it's sad that destruction magic is this way, because through a very simple mod i became the perfect fix for my destruction mages....

every point you put in adept, expert, master, etc. perks, increases your dmg by 15%. this way your magicdmg keeps increasing till lvl 100, like it should.

I understand exactly what they are saying. You don't seem to understand what I am saying. Eliminating the beserker rage and your mace does 500 in damage. How did you get the damage that high? Surely it isn't by using just one-handed skill. That is the point I was making. You can't compare the base damage of Destruction to a melee weapon damage that is created by using smithing, alchemy, enchanting and your one handed skill. You are comparing one skill to a combination of multiple skills. Compare the base damage of a standard mace with all the necessary one-handed perks and you will see that 300dmg per shot is far higher then the base damage of a mace with only one-handed perks and 100 level.

Try playing a warrior with just a mace and 100 lvl one handed and the necessary perks. No smithing, no alchemy, no enchanting, no armor perks, no block and see how easy it is. You shouldn't be able to just use one skill. This is why destruction was designed the way it is. If it was implemented as people here suggested you could be a master mage and dominate at high levels with what 6 destruction perks and wouldn't need another perk in any other skill. Level 6 master mage....see how that would be imbalanced. They designed the character creation so that you cant rely just one one skill.

Compare apples to apples, not apples to oranges.

You don't understand though..

Enchanting raises melee Damage - Enchanting lowers Magika costs

Smithing again.. raises the weapons damage - Smithing doesn't effect magic

Alchemy raises both the damage of Magic and Melee

With that being said even w/o bersker rage I can still duel weild two maces dealing 500dmg a hit plus I get a power attack of 4 quick hits. Magic on the other hand even after all these 'buffs' does less than 300 dmg a hit, and for that to be effective you've got to abuse enchanting giving your self 100% Desruction reduction.

And you clearly don't understand how if you were to play a mage without abusing the reduction you'd have to carry 100 magika bottles per fight so you'd get about 3 or 4 duel incinerate combos before you ran out of magika jumping around like a monkey trying to dodge arrows and swords while you wait for your magika to regenerate and by the way, magika shouldn't regenerate slower in combat.. stupid idea.

So you're insulting the forums calling them childish while making a childish argument yourself? Reminds me of when I say that enchantment is overpowered and people invariably respond with "then just don't use it".

Even if you made a charcter with it's respective 'crafting' skill you'd end up maces that still do more then spells and mages that get beat to death by people staring at them.. but hey.. atleast they don't use any magika.

Never understood how that agrument held up.. the whole point of rpg's or single player games like this is to make the best character without cheating... not to gimp yourself so it's playable.

@jcote23: Let's compare destruction to archery. No outside skills, just the perks within the skill trees. Archery perks allow for a 100% damage increase, destruction only gets a 50% boost.

Powershot vs Impact: I'd say they are equally powerful (Powershot has a 50% chance of working, Impact drains magic more).

Critical Shot vs Intense Flames/Deep Freeze/Disintegrate (I am comparing these because they are the "special" perks related to these skills). Critical shot (maxed out) gives a 30% chance to get a critical hit (which does 10x damage? correct me if I'm wrong). By comparison the perks for destruction can be useful to a saavy mage, but in terms of power output they are gimmicks in comparison to Critical Shot, especially since they don't actually effect damage measurably.

I'm not saying that the player should be able to rely on just Destruction, I'm bringing up the fact that focusing purely on the skill and the related perks, destruction is not only the least effective means of dealing damage in Skyrim, but it is far behind the other skills. Honestly, I'd be happy if the augmentation perks had 3 ranks instead of 2.

And in the future, I would appreciate it if you refrained from insulting me. Let's keep it civil.

You are misinformed about critical damage. It is a terrible waste of perks for archery users.

Level 3 Critical Shot: "20% chance of a critical hit that does 50% more critical damage"
Translation: If you have a Daedric Bow, Level 3 Critical Shot gives you 20% chance of doing 13 additional damage.

Default Critical Damage is flat 50% of Base weapon damage. It is not improved by perks, skills, fortify enchants or fortify potions. Investing in Critical Shot is not considered cost effective.

I think Bethesda kept in mind the fact that mages can kite to a remarkable degree, thus allowing them to drop enemies without even getting within melee range. Having said that, I believe the magic does need to scale a little better, much like a melee skill. They were a little conservative in that department.

I think a good solution Would be to have every spell have 3 stages. After effectively using each spell a certain amount of time it advances in stage like your knowledge of that spell increases or something. Say you get 500 kills with firebolt, and on the 500th kill, the spell advances in stage. It does more damage and perhaps costs less. Then another advance at 1000, and another at 2000 to max out that spell. The numbers can vary for different spells.

Because that wasn't my point? You clearly mis-read every single thing I wrote, or just didn't care to read it. I compared Destruction to the combination of multiple skills because the skills I'm comparing it to can't augment Destruction.

Destruction's damage can't be increased by Smithing, physical damage types can. Destruction's damage can't be increased by Enchanting, physical damage types can. Destruction's damage can't be increased by Alchemy anywhere close to as much as physical damage types can. Destruction can't apply poisons, weaknesses to x element, or sneak attack, physical damage types can. Destruction gets 50% boost to damage in it's three elemental types using 6 perks, physical damage types get 100% using 5. Destruction has absolutely no scaling as you increase it's skill level, physical damage types do.

What exactly are you not understanding here? Nobody is saying Destruction can't work, it can. You just have to abuse every possible thing in the game. Casting spells for 0 magicka renders every magicka reduction perk you've ever gotten useless, it renders all of your magicka regen useless (which already was useless in combat even before 0 magicka casting costs), it renders every magicka gain you've gotten upon leveling up useless. It's not surprising that many of us refuse to abuse 0 casting costs, it's a bad decision by Beth and Destruction is highly neglected, I still cannot believe people go out of their way to disagree that Destruction did not get enough attention. The sheer amount of spells in the school is a prime example of how neglected it is, there's almost none. They took away our weakness spells that could have helped balance it out more but kept it in Alchemy for some reason though! Thank god for that!

Here is what I want with the magic system in this game, first off spell creation then all of the effects we had in Morrowind.

Where is my touch spells, dispel, water walking, poison, detect key/ enchantment, Mark/recall, jump/slowfall, and so on that is just a few of the spells we have lost, with all of our effects and spell creation magic would be amazing in Skyrim with the dual casting and the thrower and ruin spells, imagine what spell creation could do for them imagine the effects you could merge, but as magic is in Skyrim its one dimensional and lackluster at best.

That's just the problem - Destruction isn't universally weak, it's just poorly balanced. At low levels it owns everything, at high levels it barely tickles anything you meet, mostly due to there not being a way to increase damage further other than potion-spamming which, quite frankly, noone enjoys.
They just need to rebalance how it scales and add a few spells for more variety. Everything else is fine with it.

I think Destruction magic negleted in skyrim because of people of skyrim doesn't trust magic. And not many magic users in skyrim. So I bet, Beth is just trying to follow the story line.
Let's hope Beth fix this in coming DLC or next series of TES.
And does everyone ever considered that Conjuration being negleted to? Not just Destruction, Conjuration to.

That would only make sense if everyone was a Nord.
Aside from that, this whole 'not trusting magic' thing that got invented for the Redguards and Nord the past two games doesnt make any sense.
Tamriel is a wholly magical place. Magic is the foundation of everything there is.
Its like saying you dont trust science. (while of course still driving a car, having electric light and the electric internet and enjoying modern medicine.)

But lets say Nords in general are indeed poor magic users, which makes no sense, but for the sake of argument.
Then we still have 9 other races and one institute devoted to magic in Skyrim.
People in the College practice spellmaking, NPC's have access to teleportation spells (sort of), why doesnt the player?

Magic in Skyrim has been a dissapointment since day one.
Sure, it looks pretty, but compared to all the options, effects, variety and versatility we had before it has gone from a flagship feature to absolute generics.
Its my number one dislike when it comes to Skyrim, and something I find utterly unfathomable given the track record magic had before Oblivion.

Just because magic is not trusted in Skyrim does not mean it should be weakened, the magic of Atherius shines brightly everywhere, this butchery of the magic system was not a lore decision but a dev one, Todd said it was to "spread sheety" give me a break. Magic needs to be what it once was and we need options for our spell casters.

Magic is a fundamental part of this universe, people on these forums seem to overlook that, its everywhere and in everything. Anybody can use magic if they are able, magic gushes out of the fibers of pretty much anything in this series.

I think you have a point.
I kind of dissapointed by skyrim magic spells, it just like a downgrade from what we got in morrowind.
Surely there are many mods that offer new magics or even somewhat from games TES before in skyrim. But really, I don't want ruined my game by using mods. I want felt what my friends felt who playing in ps3 either xbox.
Really I dissapointed by Beth. Magic is fundamental source in Tamriel. How could it negleted?!

Anyone who makes magic work for them at higher levels and difficulty settings gets kudos from me. It takes a lot of skill and dedication IMHO.

It is far easier to use conventional weapons to deadly effect - at least for me. I have nearly 100 in destruction, and have a ring/necklace to boost magic and regen, and still have trouble. I don't have any of the augment perks, but of have all the cost less up to expert.

You folks making it work - you have my admiration!

I just use the CK to up the usefulness of all spells. They are actually worth using now. But if you dont want to use to CK or you cant, then yeah they need to improve the magic system. How about a simple dmg % increase enchantment for destruction spells?

I wish they would bring back the normal RPG archetype for different classes; with mages being glass cannons and warriors doing less damage than mages but being more durable and so on.

In skyrim i don't see why should a mage NOT wear armor, other than for immersion purposes and the alteration perk. Having magicka regen reduced to 0.33 of normal makes wearing robes rather pointless; its not worth the zero armor.

And ebonyflesh only gives 330 armor or something with the perk if im not wrong.

Oof, my bad. I still stand by what I said about Overdraw compared to Augmentation though!


Have you heard of the Evangelical Church my friend?

My current mage-ish character has 94% destruction cost reduction. It's the only way to make the character viable while using destruction as a primary attack. But even then, when it gets down to a life or death situation and I need to kill something quick before it kills me, I dual wield two axes and it usually saves me----because Destruction magic can't.

The stagger perk is stupid beyond belief but what's worse is that you have to take it in order to be able to survive. It staggers everything, every time. Game over.

Beth would have to admit they really dropped the ball on this one if they went ahead and scaled the spells like they did with weaponry and that ain't gonna happen. So we're stuck with it.

The balance comes with range.

No, it doesn't.


I agree 100% with everything here.

Skyrim not being "magic friendly" is just an excuse for the devs to be lazy, people need to stop buying into that one.

Bethesda has some very talented, creative people working for it that svck at designing game mechanics and their egos are too big to admit. svck it up, guys. We love you, but if you just ignore this stuff another game company will come along and knock you off your high horse.