid (destruction) will likely sit out unless someone tolerates his terrible svckiness.

I'm sure beth has loaded Microsoft with fixes for the consoles but again it's up to Sony and micro to get them out,Beth has no control over the update process except in the PC format which they can load steam instantly once they are satisfied the beta patches work.

I think you posted this in the wrong thread.

Destruction feels strange. The common sense tell me that a magical attack must be two things: An irracional power of blasting every thing and the incapacity to do it repeatedly. An we only have the second one.

As a console player im tired and bored to try the same meele and ranged , putting out of election any magic user (the idea of a only conjurer sick me , makes feel impotent.

Nice to read others are in the same situation like me , maybe if we are too much we'll be listened.