4241

Let me put it this way. I had an NPC, Sven in the best plate I could find with the best 2h weapon I could find. Fighting along side him seeing how much damage he was doing, it became all too clear who the actual supporting NPC was.

Frequently I was running away while Sven was chasing whatever mob was attacking me. I am chugging heals and mana pots. Basically he was saving my bacon all the time.

So I parked my mage and started a warrior. I picked up Sven again for old-time’s sake though a caster NPC might be nice at some point. If I gave him a spell book, would he learn the spells and use them?

4242

Mages, as a build, are fine. Destruction really starts suffering the longer you go and is very far behind other offensive trees (1h / 2h / archery). Basically swapping out your Destruction for a bow or sword is significantly more effective, as stusser mentioned. If you actually throw some perks into a weapon instead of destruction the disparity gets pretty ridiculous.

This is a late game problem though, mostly.

4243

Damn it, I have a level 14 mage who is 100% destruction for combat (rest is in alchemy, enchating, and restoration) and I’ve been starting to have doubts. Are you sure it’s only a late game problem? It was all good at the start, even if my spells lacked long range, but after getting the longer ranged spells things started to go very well for a while. I still feel good with combat outside where I have lots of room to fight at long range or run away but inside however is another thing. It feels like each level I get weaker now. My 2H companion seems to tear through most enemies faster (stealing all my XP!) and stand up to 10x the damage.

It seems like destruction mages might have more problems than just damage. I haven’t found any real armor that makes sense to wear as a destruction mage and instead just wear some worthless robes due to 12% less destruction cost and 50% regen bonus (think those are the stats). I also have a helm and ring which further reduce destruction costs about 30% together. I die in a few hits to the average bandit. Facing multiple enemies I usually run out of mana and can rarely AOE hit multiple enemies and when I do it usually hits my ally just as hard. If I miss with a few times with AOE spells I basically lose the fight since I have no more mana. I could probably branch into other schools of magic and see if that helps but I find it really annoying switching between spells constantly without hotkeys. Enemy mages seem to have much more mana than me and can withstand much more damage despite apparently also wearing shitty robes. What’s up with that? Defensive buffs don’t seem to help and usually my problem is lack of mana to keep doing damage. I even picked a High Elf and went for all mana upgrades but it doesn’t seem like enough.

Having read the last few pages and seen the links to the Bethesda forums I am going to start over as a archer/one hander/shield, just like I’ve always been in TES games. I should have known better.

4244

Stupid question: if you finish the main quest, can you keep, like, playing, or do you have to re-roll?

4245

You can keep playing.

4246

PG: The lack of stats on items to boost spell damage is a pretty good part of the scaling problem. You can significantly improve weapon effectiveness by enchanting the weapon itself and gear with +weapon damage stats. There are no equivalents for spells. At least alchemy has spell damage potions.

You’ll see your effectiveness go up and down a bit as you go between spell upgrades, its when those upgrades stop coming that the problems really start to get bad with Destruction. What we need is a way to upgrade existing spells the way that a warrior upgrades from iron weapons to steel to elven, etc. Then add in the “missing” stats on items and things will be good.

4247

I’ve seen items with +10% or +15% effectiveness on specific schools of magic. Nothing for specific spells though.

4248

Have you folks tried the ritual spells? And, IMVHO, mages are fine late game (I’ve played one to 36) - you’ll need to branch out a bit into restoration and conjuration, but, you’ll have more than enough perks to do so.

JeffG

4249

Not effectiveness, its reduction in magicka cost.

4250

There are also perks that make spells in schools that aren’t destruction “affect” more significant dudes, which seems to be what Destruction is sorely lacking.

I’m basing that analysis entirely on the hour I spent last night meticulously reading through the skill and perk system description in the guide. Not being able to get all the perks might end up annoying me. We’ll see how that goes.

4251

Sure they’re fine as a build, but your conjuration and restoration mage is far better off complimenting those with a bow or sword than destruction. Significantly so. The problem isn’t with mages, its with destruction when compared to other damage skills (1h 2h bow). Something is wrong When companion and pet destruction spells hit harder than yours, no? Fire Rune was pretty awesome at L6 when I got it, but at L36? Not so much.

Restoration wards and heals and alteration armor spells have upgraded versions of those spells for a reason. It’d be silly to be forced use the same Novice lesser ward at L50.

4252

Yeah, using the console I dropped all my destruction perks and set my destruction skill low, then added the one-handed skillpoints and perks instead. I kept the numbers exactly the same so it doesn’t feel like I cheated.

I do a ton more damage with weapons, but more importantly I can actually take hits now that I’m actually wearing armor. I was just getting destroyed as a mage, because I didn’t want to bother with the armor ward spells, as they either required me to stop dual-casting or had a very short duration.

4253

Yeah, buff spells that need to be re-cast every 60 seconds suck. I never used them with my mage although I am sure they could have helped.

4254

I put a perk in Expert magic last night, and found my Thunderbolt (whiich I could drop 4 times now) to be a fantastic way to hurt foes at a distance now finally. It seems to hit guys harder and even stagger than more than Chain Lightning did, and even though I rarely can finish someone off with 3 bolts, I can casually swip with one of my Legendary Glass Sword (complete with +33 lightning damage) to finish them off.

Wall of Storms feels much more useful as well, so I’ve been enjoying destruction more today than I was yesterday, having put 7 more points into it (from 71 to 78 or so).

I still don’t feel like it compares to melee though (I can’t speak to Archery). With a 95 smithing and a 77 in One-Handed (4 perks in Armsman) my Legendary Glass Swords base damage is 111 (I have 4 pieces of gear giving me +26% one-handed with an enchanting of 75). Additionally, both weapons have +33 lightning damage, a big bonus of which comes from the destruction perk (which is cool).

Thunderbolt will only ever do 90. It’s nice it will get cheaper, but I use it mostly for variety for ranged enemies I don’t want to get smacked by arrows from while I run at them. And dragons, of course, though it does little damage to an Elder Dragon.

Shiva X pointed out to me that even Restoration has a perk that improves it’s effectiveness, Destruction doesn’t really - unless you count the perks to improve elemental damage, but you would need to put 6 perks in just to cover all of them.

I really like the idea someone had earlier of getting a small damage bonus (say, +10%) each time you put a perk into Novice, Adept, Expert, etc.) for a total of +50% by the end. That would be sweet, and be in line with Melee weapons a bit more.

Though Smithing and Enchanting definately need some nerfing.

4255

You know what the problem is with all this nerfing? They’ll need to introduce a respec method for getting back perks. Because, while you can eventually max your skills (so your periodic skill allocation is something you can grind around), perks are both limited and, to my knowledge, not reassignable, right?

4256

One problem with respecs is that you could be fully perked in smithing and enchanting make some super cool enchanted daedric plate with +1000000 to everything, despec and still wear your armour. The Skyrim game systems don’t have any way to deal with that as they rather sensibly assume that your character can still dress themselves no matter how fancy their clothes.

4257

You can reassign with the console, it’s a bit of a nutkicker though.

Bleed, you know there’s the doublefist perk for destruction right? A doublefisted spell with the perk seems to do base damage + 25 to 50% more damage and guarantees stagger if you have the stagger perk. So that’d be like 250 - 300 from a single dual cast of a high level bolt spell like Thunder or Incinerate, not affected by armor as far as I can tell.

Most things die from a single dualcast incin. Stronger enemies take two. Bosses take 4-5. Dualcast incin with my gear costs like 30-40mp. And I have crappy enchanting because I didn’t figure it out til much too late in the game, so my gear ain’t great. With incin in particular they take loads of damage, are frozen for a couple seconds and are on fire. Being on fire causes them to take damage over time and causes your next fire spell to do even more damage. With dualcast Thunderbolt on a mage, they’re staggered (cancels current spell) and lose ~150-200 mana, which is usually 1/3rd to 1/2 of their mana bar if not more. Given that they’ve also shot off a couple spells, a single dualcast Thunderbolt is generally enough to blap their mana or just out and out vaporize them. And most mages generally cannot sustain that kind of firepower hitting their ward spell. With the disintegrate perk, they seem to autodie if they hit ~20% of health, so there’s a potential for even more damage in there. And don’t forget frost. With the relevant perk they are paralyzed at ~20%, and every cast slows them significantly, eats stamina and staggers if dual cast. Use it on a warrior type npc and they will never get close enough to hit, let alone power attack you.

Seriously, destruction can output some fucking retarded numbers and has some amazing side effects with the right perks. I ignored the fire one that causes flee at low HP, because that shit is annoying. With good gear those numbers can be output at an obscenely frequent rate. You might think fireball is fairly weak, but a spell dual cast for less than 20 mana (at my current level and gear) that hits for ~110-150 in a huge aoe will kill most enemies in just a few dual casts. And staggers them too. I can shit fireballs out erryday all day without noticing and never take damage as a result. There are some mass battle quests, and I was blapping a dozen or more dudes simultaneously. Doubt even a 2h warrior could come close to doing that.

Mad powerful school. I speed run through most dungeons, and blap bosses like nobody’s business because the single target damage, though not as good as what a weapon can put out, is high enough and frequent enough and cheap enough that it can be maintained. I carry a glass dagger for flavor and the occasional assassination, but I find that actually using a weapon lowers my damage output too much to be worth doing. And I have a sick enchanted glass sword I got as a quest reward (not to mention several daedric prince weapons that are similarly powerful) and fairly decent 1h skill (you stab enough people for the Brotherhood, it goes up quick).

And that’s ignoring the ability to do stuff like summon a frost atronach and spam ice storm without affecting it, or a fire atronach and firebombing the area, or creating a dead zone with wall of X and runes. I’ve yet to see an enemy that can survive running through a door blocked by a triple wall of fire/ice/lightning.

I don’t get why people think it isn’t all that strong. At level 40, I feel it’s broken overpowered for the ease with which it can smite a boss while simultaneously annihilating his companions. At low levels? Definitely weak. I spent most of my time fleeing and hoping my atronach and companion would hold an enemy at bay, and getting instagibbed. But at high levels, zomgzorz. And if you know which races are strong/weak vs what elemental damage types, it gets even more absurd. Don’t hit a dunmer with fire, hit em with ice. Hit nords with fire. Hit vampires with fire. Hit dragons with the opposed type for their breath attack or zing. Don’t hit critters with the word ice/snow in front of their name with ice spells (snow bear, ice wolves, whatev).

4258

I’ve already noticed how much stronger melee is. I managed to save two more guys in the opening sequence and I basically haven’t taken any damage after putting on heavy armor. Maybe I could make my magic character work with summons but I’ve never really been interested in watching the AI fight for me, I was already getting frustrated with just Lydia helping me out. It’s a shame since destruction was fun and being weak was a nice twist for a while. Another reason pure mages are weaker is at zero stamina you can keep fighting and fatality moves.

4259

You’re supposed to save guys in the opening sequence? Where?

4260

You can do that right now for the cost of 26 points and still have enough points to put in the proper combat perks of your choice.