Are mages wimps?

[Sputnik]

Maybe I'm missing something, but my current play-through as a Destruction Mage specialist seems a little underwhelming.

I normally play as a stealth archer (which is possibly wildly OP, once pimped up with a max buffed & enchanted dragon-bone bow).

Damage output from my mage, on the other hand, doesn't seem to scale with my Destruction skill level. Dragon hunting is exceedingly slow and tedious.

I thought the Tel Mithryn staff enchanter might be the answer, but the Wiki reckons its effects won't scale with my Enchantment skill level either.

Got any tips for this build?

[alexander_dougherty]

You need a variety of schools of magic to get a mage to work, and a mod to get spells to scale, there are a lot of mods that do this, but one of the more popular is Ordinator.... but that changes a lot of other things too.

[alexander_dougherty]

Also anyone who thinks Mages are wimps might like to tell the Librarian at the Mages' College that opinion... (bearing in mind all the Faculty are Mages, including him)

[Sputnik]

OK, so a more nuanced approach to mass-murder is needed. I'm guessing that Conjuration school summonings would be helpful, and maybe the odd Frenzy illusion spell.

Any other magic schools you'd suggest for a more balanced mage build?

[Tolman]

the funny thing is that the best thing to do as a 'mage' is to just get Conjure Bow and be a pseudo archer

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by obidogo:

Originally posted by alexander_dougherty:

Also anyone who thinks Mages are wimps might like to tell the Librarian at the Mages' College that opinion... (bearing in mind all the Faculty are Mages, including him)

Kodlak Whitemain says mages are wimps. You can tell that to the librarian bookworm

That bookworm could snap Kodlak in two with his bear hands.... Do not piss off an Orc Mage.

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by Sputnik:

OK, so a more nuanced approach to mass-murder is needed. I'm guessing that Conjuration school summonings would be helpful, and maybe the odd Frenzy illusion spell.

Any other magic schools you'd suggest for a more balanced mage build?

Conjuration and Illusion are the best schools in the game, Restoration is good too, especially as it has wards.

Transmutation is rubbish, the armour spells are worthless, and the only worthwhile spell there is for transmuting iron into silver (and then into gold)

[Qwesar]

Mages aren't whimps. They are the strongest early and mid game presence.
In fact, pretty much the start of EVERY play thru, you're going to be using flames and healing for awhile, because its way better damage than any bow or sword you're gonna find early game.

Mages are also insanely strong mid game and can blast enemies away, stagger enemies, conjure a small army, heal large amounts of hp.

With a good setup mages can go late game too. Especially with 2 Dead Thralls. However yes mages do taper off pretty badly late game compared to archery or melee in terms of damage AND tankiness and any character can get access to a Mage's best late game spells and talents like Dead Thrall.

Mages lack of late game scaling can be fixed two mods with Apocalypse Magic + Awakened Magic, which add spells and add magic scaling respectively + use of Fortify Destruction Potion, means you will be hitting as hard as fully crafted weapons.

[Perplex]

Get 100% reduction on destruction cost, get impact, use schock spells. win game, very very slowly.

[Sputnik]

Thanks all

[Brandybuck]

Mages are awesome! But mages are not melee warriors, so don't treat them like that. Keep them OUT of combat. Don't try to take down dragons with your Flames spell. And by the Nine, take the damned perks!

Destruction won't even do one hit hills for you, and with the way difficulty works in this game, bumping the difficulty only gimps your destruction. So don't relay on destruction. You're not a boom boom, stop trying to be a boom boon. People think destruction is the only magic and then they rage when they discover it's not a one hit cheaty sword.

Illusion is the most powerful skill in the game. Conjuration summons are not gimped by difficulty. Lots of way to take out enemies without relying on boom boom.

[Sabaithal]

What mages need is some sort of close-range "force" spell that knocks opponents back but does very little damage. The main problem with mages is that almost everything is going to close into melee range as quickly as possible, and mages are squishy.

[Zsrai]

OP, if you previously played a Stealth Archer then everything else will feel underpowered for you. The problem is more that Stealth + Archery is hilariously OP than other play styles are weak.

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

What mages need is some sort of close-range "force" spell that knocks opponents back but does very little damage. The main problem with mages is that almost everything is going to close into melee range as quickly as possible, and mages are squishy.

Runes, Cloaks, Walls, Wards, Paralyze spells are all good, not to mention the Illusion spells you can use for Crowd Control. If you want to stand there and be an untouchable turret you need to get a bunch of mods (and then be bored since everything will be trivial) or try another game with more high powered Mage archetypes.

Originally posted by alexander_dougherty:

Transmutation is rubbish, the armour spells are worthless, and the only worthwhile spell there is for transmuting iron into silver (and then into gold)

Eh, Paralyze is great. The armor spells aren't terrible if you're going pure mage (no armor) but otherwise it's a lot of support spells in Vanilla... you really have to use it in addition to other schools. The perks are really good though (again, in Vanilla).

[OrangeManBad]

I think OP, and others, like the idea of a sorcerer like in neverwinter nights. A spellcaster class that specializes in elemental damage exclusively.

While others prefer to associate mages with wizards. A support class mainly who can also specialize. My most liked class of mages was in Dragon Age Origins where they can specialize into necromancy summoners for example, or crowd control specialists, or buffers/debuffers and healers, or even a standalone battlemage (arcane warrior).

Due to the solo nature of Skyrim, mages are quite different but still fun. Mages never can be too boring..the most boring class is the two-hander warrior...like literally all you have to do is splitting skulls.

[DrNewcenstein]

Spell Crafting in Oblivion let you make an immensely powerful Destruction mage. I had a custom spell that did 33 points of Fire, 33 points of Shock, and 32 points of Frost, plus 100% Weakness to Fire, Frost, and Shock, plus 3 seconds of Paralysis that 1-hit everything except Ogres (3 hits max) and Goblin Warlords (about 7 hits, which pissed me right off).

If you built it right, the visual effect you got was Shock, and if it hit the ground next to a target, they took half as much damage as a direct hit, with Paralysis, and wolves would launch into the air.

And then you had Bound Armor which had no negative effect on your damage output.


Skyrim not so much. If you want to be a Destruction mage, you need a ton of Magicka, Fortify Magicka Regen out the wazoo, and as many Reduce Cost items as you can find.

Get your Enchanting up to 100 and you can put 2 enchantments on one item.
Reduce School Cost + Magicka Regen on a single found/bought robe counts as one enchantment.
You can put Reduce Destruction Cost + Magicka Regen AND Reduce another School Cost + Magicka Regen on one item vanilla.
You can also put Reduce Destruction Cost + Magicka Regen and just another Magicka Regen on a robe and go that way.

Conjuration is ok if you want an assistant in combat, as you'll face many conjurers and their summons, but unless you get a mod that beefs them up, they're pretty weak.

[258789553873]

I find summons rather useful actually. Using destruction magic, its rather nice having a tank that you don't have to worry about killing (all the atronachs are immune to one of the three elements). Yeah, flame atronachs are only worthwhile in the early game, but they get replaced by dremora late-game if you want to use fire magic. Not to mention those dremora ARE obviously op (even if they're not optimized, they use two-handed weapons but they're actually skilled in one-handed, in fact I hear they become even more op if you get them to equip a one-handed weapon). Yeah, you can make an even more op follower with dead thrall, but you need smithing AND enchanting to really get anything out of that. Also, not a lot of people realized that early on in this game's history since dead thrall and the ritual stone are the only two reanimation effects worth using. Guides used to recommend you use dead thrall on npcs that were already good out of the box (Orchendor being a classic example). People just didn't know at first how to get them to use custom gear. All people knew is that they would never use any gear you gave them (besides weapons), even if you removed their vanilla gear. It wasn't until a few years ago that people discovered that dead thralls WOULD equip armor you gave them, as long as it came out of their loot table (most named npcs have their own unique tables, forsworn are also notable for using any forsworn gear, even if it came from another forsworn).

Honestly, I think conjuration goes hand-in-hand with destruction. It gives you something to distract your enemies, and also gives you some extra fire power (storm thralls work great against dragons, dremora too even though half the dragons resist fire, and they can only attack them when they land). And the magicka efficiency of them isn't an issue once you make your desctruction spells free anyway (though from my experience, flame thrall is far more efficient in terms of magicka than flames).