Runes cast in back-pedaling work wonders, as do Wall of X. A smart Destro-mage who invests *a little* beyond Destro can Detect, lay his runes, toss in a Fireball, and watch the "magic" happen.

Bows are negated by wind-wall. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/windWall.htm

You really don't know much about DnD 3e, do you? The wizard can have all these and more, because any wizard worth his salt will have a high Int score (which increases the amount of spells he can prepare), pearls of power, staves, wands, Celerity, contingencies, timestop...

Yep, watch as you die painfully.

Edit: To clarify, you can only lay one rune. Wall of X requires you to kite in and out like nuts, and fireball won't cut it either.

Firstly, you misused the word "dire." If enemies did, in fact, have dire armor ratings, Destruction would be an absolute must.

Secondly, I'm pretty sure that we here on the forum have a fine understanding of the game's mechanics, and probably better than yours, given your final statement.

Being a "Destruction Mage" and using only (or almost exclusively) Destruction are two different things, and will obviously be about as effective as using only an offensive combat skill and little else. Maybe people expect a lot out of mages, like for them to be able to effortlessly burn up a whole town or something, but in order to do that, we need to focus on more than just Destruction.

Finally, even considering Destruction and nothing else, (1) it's best compared to Archery, as both only deal damage at a distance, however small or great (and Archery is fairly comparable to the other two offensive combat skills, so that's a balanced way to look at it), and (2) magic can do unique things.

For instance, arrows cannot AOE. Even two handed weapons with Sweep cannot hope to compare to the basic fifteen feet of AOE that Adept spells have, no less the great distance of Master spells. And while they can be poisoned to great effect, combat skills cannot DOT without supplement via poisons (which means Alchemy investment, gold investment, or luck finding these one-time use items).

Before even going on the offensive (and let's face it, that's all bows can do), Destruction magic can set up a spectacular defense. Walk into battle with a cloak spell and Ebonyflesh, cast both. Switch to a rune in one hand and a wall spell in the other, casting the rune in front of you in the direction of the opposition and circling the wall around you, and viola: hundreds of points in both defensive damage and armor rating before you even start attacking.

And none of that is to mention awesome things that magic is capable of doing, like Mass Paralysis and Blizzard together, or, say, completely obliterating Ancient dragons in just 40 seconds with one spell (3,071 HP divided by 75 damage/sec, which is Lightning Storm unimproved).

Destruction is not math.

When was the last time you saw a bow dealing 300 damage plus stamina damage plus slow plus a paralysis to survivors over ten seconds to three dozen enemies at the same time?

You haters need to quit hatin'. Destruction makes the battlefield my battlefield. The civil war questline wouldn't be the same for me without it

Sigh.

A cloak is worthless, because it requires you to be in melee range to function and does piddly damage. Ebonyflesh is much less potent than the equivalent-ranked regular armor. You can only only have one rune with 50 points of damage; the wall is the only saving grace.

Mass Paralysis and Blizzard eat so much magicka that there's no point to it, and they're both Master spells. You're better off with lolstunlock, and Blizzard alone takes two hands and 5 seconds to charge up. So does Mass Paralysis, come to think of it.

Lightning Storm. You mean stand in one spot and charge for five seconds while hoping the dragon doesn't breathe or fly to the opposite side of the terrain Lightning Storm?

Of course, that's all irrelevant when you realize you're comparing Archery to Alteration + Destruction. Archery + all other magic skills still wipe the floor with Destruction + all other magic skills, and the resource for Archery (arrows) are still more inexpensive and more abundant than magicka blast for blast. From uesp:


Master Level

Master-level spells are different than lower-level spells:

• Always require both hands (and therefore cannot be dual-cast)
  
• Cannot move while casting.
  
• Are interruptible.

For the Destruction school, they are of debatable value since value in this school generally equates to damage per second. Blizzard does no appreciable damage (you can in fact cast it in the middle of town and generally not aggro anything), and while the Fire and Lightning spells do significant damage, they take a very long time to cast. The Lightning spell in particular is crippled by the inability to move as it is a sustained beam, though this works against the Fire spell as well as your target could simply move away during the very long cast time.

Perks don't negate archery's issues until you get the perks. Until you take the countering perk, you're stuck with archery's movement disadvantage (and it can be a good while before you acquire the Ranger perk to overcome it). Wards and armor spells don't replace their normal counterparts, but add to them. Both the archer and the mage can be armored. Unlike an archer, a mage can be both armored and be holding up a ward.

Spell combat and bow combat and melee combat are probably each designed to play differently from one another. "Destruction needs to do more damage because because bows do more damage" does not say that Destruction is underpowered, but says only that Destruction needs to be a more effective bow. If Destruction needs a boost, I think it would be best demonstrated by what it fails to accomplish against enemies.

That's good to know about runes and walls. I can't speak for the effectiveness of our own fireballs, but NPC fireballs have been playing havoc with my archer.

Simply put, Destruction cannot keep you alive as a mage that relies upon it. You might get by for a little while in the beginning, but then you meet your first sabrecat. No amount of runes or backpedaling will save you, because you are dead meat on feet.

A simple anolysis of the spells reveals why... let's compare Conjuration's damage output at the Apprentice level to Destruction at the Apprentice level:

Conjure Flame Atronach -- 1 cast for base 150 magicka yields 60 secs worth of firebolts, plus a defender to soak melee who is flamecloaked for 10 fire damage/second plus the firebolts

Firebolt -- the same 150 magicka yields 3.65 casts of firebolt which must be aimed by the player. There is no defensive ability conferred until the impact perk is unlocked. Even then, you are unable to effectively engage more than one enemy at a time.

Remember that sabrecat? A single Flame Atronach can de-aggro it from your character, and in many cases, kill it... especially if you turn around and help. THIS is when you use your firebolt spell... AFTER a summons. The cat is locked into melee with your 'Nach... you have an easy target. I like to whack it with a Soul Trap first, and then pour on the heat... easy lesser soul. With just Destruction, you are dead -- the school cannot stand on its own. But here's the kicker: Conjuration can stand up by itself just fine. If that sabrecat kills your 'Nach, summon another one. Destruction is entirely optional in Skyrim... and this is supposed to be the primary damage-dealing school! That's all it's supposed to do... it can't do anything else except cause damage!

As you gain levels and advance, the disparity does nothing but grow wider and wider between Destruction and Conjuration. Frost Atronachs are super-deadly tanks with 10 DPS frost cloaks and a huge health pool... but you could almost cast 2 fireballs for the same amount of magicka that does the same amount of damage as the Frost Atronach just standing next to an enemy and not attacking it for 4 seconds -- wow, that's helpful. Storm Atronachs? Cast Lightning Bolts and Chain Lightning for 60 secs, plus 10 DPS lightning cloak... for the same magicka, you can almost cast 2 thunderbolts... but not one dual-cast.

So, yeah... I play with a Destro scaling mod.
-Loth

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1330096-fixing-the-combat-skills-in-skyrim/

A long post I made yesterday, I have fixes there on how to balance the skills, not destruction damage scaling, it's all about magicka cost.

Edit: Like the person above has said, the fact that the expert destro spells cost more than the conjuration expert spells is ridiculous! You only need to cast the conjuration spell once, the destruction you need to cast multiple times. Completely agree, I believe the solution is magicka cost, and increasing the effectiveness of the +damage destro perks to +100% instead of +50%.

ha yea im lvl 45 and having a real hard time with some encounters but i refuse armor/shields for my wizard and use destruct/conjure combo in fights.


Whats kite?

Good on you... you're playing it right.
Kiting is when you cast and run, cast and run... a common tactic that keeps you away from harm while inflicting it. The term is also used to describe how a player can get enemies to follow him in order to lure them into a trap or ambush.

-Loth

Someone hasn't played as an Archer in Skyrim.

Your numbers are also quite off. My Legendary Daedric Bow at the moment has 100 base damage, that's with no enchants, no +Smithing potions/gear and my Archery skill isn't even at 100 yet.

Dual Cast is also not 2.5x damage of a single cast. It's 2.2x for 2.4x the cost in Magicka.

So err yea, try playing as an Archer before you post garbage like this.

Another thing to keep in mind that helps melee and archery damage. Marked for death is a serious debuff to mob armor especially when you stack a couple/few level 1 shouts.

Makes swords and arrows hit like a Mack truck. Doesn't really do anything to my fire spells that I can tell. Is there any way to debuff an enemy's resistance as a Mage?

You can use poisons to de-buff, namely causing weakness to magicka/weakness to elements... but you need a bow to safely apply the poisons. It is possible to cause tens of thousands of points of damage by stacking poison effects properly (this will take 100 alchemy plus lotsa perks, and thorough knowledge of the alchemy mechanism... not to mention a good eight or nine applications of stackable poisons), and then casting a single novice destruction spell.

-Loth

There seems to be 4 major playstyles for the pure destruction caster.

1. No Enchanting, no Impact. Have fun getting owned.

2. No Enchanting, Impact. With a high enough regeneration rate and max mana, this is viable. Everything dies. Eventually. It might take 50 dual-cased apprentice spells, but everything dies. This was my first pure destruction mage.

3. Enchanting, no Impact. This one's a total drag until you reach level 100 enchanting. Expect to level Destruction on things in the wilderness that can't fight back. Wolves, game animals, Giants and Mammoths, Horkers. No dungeon running for you, unless you want to get dead fast. This one was my second pure mage. Once you reach 40+ Destruction and 100 Enchanting (with perks), you become a Fireball-spamming God, or better. If you "powergame", I think this one puts you closest to the NPC mages you can find in the game: high health pools, practically limitless magicka. That means going pure health, since mana won't matter in the end, and don't bother getting apprentice or above mastery perks for 50% cost reduction, since those will just be wasted perks in the end.

4. Enchanting, Impact. May or may not be so much of a drag in the beginning, depending on how much you want to dump into Magicka. When you hit 100 Enchanting, you may as well quit playing, because the game could honestly play itself at this point. I would never make this character.

On the damage of Destruction, it's hard to argue that it isn't underpowered when compared to other forms of damage. However, the amount of damage most of the spells have is acceptable, in my experience. It's really the base cost of the spells that hurts the destruction tree and forces the usage of Fortify Destruction enchantments or the spamming of apprentice spells with Impact. Impact, as a perk... well, it blows my mind how anybody could have put a perk like this into the game. It must have been a last resort. I don't know. I can't justify a perk so gamebreakingly overpowered that it allows you to permastun any enemy in the game with 100% certainty. Even groups of enemies if you're fast enough and their stun animations are long enough. I took this perk on my first character expecting it to work like 20% of the time. Imagine my surprise. That perk will never have a place in any of my future characters at its current strength.

Agree 100%. The mod I'm using to scale destro nerfs impact to 50%... but it's still too high, IMO.
-Loth

+ Summon 2 atronaches/dremora/thralls...

Stoppled playing my mage because it became too easy... I play on Master aswell........ Impact is just..... Silly. It should be a 15-20% chance to stagger.... Not 100%

Actually, Impact just makes dual casting Destro into a stamina-less power attack (all power attacks cause stagger 100% of the time)

Does your mod also nerf power attack stagger to 50% for consistancy's sake?

Nah, it's the Balanced Magic Mod... kinda out of the scope of the thing to also mess around with melee... besides, that would just nerf my enemies.
-Loth

Why does the OP overlook the bonus thing on destructionmagic eg:

Fire> Burns opponent casuing more damage over time (its the same a poison)
Ice> Stamina Damage as well
Lightning> Magicka Damage (makes enemy mages cry.)

Fire DoT is negligible, Stamina does nothing against autoattacks, and enemy mages put up wards and have too much mana.

The "on fire" debuff is low damage, but it can be stacked with itself. This is good, but still... wimpy damage, unless you have the bugged Aspect of Terror perk from the Illusion Tree which adds a flat 10 points to your fire spells. For the Flames spell, this bug means a +125% increase in damage. The Aspect of Terror is a level 50 Illusion perk, and you only need to spend another 2 perks in Illusion to get it.

The stamina damage/slow for ice spells sounds great on paper until you realize that you are in Skyrim... where most of the critters, all of the undead, and the entire indigenous population of humans are 50% resistant or more. While that Nord Barbarian charging you with that battleaxe will come at you a fraction of a second later, you are still just as dead after he cleaves your head from your shoulders.

Magicka damage is even more useless... enemy mages have MUCH more than double or triple their health in magicka points. By the time you have beat them down to zero magicka, you have already killed them five casts ago. Might as well have not even bothered with this, but they needed an excuse to make the instant-strike spells cost the most, since they are the easiest to aim.

-Loth

Armor against enemies is inconsequential due to the fact that they don't get the armor perks. IIRC, the figure for the absolute max a NPC can get without player intervention (IE: giving armor improved by smithing or smithing abuse) is about 120-ish clad head to toe in daedric armor.

Stamina reduction with frost damage? Magicka reduction with shock damage Inconsequential against damage sponge enemies. Those types of enemies don't just have 1000+ health, they have huge pools of stamina and magicka as well. The damage that frost and shock do to those is a drop in the bucket.

We are doing a direct comparison of ONLY destruction skills vs other schools and skills. Your argument is based on mixing skills as you pointed out, which is nothing to do with the point we are making at all.

Again playstyle is nothing to do with game mechanics. Your entire point is moot, as I have pointed out several times in this thread destruction is MATHMATICALLY inferior to other schools of magic and combat skills. It doesnt matter what additional effects a spell has, when a sword can do more damage in a single strike than a destruction spell can do in several strikes.

This is not about magic vs melee or bows. It is about Destruction on its own and why its damage output is mathmatically inferior to direct combat.

As for your point about additional effects, only AoE damage would be the preserve of destruction however the AoE damage itself is negligable. Why? For a simple reason, the AoE damage is calculated from the base damage of the spell. The base damage of the spell is still lower than the base damage of the majority of upgraded weaponry. Therfor the AoE splash is only a small fraction of what a direct strike with a weapon would be. And since a warrior or ranger can kill in one strike AoE only comes in to play against mobs, and there warriors still have the advantage if they wield two handed weaponry as a sideways power attack can be made to hit anyone in range meaning essentially AoE.

Again I am not saying destruction cannot be used effectively ( I have a pure mage on master specced for lightning dest.), I am pointing out that the fact of the matter is that;

No matter how much you maximise your damage output with destruction magic, a melee or archer character can potentially do 10 times more damage.

Say that to my destro mage who can take down an ancient dragon on master in 6 dual casts. Through the use of poisons and potions.