Alchemy is a thief skill in skyrim, so are all mages destined to become thieves?

And people suggesting alchemy probably have not actually tried it. Given the amount of grinding and the rarity of ingredients that fortify destruction.

Really? You must not invest anything into Health then, because my Mage has 500 magicka and 150 Health and he can survive atleast 3 swipes from a bear or cat. Then again, I suppose it depends on what difficulty you play on. The only opponents who also strafe alot are other mages. And they're not that hard to miss with destruction spells, even ice. If anything they're easier due to the lack of sensitivity restrictions when casting spells. Respectively, an archer can slow time and a mage can shout to slow time if they're fighting mages at distance, and if a Destruction user IS fighting a mage, he should probably be using Lightning in the first place.

Fority destruction reagents are abunant, and there are plenty of places you can "farm" for those reagents. And the leveling is much faster when you understand that; more effects = more skill gained. I used Alchemy on my pure mage, who specced for lightning. Those destruction potions were bloody handy as I aways get swamped by elder dragons at the college.

Re; Slow time shout vs Steady Hand,

Steady hand uses stamina and can be used as much as you like within stamina limits with zero cooldown. Slow time has a long cooldown and is only as effective as steady hand with 2 words or more which then increases its cooldown further.

Enemy archers strafe. Wolves strafe. Falmer can be quite tough to bullseye at times... and one-shot with their archery.

And yes, I play on master, so no mistakes in tactics are survivable.
-Loth

Archers can slow time to aim and shoot;

mages can't do that.

Example: my pure mage got into a firefight with a couple of other mages earlier today on the Whiterun plains. It's all good... we're all calling up Atronachs and blasting each other silly. I have spell absorb, so I'm having a better time than they are. I win the fight, my Frost Atronach de-summons after giving the enemy mage's corpses a sly grin... and then I get jumped from outta nowhere by 3 wolves with almost zero mana on my bar. Can't fight back, I start running like a madman, but I'm out in the open, and there's no ledges to jump off of to lose these doggies that are hounding me.

Yeah... I died.

Moral of the story: running out of magicka can really svck. An archer or melee warrior could have just popped the wolves with nary a second thought. Stop selling your mana pots, Loth!

There are Fortify Destruction potions, which reach some pretty high numbers if you level Alchemy and make your own, and with one active you can bump that to around 450-500 damage. You can't use one for every fight though, as your supply is limited by your rate of ingredient collection.

If an archer starts stacking smithing increases and Fortify Marksman enchantments the mage's damage falls way behind, as said archer can deal over 3300 with a sneak attack using an upped bow while under the influence of a custom Fortify Marksman potion, or 1100+ in open combat.

ugh another reason i didn't like skyrim.. they made a mockery of mages (my favorite class).... DOn't put them in your game if you aren't going to respect them.

Agreed. Mages should get a sneak bonus, at least, and extra slots for enchanted gear.

Why are you still on these forums? No one likes a troll.

Yeesh. I don't think I ever saw all that Smithing bonus stuff in my first character's playthrough (ended at lv~56, 80-90ish hours). I had a total of 42% enchanted smithing bonus, and about handful of smithing bonus potions (ranging from 20-40). In the end, with a piece or two of +1-handed-damage gear I found in some dungeons, I managed to get a Daedric sword that did around 105 damage, and Dawnbreaker doing a bit less.

Maybe it's just me, but the things you describe doing don't seem "extremely easy". Or "basic".

I bet you didn't find -100% casting gear, either... you kinda have to powergame to get that kind of stuff.
-Loth

You can smith an weapon to do many times more damage, 100% as master + 100% for spesialisaiton + up to 4*29% from enchants+ up to 148% from potions= from 300% with bought enchants and potions to 464% with maximum enchant and alchemy.
Now put on + damage gear up to 4*48% damage

I have an glass bow who does 164 damage with archery 89 and 4 overdraw perks, an standard glass bow does 39 in damage for me. With 4*48% damage enchants I do 490 in damage with my bow. sneak atacks does 1470.

My main weakness is low armor rating as I take so few hits, mostly animals in the wild and an serious enemy would easy kill me on hard.

I have to admit that after leveling the Warrior skills so I could hit 81 on my mage, coming back to destruction magic seemed underpowered by comparison. Playing a mage does require crafting support a bit more, too, and also more menu management. I still find wielding magic to be more fun than wielding a sword and a board, although archery is an enjoyable secondary.

Gotta love how there's always one jerk who thinks he's oh-so-clever trying to hide a flame behind a choice of a number of equally insulting assumptions.

Yes, I have played destruction a lot, and yes, I know about the stagger-lock effect as you call it, but the discussion at hand is about DPS. Sure, you can repeatedly stun mister dragon if he oh-so-conveniently lands so you can get a good bead on him, but an archer of the same level, with the same perk investment and the same enchanting skill, will kill the dragon 5 times faster, and get staggers too, though not on every shot.

Others have already pointed out how dual casting destruction is a losing proposition since you spend more energy per damage than you would simply casting both hands independantly, and ONLY becomes worth the effort with the stagger perk.

As soon as you can demonstrate how well Destruction does (without Conjuration as backup, by the way) against 4 or more enemies, which an archer could one-shot with sneak attacks individually, waiting for sneak to re-assert itself between shots in order to prove me wrong, I'm calling shenannigans.

You also forgot the Perk that lets you move around fast with a drawn bow.


Closest I've gotten is -88% with standard enchanting (no potions, this character's not a very good potionmaker) but with dual enchants I also have some +mana and +recharge in there as well.

Face facts - pure destruction blows donkey balls! As the OP mentioned Archery (+Sneak) is way overpowered.

ironically though, all the builds I've made that involve using a bow benefit from the destruction tree perks.
- 50 enchanted Fire/Cold or Shock damage on top of the base bow damage is sick, or just go all the way and use two enchantments on a bow. (50 Cold / 50 Shock)
- From what I can see the charges to an enchanted bow are vastly increased due to the perks in the destruction tree (Novice / Adept casting, also the +damage to an element type perks) , so bows rarely need to be recharged with soul gems. Hence as was said in a previous post "Archery blows stuff out of the water."

As you said - Destruction needs balancing, without a doubt along with "in combat" mana regen to compensate for this.

Although my main gripe is the lackluster way the hotkeys have been implemented (PC), that was the crux that made me drop a destruction based mage char. http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4862 - "Categorised favorites menu" has changed that to some extent, but it's still a piss poor solution that forces you to pause the game and muck about in spell selection.

up until recently i have only really dabbled in magic.

i have played my mage class and this is how i see the mages

conjuration i use for setting up my distractions and dps.

alteration for armor and spell resists.

destruction is a support type of school.

i feel the idea with destruction (being a mage) is that you use other schools to suppliment the school. though keep in mind at level 4 i was able to down a icetroll before it reached me using firebolt with no kiting what so ever.. where as with other class types i had to kite it use potions etc.

you cannot compare destruction with archery if you are a pure mage becuase they are different from each other. though me personally i prefere the bow and like i have said in another thread magic in general is pretty pointless. though it is much more challenging sneaking through a crypt and blasting mobs with sneak attacks. then on the other side it is more fun running through with a sword and board fighting a few mobs at a time. i find magic to be.. equip dual hand spell dual hand spell till they die. or even lazier spawn minions with conjuration and sit back resummoning if they die. good trick with conjuration if you stay in hide and are not discovered yolu can keep somoning and you will never be targetted.

i like some of the ideas put in with magic i.e dual casting and impact. the runes i find to be too combersome becuase half the time you dont have the time to place them and if you do you are better of just firing a spell at them.. a good fix to the runes would be to attach them to the base spell i.e if you miss a enemy it will stick to the wall/floor. or maybe making the runes work in that manor.

A "pure" destruction mage? Isn't that a bit unrealistic? Maybe for a college mage/instructor, but not for an adventurer. And, IMO, that's more where things equal out (ignoring how big your ahem is next to the archer). The archer NEEDS to split perks and skills, and MUST invest in at least a little melee (plus armor since arrows back atcha will KILL at higher levels if you're unarmored). An adventuring mage should have, at the very least, perked up ward/shield and skin/mage armor spells. Your pure archer, taken from three or four directions by bandits, is going to have a hard time. Your destruction mage can shield/skin himself and wall of X and/or X cloak his area/path of retreat, all while casting thunderbolts or incinerates or what have you for the closest baddies. If you think destruction is "underpowered", you're not cut out for playing a mage. This version of TES comes closest, IMO, to emulating PnP SP-party mage adventures and is very well done, and balanced.

What you see in Skyrim is the weakest magic has ever been in a TES game. Even with its faults, I would have to say that Skyrim is the most "balanced", in general, out of the entire series -- there were so many exploits with the previous titles. Custom spells literally let you have your way with the games... I remember making a fly spell and hovering above foes who could not touch me as I blasted them to smithereens from a distance with custom Destro spells -- it was crazy.

@Joe But about Skyrim... you're right... Destruction cannot hold its own anymore, and cannot be relied upon as a major skill -- it is now a support skill to bolster Conjuration or Illusion. Woe to he who thinks he can Destro his way to glory in Skyrim -- especially on master difficulty.

-Loth

Edit: this is the litmus test: Can you play a viable mage without Conjuration/Illusion? Can you play a viable mage without Destruction? Which would you rather not use?

Yeah, I never used custom spells. Didn't see a need, really. So, yeah, comparatively weaker to prior TES games, maybe, but not, IMO, unbalanced to other "classes".

What I REALLY don't get is why SO many people are still trying to peg themselves into "classes". Think about it. No one, IRL, is ONE thing. And, if you are, I pity you. I'm a coder, that's my vocation. But I'm also a writer. And an avid aquarist. And an avid bonsai enthusiast. And a gamer. And a husband and father. Why in any god's name would you want to roleplay such a one-dimensional character? Why peg yourself into the traditional DnD slot? Why can't a mage wield a sword? Gandalf did. Or wear armor for that mattter? Why continue trying to peg yourself into traditionalist slots when you've been provided with a means to FINALLY grow your own character?

I'm also pretty sure that a sword to the stomach is a lot more deadly than being sprayed with frost/fire/electricity.

If you don't want to go the Enchanting for reduced casting cost root (Which does trivialize a bit. I usually grab the 3 gear then use the not quite 100% Skill+Mana Regen enchant on my armor/robe), you can also get stupidly powerful Restore Magicka potions by investing in Alchemy perks.
I dont' use Impact, oddly enough, if I feel the need to stunlock something, I just hold healing in one hand with the stamina perk and spam power strikes on it with a weapon in the other hand.

The comparison with Archery is perhaps apt. I remember in the lead up to the game, they said they were going to make it more potent, so you didn't get walking porcupine enemies like oblivion. They also said arrows were going to be a rarer commodity though, which they seem to have abandoned while keeping the power boost.

Morrowind was extremely unbalanced, mages had to sleep to regain magic, but with fortify intelligence potions you become an god.
Melee was strong as you could do 6x sneak atack with two-hands weapons, archery was much like Skyrim destruction, to low damage at high levels (blood moon and tribunal)
Enchanting was very powerful but you needed borderland exploits to make your own gear.

Oblivion was much more balanced, all classes suffered from low base damage and enemies with lots of health at high level, destruction was most powerful as you could make spells who stacked weaknesses, they was expensive to cast but gave mages an clear edge.
You could also make enchanted items with stacking weakness however they run out of charges fast making them backup weapon for an archer or mage or an boss killer.

Skyrim turn this upside down, the crafting make weapon users very powerful while destruction has limited possibility to boost damage, not surprising with no spell making.

An mod who rearrange how spell damage is calculated or just some new expert to master spells will solve this.
Think Fallout 3 mini nuke but with larger range and rate of fire and you have a good master level destruction spell.

Get struck by lightning -- and if you survive, get back to us. I bet you'll be willing to retract that statement. All it takes is one ampere in the right spot to kill you.
-Loth

PS Being on fire hurts REALLY REALLY bad. And having the water in your body frozen solid svcks very hard as well. I'll take a piece of metal in the gut over being burned to a crisp any day.