No, but you could try killing them in 0.5 seconds with a bow...

Yep... but a smithed steel will do 80, while a smithed daedric will do 150 or so... and you can also wield 2 of those, in case you didn't know, so 2.5x the damage and 1.35x the speed...

OK, remove all enchantments and perks, go hit an Ancient Dragon with a 1H sword, in robes, and let me know what you think.

No finishers.

Yes, I do use Steel...but that's not the point. If it's inappropriate to compare steel to incinerate, then the naysayers shouldn't compare destruction to melee skills.

But, as I said, it took a lot of perks to get that 94 hp axe/sword, but only a couple of perks to get a 90 hp spell....

People seem to consider that everyone will want to go for the 'best option' or 'maximised weapon'...and that's simply not the case, and is based on too anolytical an approach to the game, which we have seen evidence throughout these 'destruction is UP' threads...I would suggest that if people are so fixated on disecting the game down to the nth degree, then perhaps they should find something else to fill in their time...it's a game, not a mathematical exercise.

Yeah, its scaling, or lack thereof is terrible. NPCs magic scales, yet the pc's doesn't. This has been known and has been said ad nauseum though. Its a known problem. There are some good mods to fix it, though it should be patched for vanilla players.

And why wear robes? We said no enchantments., remember?

Who needs mod fixes for it? Once I started moving up levels, I started finding more enchantments to use so now I have a Resist X necklace and ring for every damage type. I haven't been grinding any skill so my enchantment is at 70 or so which means I get a total of about 40% resistance out of the two of them. And then I get another 30% resistance out of Resist X boots I've found (I've found 1 each for all damage types) so I get up to 70% resistance on all types of spell damage.

Spellcasters give me much less trouble at higher levels than they do at lower. You don't need a mod fix, just a little common sense.

This x 100

What are you talking about? I'm talking pc destruction damage level, not NPC. The fact that the npc destruction scales and pc doesn't, just shows how flawed it is. The mods fixes your damage level, it doesn't mess with the enemies. You need some common reading skills.

Because the complaints about Destruction reference comparison to other damage sources, and a mage doesn't have to wear armor to fry Ancient Dragons.

It's a stupid argument. My mage can nuke dragons, my thief can nuke dragons, my warrior can nuke dragons. The main difference is that the mage has more ways to do it.

Destro skills are somewhat compairable to melee weapons. Rank 1 spell is flames, rank 1 sword is iron. Rank 2 are fireball and steel, and so on... they are not directly compairable, but you can't go compairing an obviously low-tier sword with an obviously high-tier spell... much more when the spell is STILL losing, at least in damage...

Yes, it took a couple perks only to get that 90 hp spell... however, without a LOT of perks in enchanting you are as good as an empty gun. And, of, how many perks would it take to get it to 250hp? And how would you be able to do 1000+ and 2000+ hits regularly with your spells?
You don't want to have that much firepower, it's fine. It's pointless anyway. Still, it doesn't change the fact that destruction IS underpowered, and whoever says otherwise is suffering from a severe case of blindness. And the rest of the skills are not overpowered. It doesn't work that way. When everything can potentially do insane damage, but one single skill can't, then that one skill is underpowered.

Your point was that NPC damage scaled with their level and PC didn't as a means to show that the PC spellcasting was flawed.

My point was that, in the context of the game, NPC damage actually decreases as players avail themselves to magic protections so the basic premise behind the support of your argument was flawed.

In any case, I haven't had a problem with destruction damage up through L40.

Why does an archer have to wear armor? Can't remember the last time anything touched my archer while it was still breathing, I could have worn chef clothes for all I know and it would have been the same...

Also, we are not talking about mages. We are talking about DESTRUCTION. And destruction only has one way of killing things: spam your strongest spell till the opponent is dead. Yeah, you could cast rage or summon a daedra, guess what: my thief can do that as well. And so can my warrior and my archer.

No, that wasn't my point, it was just a funny side note that shows how flawed it is. Nothing was flawed about anything I said. Element resistance has nothing to do with what I said. Destruction at higher levels is flawed and weak. Requiring a high reduction and, or stun spam. This is known. Destruction should be the most powerful of all damage dealing skills, yet its not. No amount of newbs are going to change this fact.

There seems to be a fair amount of disagreement on this fact.

You can crown yourself King Czar of Skyrim for all I care, I've been playing the game all the way through with destruction as my primary means of doing damage and I haven't found it to be gimped. Simply because smithing is ricockulous and archers are 1-shotting dungeon bosses doesn't mean that my game is screwed up.

Only from newbs. Its a known problem, otherwise there wouldn't be so many threads, or mods. Also, its simple numbers. Destruction compared to the other damage dealing skills is a joke. Mods fix this though, and make destruction actually good.

If you use the PSB command you will see a lot of destruction spells with heavily enhanced damage that are not available to the player.

I always assumed that these were the spells the game is using against you. I'd like to know for certain, but I find it hard to believe that some of the game's stronger mages are using the player level spells and not these enhanced versions.

Well, this is the rub, ain't it.

All the other means of dealing damage can be warped out of any scale by smithing. That doesn't mean that destruction is the skill that's screwed up. It also doesn't mean that you can't reasonably play the game all the way through what is considered the natural level cap of 51 without relying on destruction as your primary damage-dealer. All that it means is that you can't god-mode it like you can with the other skills.

p.s. The whole "newbie" argument is tiresome and trite. How old are you? 13?

Yes it does, when its supposed to be the most powerful. When you have to stun spam the higher level enemies as a master, with high level spells, and they take forever to die, its a joke and doesn't compare to the other damage dealing types. And you don't even need a high smithing, or even any perks in it to totally out damage destruction. A few of my builds that use weapons don't even have smithing or enchanting and they totally out damage my Pure Mage.

So what we are arguing about is someone with no other skills than Destruction fighting a dragon, and someone with no other skills than Archery fighting a dragon.

Both will get owned the same. The difference will be that the archer has a bunch of arrows, while the destruction person (sorry, don't want to use the word "mage") will have a bunch of potions.

Next time I make a character with only one skill, I will have to try this and see what happens.

Magic in general is pretty poorly designed, imho.

Destruction is pretty weak and it costs waaay too much mana. You can enchant to make mana a unimportant resource, which is stupid. And you can grab the Impact Perk, which doesn't fix damage issues and just makes dual-casted spells overpowered by enabling a stun-lock even on dragons. It has a variety of spell effects, which is ruined by the fact the effects don't scale at all (though, in all honesty, it could use a bit more variety along with scaling).

Alteration is somewhat useless. Its armor spells simply don't last nearly long enough. Most of the other stuff is random utility that isn't often needed. Well, until you get paralyze, which is ridiculously overpowered turning most fights into snore-fests.

I feel that conjuration doesn't really have any depth to it. You make a summon and it does what it does. You don't have spells that boost summons, you can't talk to summons to change how they behave, and so the gameplay with them is a bit static. Edit: I feel there could have been a larger variety of summons at least. Even better would be summon-boosting abilities or adding depth to bound items.

Invisibility and muffle in illusion is pretty weak. The AI modifying spells are ok, but a bit OP imho (though granted I haven't used them that much). That said, it does manage to have a variety of buffs and non-buffs to choose from.

Restoration gets the job done, but there's not much that's interesting to it. I think the ward spells are a good idea, but they need some tweaking (probably should have been designed as a way to recharge magicka if you are getting hit with magical attacks).

Overall I am a bit disappointed by magic. Right now I am almost level 60 and I am playing a pure mage that wears heavy armor. I feel like the gameplay as a mage lacks sufficient depth overall. It also tends to fluctuate between "somewhat worthless/tedious" and "overpowered ability that completely shuts the enemy down". Neither one is very interesting.

Edit: I don't think any of this is aided by the potion mechanic which feels like "pause the game and use cheats to heal up and magick up".

I think there was a lot of missed potential with the two-hands magic system, which I think bothers me more than anything else.

There's also this factor. Not only poorly designed, but a joke compared to previous magic systems, total neutering of effects and spell creation. The only thing that got better were animations and graphics. Beth somehow ironically took the "magic out of magic".

Comparing a low-tier sword to a high tier spell is no different to comparing a base spell to a highly upgraded or enchanted weapon...what's good for one side of the debate is good enough for the other.

Actually, enchanting does NOT increase spell damage. It lowers the energy cost ONLY. Your only ways to increase spell damage is perks and potions. Mundane attacks go up with skill level, perks potions, and enchanting (this last is boosted even more since the weapon ITSELF can be enchanted to do more damage, which you can't do with a spell, since there's no spellcrafting.

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

Something I made ago a while ago, some ideas on how to balance the combat skills. Not huge changes, only small ones, that sort out problems such as not needing 100% spell reduction and a % chance to stagger rather than every single time.

Also having a stamina cost on all melee/archery weapons for normal (not power attacks) use. Also you shouldn't be able to do a triple spin power attack with 1 stamina, can you cast master level destruction spells with 1 magicka? No.