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.

Except my deathknight kills it in one hit on master with his two handed Daedric sword.

Again unless you actually look at the math involved please dont bother saying things like this because its nothing to do with the point.

Your point was that destruction can never reach those levels, my point was that it can, just because my point is against yours it doesn't mean I'm wrong.

I've seen at most ~1100 damage with a 2h weapon, with a +potion then I'm assuming you can reach ~2400, then a power attack you can hit for around 6000 damage with the power attack perk, so yeah your right. But you have to wait/force them to land, before you hit them. I can hit them as soon as I see them with thunderbolt/lightning storm.

You can become vastly overpowered with all the combat styles, I'm sure I could kill an ancient dragon in similar time to you on master, with destruction. Your point was that destruction can never reach those levels, my point was that it can, just because my point is against yours it doesn't mean I'm wrong.

I never want any skill to be able to be this powerful. IMO skyrim really isn't that kind of game, but if you enjoy reaching those levels and one hitting everything you see, then great. But don't come on to a games forum trying to claim superiority about game mechanics, because it's pathetic.

I'm entitled to argue any point you put across, and you saying "don't bother getting involved" is pointless.

Here is why destruction magic is seriously underpowered, and it really doesn't have to do with 'Scaling' so much as how things are set up damagewise.

For the sake of comparison, let's compare it to the closest mundane skill to Destruction's purpose, Archery.

They both have the primary purpose of doing damage at range, but archery completely blows Destruction out of the water.

Archery has the following things that Destruction lacks:

Critical hits.
Sneak attack if stealthed (and a stealth perk to increase the damage of these)
Fortify damage enchants and potions.
Perks to increase attack rate, zoom in to improve aim, and 50% stagger/15% paralyze per shot.
+100% damage perk (for 5 talent points - Destruction has +50% damage perk for 2 talent points, but split into 3 damage type branches.)
And finally, you can further improve bow damage by enchanting for extra damage, smithing and getting better arrows.

The only thing destruction gets is the aforementioned +50% damage in each branch for 2 perks each, and upgrading to better spells (think of it as the equivalent of getting a better bow, but not smith-able.) Destruction enhancing potions and enchants only lower the cost to cast. They do not increase damage or speed up attack rate.

A fully perked archer with full archery enchants can annihilate just about anything before it can reach him short of a dragon. A fully perked destruction mage with full destruction enchants is lucky if he can take out a Troll before it's whacking him over the head, never mind giants.

What destruction needs is something to compensate for the head start mundane combat skills have by having enchant-able weapons. At the very least, Fortify Destruction should enhance damage, NOT lower casting cost. It's silly as it is now anyway...you can reduce your casting cost to zero, but due to the casting time restriction, you still can't do enough damage fast enough to compete with mundane attacks.

No, he's saying that every other damage-dealing skills can easily reach that level compared to Destruction

Oh, Destruction CAN reach that level

it's just that it has "...eventually" added to the end

Destruction can NEVER reach the same damage levels as a weapon. The math proves that. And as I said gameplay style is NOTHING to do with the point at all. Your saying I have to wait? Dragonrend>hit it on the head = dead dragon.

I am not saying you cant articulate a counter argument, but you have to couch it in the maths available. You are not.

OP, either you're an idiot, playing dumb, or you haven't experiment with destruction at all and you're just making a moderatley intelligent anolysis from looking at the perks. I'll list some of the things that the Destruction School has thast Archery doesn't.

Strafing - Even with that one perk in the Archery tree, a Mage has alot more mobility in combat than an archer.

Staggerlocking - Destruction Mages can kill almost anything without it being able to touch them, one perk makes it so that Dual-Casted Destruction Spells will stagger an enemy. And since Armor does not affect Destruction damage, you can just spam enemies(even Dragons and Dragon Priests) and staggerlock them.

Infinite Destruction- With the right enchantments, a Destruction Mage can cast an infinite amount of Destruction spells, which are faster and more accurate than arrows.

Accuracy, Damage and Speed - Unlike Arrows, Destruction spells don't have a drop-off rate, and other than Ice, they're just as fast if not faster than arrows. Lightning is automatic infact, since it uses hitscans, and doesn't travel in real-time. Destruction spells can be more conviniently casted quicker and faster than arrows. As for damage, I haven't tested it to the fullest, but a fully upgraded Daedric bow would do what? 80 Damage? Along with Daedric arrows which do 24 Damage(I'm pretty sure); together they do a little over a hundred damage. A dualcast Thunderbolt spells which does 235 damage(Dual Cast is 2.5x damage) is faster, stronger and more powerful than anything a bow can do. Incinerate does even more damage than that if you consider its burn effect.

So no, other than scaling, which isn't even necessary, Destruction is far from underpowered.

Weakness does not stack, it will never go above 100%. You can have two differnet types, but by the same token so can any other class. Weakness to potions are available to other classes. The most you can have for destruction is a 200% damage increase from combining weakness potions.


Again your math is flawed, as other classes also do elemental damage with weapon enchants and can use the same potions to increase damage further. Weaponry has more damage potential than Destriction no matter how you try to fudge the maths.

The point is that destruction can match that damage, with my above example.

So your point is that Destruction can't stand on its own without buffs from a non-magical perk tree

No it cant, read my above edit. Your math is flawed.

What are you talking about? All I need to do is level destruction and alchemy to reach those levels.

You have to level smithing, enchanting, alchemy and the combat style that you want to improve for your method. I also only need to invest 3 perks into destruction, you will need at least 5-6.


Okay fine, I thought you would know the math regarding destruction damage, why would you comment about how inferior it is if you didn't.

Incinerate, dual cast for 220 damage. If I drink a +130% destruction damage potion that dual cast damage goes up to 506. Then you hit them with a weakness to magic/fire poison, or both. Lets say a 100% fire weakness poison (which you can stack with successive hits). So that incinerate now does 1012 damage per dual cast. You could have made a weakness to fire/magic poison for even more damage, then stacked them. You could then kill it in one dual cast.

So that incinerate will kill an ancient dragon in 6 dual casts, which can be fired at a very fast rate. Like I said I could kill an ancient dragon in a similar time to you using dragonrend and 2h.

So that means, destruction can meet the same damage levels .

I honestly don't see the point of arguing combat skills at this level of damage though, as I don't think this is the way skyrim should be played. I think destro does need a buff for normal use, along with weakening the melee skills to balance.

What are you talking about? All I need to do is level destruction and alchemy to reach those levels.

You have to level smithing, enchanting, alchemy and the combat style that you want to improve for your method. I also only need to invest 3 perks into destruction, you will need at least 5-6.

You haven't given anything that proves my maths is flawed. You agreed that you can give +200% weakness to that dual cast incinerate. 500 damage, x3 is 1500 = ancient dragon in 4 hits.

We are doing a direct comparison of ONLY destruction skills vs other schools and skills.

I mean seriously think about it, there's a reason why the NPC wizards and witches etc move about a lot back forth and sideways, its to encourage YOU to play like that!. Thats how you fight as a magician. There is logic in this....

Yet the game allows far more perks than filling up just one skill tree. Who's to say you HAVE to play the game focusing entirely on just one tree, who's to say you can't play the game enjoying several that interact with each other. I wonder how many players do strictly hold out the perks for one tree waiting for the skill level to be high enough to buy the next perk without buying from any other trees.

There are times when I come across apponents that block with a shield very well, but magic kicks their ass, especially those nasty ice picks.

Bottom line, destruction, like archery, gives you distance, but even on the low destruction runs it doesn't impeded your ability to move about quickly, with archery you have to build it up before you can move faster with your bow. Plus with archery your aim has to be bang on, not so easy in a busy fight with lots of effects flying everywhere. With a destruction spell with large impact radius your aim doesn't have to be soo accurate.

In that respect I don't really feel destructions that underpowered. But sure if you like to just stand your ground, a big hard hit of a heavy weapon does the job.

I mean seriously think about it, there's a reason why the NPC wizards and witches etc move about a lot back forth and sideways, its to encourage YOU to play like that!. Thats how you fight as a magician. There is logic in this....

And you need a weapon to apply those poisons, while those already using weapons don't need 'weakness to' poisons since they can one-shot the dragon anyway. There's also the fact that applying those poisons takes time, during which the target can, and likely will, react, with potentially fatal consequences if it can attack before you can start casting.

Oh my.............. Please read the posts. Your statement was the destruction CAN reach the same damage output as a weapon and then proceeded to use flawed mathmatical reasoning to prove it so.

Your ENTIRE basis for your math is DUAL CASTING.


Dual casting is irrelelvant when I can have TWO weapons. Which is why the examples are always one weapon vs one spell. Anytime your bring up dual casting remember that a swordsman gets 300% damage for a single attack with dual wielding. Thats more than your dual casting.

@Above; The exploitation of the broken pots is not a valid point because that is a bug exploit that will shortly be removed.

No. Alchemy is already enough. You don't even need to invest on ANY perk, or skill.

Just go with Fortify Restoration loop. I created a Fortify Smithing 5000% pot with enough material and patience. You, too, can make a Fortify Destruction 5000% potion. However, since I can also make a Fortify One-Handed/Two-handed/Archery 5000%, Destruction suddenly pales in comparison, but it can reach that level, eventually, with enough material and patience, although with the same numbers Destruction will always pale in comparison.

I was comparing destruction vs 2h vs dual wield 1h, your example above was 2h (which uses two hands, like my destruction example). You can reach that 6000 number with all three, any higher than 6000 is worthless as no enemy has that amount of health. If your argument is really that you can reach numbers higher than 6000 then what the hell is the point? So I was ignoring that point as its moot.

Yeah my math is based on dual casting, thats what you do with destruction. How about you read this, all of it, rather than just pick a tiny bit of text to comment on.

Why do I feel like Im banging my head against a brick wall?

Your math is flawed precisely because you are using mathmatical examples that do not support your argument. No matter which example you use there is ALWAYS a weapon example that will output more damage. That is my point. Till such time as the player can cast a spell either single or dual casted that can do upwards of 6k damage you are wrong.

Why do I feel like Im banging my head against a brick wall?

Your math is flawed precisely because you are using mathmatical examples that do not support your argument. No matter which example you use there is ALWAYS a weapon example that will output more damage. That is my point. Till such time as the player can cast a spell either single or dual casted that can do upwards of 6k damage you are wrong.

I think he's alluding to using the restoration exploit that lets you make potions that can fortify skills by several billion points;so you can smith weapons that do millions of damage; or a fortify marksman potion that makes every arrow do billions of damage, without ever gaining a level in their governing skills.

Cause even as a glitch, similar effects can be performed with weakness to magic potions which has the same effect if you stack them.