Incinerate can cause 198 pts of damage per dual-cast when fully perked out in firecasting. For an elder dragon (2255 health), this takes 12 casts to kill. Meanwhile, you can one-shot the same dragon when using fully decked-out combat gear and dual-wielding any two weapons except a pair of iron daggers. Hell, you can one-shot Alduin when dual-wielding melee.

Before you say "well... you're using fully-buffed stuff to do that, so it's not a fair comparison", I'd like to point out that in order to cast those 12 full-power incinerates, you need to also be kitted out to the near-max for destruction with low to zero magicka cost. So -- enchanted out, just as the warrior types... just in a different way.

Destruction is at most 1/12 the power of melee (actually that's being very conservative, it's really a lot less)... and don't even get me started on backstabbing vs. destruction.

But having said all that, I still love playing my mages. It's not like they are terrible -- quite the opposite, actually.
-Loth

Critical hits aren't that big of a deal, I skipped those perks entirely.

Fortify enchants and potions are a huge increase in damage, just one enchant can be the equivalent of multiple perks into the basic damage increase.
Enchant/Alchemy are broken and most players know it.

Attack rate perk is disfunctional, it only speeds up the animation you still have to draw for the same time as before. A perk to avoid as it throws off your judgement of when the arrow is ready.
Destruction's impact > archery's stagger and paralysis

Weapon damage increase via smithing is probably the most major factor, albeit a bound bow will still out damage apprentice level destruction.

The cost of destruction spells is what really gimps it though I think. If higher level damage spells were castable for a more reasonable cost it'd be less of an issue. Archery's only limit is arrows which is essentially no limit. You can shoot arrows all day, you run out of magicka extremely fast casting anything above novice level destruction spells.

The cost reduction enchants are the only decent solution for making destruction reasonably playable on vanilla.



One pretty damning comparison is this:

Conjure Dremora Lord 358 base magicka cost
Thunderbolt 343 base magicka cost

Thunderbolt does 60 damage. How much would you say a dremora lord does while it also is distracting enemies and taking damage for you? Not to mention potentially staggering them with its attacks.
Are these really anywhere close to appropriate returns for their magicka costs relative to eachother? Most players who've used both spells would probably laugh at a suggestion that they are.

Why can't we get more than 2 perks related to damage? I thought just having 2 without scaling is more than a little conservative.

You are forgetting the 100 percent damage augmentation potions. Which puts it at.....396 damage.

The two other problems are -mana cost stacking and stunlock.

-mana cost trivializes the mages' resource stat, which effectively means you have unlimited magicka. That's right, you can start off with 100 magicka or 700 magicka and so long as you have the gear, it won't matter. There's no reward for devoting your stat increases to magicka.

Stunlock is stupidly op. If it was something like "increases your chance to stagger opponents by 1% per 2 points in your Destruction skill", it wouldn't matter. All these posts about playing your mage effectively with runes/cloaks/paralysis/summons/fiery death are mana-inefficient since combat mana regeneration is abysmal, and you're better off using stunlock instead. It makes me think that Bethesda doesn't playtest these skills extensively beforehand. The only other option is run like crazy and hope your summon of the day can tank the angry boss.

The two other problems are -mana cost stacking and stunlock.

-mana cost trivializes the mages' resource stat, which effectively means you have unlimited magicka. That's right, you can start off with 100 magicka or 700 magicka and so long as you have the gear, it won't matter. There's no reward for devoting your stat increases to magicka.

Stunlock is stupidly op. If it was something like "increases your chance to stagger opponents by 1% per 2 points in your Destruction skill", it wouldn't matter. All these posts about playing your mage effectively with runes/cloaks/paralysis/summons/fiery death are mana-inefficient since combat mana regeneration is abysmal, and you're better off using stunlock instead. It makes me think that Bethesda doesn't playtest these skills extensively beforehand. The only other option is run like crazy and hope your summon of the day can tank the angry boss.

You are absolutely right... I did forget that. Still... melee doesn't need potion chugging before battle to still outstrip destruction by a large margin.
-Loth

Stunlock is stupidly op. If it was something like "increases your chance to stagger opponents by 1% per 2 points in your Destruction skill", it wouldn't matter. All these posts about playing your mage effectively with runes/cloaks/paralysis/summons/fiery death are mana-inefficient since combat mana regeneration is abysmal, and you're better off using stunlock instead. It makes me think that Bethesda doesn't playtest these skills extensively beforehand. The only other option is run like crazy and hope your summon of the day can tank the angry boss.

But mages ALWAYS use potions in EVERY fantasy game, so yes, it takes more time than a warrior, but mages ARE NOT supposed to be as straight forward. And if you use the weakness to so and so magika poison, you can pretty muh one hit anything with destruction, it just takes more thinking, but mages are supposed to take more thinking.

I use both, at times my dremora gets smashed, and I can cast spells that take out entire rooms of people, for a whole 15 magika.

But mages ALWAYS use potions in EVERY fantasy game, so yes, it takes more time than a warrior, but mages ARE NOT supposed to be as straight forward. And if you use the weakness to so and so magika poison, you can pretty muh one hit anything with destruction, it just takes more thinking, but mages are supposed to take more thinking.

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.

Is 235 damage the most a mage can do? You're forgetting that archers have the sneak attack x3 while shooting an arrow. Using a Daedric bow and arrow that would be over 300 damage in one shot. And that's not counting any critical damage, or poisons or enchantments on top of that.

And dual-wielding daggers can do 60x extra sneak attack damage, which is much higher than what Destruction or Archery can do. But you won't always be able to sneak. Mages are quicker than archers.

I have no doubt of that. Every mage I play uses casting gear -- in fact, it's a necessity. This is not so bad, of course, but the point remains: until that casting gear is acquired, you will run outta magicka and be left up a certain creek without a paddle. Archers do not have this problem if they retrieve arrows and keep all the arrows they find. And arrows have zero weight, so you could have thousands of them and not even notice.

-Loth

True that. You do have to be a good shot if you're an archer as you don't get to move around like mages do.

I wear robes and the mages circlet from the college..i dont enchant exploit and dont wear armor because thats not the wizard way

LOL, yeah... it's not like Archers can get a perk to slow time down or zoom in for a better shot.

Oh... wait.
-Loth

LOL, yeah... it's not like Archers can get a perk to slow time down or zoom in for a better shot.

Oh... wait.
-Loth

To be fair, a comparison with archery should note that its easier to kite with destruction because you dont get slowed when you are casting like you do with archery. Also its much easier to hit with magic than it is with archery. I know you are going to say you can hit with archery no problem, but that doesnt dispel the argument that it takes more skill to hit with archery than with magic.

To be fair, a comparison with archery should note that its easier to kite with destruction because you dont get slowed when you are casting like you do with archery. Also its much easier to hit with magic than it is with archery. I know you are going to say you can hit with archery no problem, but that doesnt dispel the argument that it takes more skill to hit with archery than with magic.