Playing as a mage is ridiculously unsatisfying in the higher levels

[cookiecruncher]

When you go >25 levels then all the spells are "charge-throw" types. This causes the following issues:

1) Time taken for a single attack. You can't just click attack. You need to charge up and it takes time. Then release. It is very unsatisfying when you're surrounded by enemies

2) Fire your spells and it travells through the air slowly (except for lightning). Frequent misses + drained Magicka.

During this time if the opponent moves even so much the spell goes past the opponent. It's quite useless to fire spells at moving opponents.

Now fanboys will probably say "hey fire at the ground". Well here's the thing about firing on the ground - you need to do it with a certain proximity else you can't target the ground properly. A change in even a single degree of aim corresponds to a difference of more than 10 feet at a distance. You can't target the ground without coming into melee range.

3) The weak area of effect. The spells have an area of effect. True. But the area effect depends upon the distance from the center. That sucks. The enemy you aim at will take maximum damage while others neaby just get a few scratches.

4) Annoying drained Magicka.
You're a mage. Your supposed to have more f'ing Magicka. Not fire 2 spells and you're gone all out. This has been ridiculous all throughout the Elder Scrolls series. It got corrected in Oblivion because your mana would recharge faster. But in Morrowind the mage character was beyond fun. You keep switching back and forth in your inventory for potions.

Now please don't give me the "gee but it works fine for me" bs . You've probably got lots of time doing the quests slowly or are using some other method.

[Taiwan Number One]

Magic is seriously unbalanced in Skyrim. You MUST use heavy enchantments and cost reducing perks to make it viable.

[Bomb Bloke]

Indeed, at higher levels, you've got enchants which remove all casting costs. That still doesn't make mages as game-breakingly powerful as they were in the likes of Morrowind (literally flying around firing unlimited exploding bombs with a 50ft blast radius as if from a freakin' minigun), and even Oblivion allowed you to do some really nasty stuff by stacking "weakness to magic" effects into custom spells, but Skyrim's ability to completely ignore casting costs isn't to be sniffed at.

Last time found myself using destruction spells through a dungeon, beats me as to why, but I used runes. Just ran around firing them at my feet. This actually worked pretty well, but then, with unlimited mana most things do.

One thing which DOES bug me, but I suspect doesn't affect everyone, is that if I stagger someone with the Impact perk I will be unable to hit them with another blast until they stand up again. I suspect something weird happens to their hitbox, I just dunno, but all my shots will fail to have a further effect until they're back up and ready to fight again.

That said, one-on-one, Impact means you'll win every fight through stun-lock... no matter how little damage your spells do. And yeah, at the end of the day, the only real boost to spell damage is through perks... destruction becomes obsolete once you level high enough, but by then you've got plenty of other skills maxed out too, so by then it doesn't really matter.

[mpd1958]

I use everything I can get my hands on or craft/enchant myself to Fortify, Increase Regen, and Lessen Cost of Magicka. If you are playing strick Mage you can level up Health & Magicka (not so much Stamina) to increase your (lets call it) magic endurance. There are also several mods that increase the damage of Destruction Spells as Magicka is increased.

Edit: Also when using magic I tend to lead the target just like you would with archery.

[Spirit]

When I was new to Skyrim, I always used armor and then spells with both hands. Now I don't use armor at all for challenge.

Playing as a mage is awesome. I'm level 99 on destruction at the moment.

Magic is quite fun at least for me. I can use at least 7 Ice Storms(both hands) until my mana is out for a moment.

[Iceira]

yeah mage can be hard to play and even our mods can effect this class

but 2 things i have notice, dont have a follower that use range skill bow and such, you need a melee types to move in , aka taunt them,

and do watchout for mods that change behavior on follower not all option is a good idea

( dont forget warewolf form ) if you had this this actual will help you past many enemys
until mage skill is much higher )

but again this depend on perks and mage style type

[KiraTsukasa]

It's true. Basically, vanilla Skyrim combat works like this: Stealth and bow is OP shortly after the beginning of the game (I can't even begin to tell you how much of a joke the game becomes with this combo), Stealth and daggers become OP between mid and late game, standard melee is fairly balanced through the whole game, and magic is fairly powerful early on, but becomes obsolete around mid game. If you're really wanting to play a spellcaster, you'll want to look to mods. Personally, I recommend Apocalypse Spells, which adds a wide variety of spells to the game to all spell schools, making any of them viable as a combat option, rather than just Destruction.

[Troop]

Isn't anybody using this? http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/44562/?

[Malaficus Shaikan]

It is why i love this mod:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=115423252

Skyrim magic feels like a large selection of arrows rather then spells.
I never got far in morrowind(god awefull combat) but i did play alot of oblivion on the xbox360.
And i remember loving the mage's guild quest.
I felt like i was using magic not just an other form of attack.
That is the problem with skyrim.
Everything is go to dungeon.
Kill stuff.
Repeat.

No find the invisible kaj'ick.
No get ring that will overburden you.
No use charm to get people to spill there deepest darkest secrets.

Or something as simple as underwater breating, water walking, unlock spells, etc.

In skyrim magic is just an other form of combat.
And that is why it fails.

I love skyrim crafting and combat system tho.

[KiraTsukasa]

Originally posted by Waltz #NewPC:

Isn't anybody using this? http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/44562/?

That's not really going to make spellcasting more viable, in particular. Spell cost isn't the issue. You can equip four 25% Destruction cost enchantments to cast any Destruction spell for zero magicka, meaning you can cast a spell like Flames literally forever without stopping. The underwhelming part of magic is the damage, which remains static no matter what level you have in your magic school, unlike melee and archery which increase as you level them, even without damage perks. At early levels, enemies rarely have magic resistances and have lower health, so you'll tear through them no problem, but at higher levels, they gain more health and resistances in some cases, while you're still dealing the same damage per spell at level 50 that you were at level 5.

[Troop]

Originally posted by KiraTsukasa:

That's not really going to make spellcasting more viable, in particular. Spell cost isn't the issue. You can equip four 25% Destruction cost enchantments to cast any Destruction spell for zero magicka, meaning you can cast a spell like Flames literally forever without stopping. The underwhelming part of magic is the damage, which remains static no matter what level you have in your magic school, unlike melee and archery which increase as you level them, even without damage perks. At early levels, enemies rarely have magic resistances and have lower health, so you'll tear through them no problem, but at higher levels, they gain more health and resistances in some cases, while you're still dealing the same damage per spell at level 50 that you were at level 5.

There's gotta be another mod on Nexus that scales Destruction damage to your skill, but I can't remember its name.

[KiraTsukasa]

Originally posted by Waltz #NewPC:

Originally posted by KiraTsukasa:

That's not really going to make spellcasting more viable, in particular. Spell cost isn't the issue. You can equip four 25% Destruction cost enchantments to cast any Destruction spell for zero magicka, meaning you can cast a spell like Flames literally forever without stopping. The underwhelming part of magic is the damage, which remains static no matter what level you have in your magic school, unlike melee and archery which increase as you level them, even without damage perks. At early levels, enemies rarely have magic resistances and have lower health, so you'll tear through them no problem, but at higher levels, they gain more health and resistances in some cases, while you're still dealing the same damage per spell at level 50 that you were at level 5.

There's gotta be another mod on Nexus that scales Destruction damage to your skill, but I can't remember its name.

Oh there is, I remember looking at it awhile back, I don't remember what it was called either. But, if I recall correctly, it only affected vanilla spells and I had been using Apocalypse Spells by the time I saw it so I never used it.

[cookiecruncher]

Okay there is another concept to the Destruction damage. The enemies around you appear based on your level. So even if you're a very high level mage your enemies will be relative to your level.

The catch is that your level increases not just with Destruction skill but with all other skills. You're sneaking around, stealing stuff (pickpocket), buying/selling stuff (speechcraft), enchanting/disechanting items, crafting ocassionally.

So you're Char Level = some formula involving sum of all these levels.

However, when the enemy gets normalized relative to your level only his attack attributes get normalized. It's as if the enemy grew up in the world doing nothing but fighting 100% of the time, i.e., he was a "pure" fighter, or a "pure" mage.

IMO this is what tends to make enemies so much harder as you level up. If you can somehow increase only your destruction / fighting skill levels and nothing else then fighting the enemies / bosses should be much easier at higher levels.

[cookiecruncher]

Also, for everyone saying enchanting is reqired to compliment a mage I have two questions about this.

1) How were we supposed to know that we need to focus on enchanting along with destruction? It's only after a playthrough and reaching higher magic levels that we get to know about it.

2) What do you guys enchant really? Weapons are useless for a mage. Staff doesn't grant experience while fighting. So armor then?

[Bomb Bloke]

Originally posted by mugen:

1) How were we supposed to know that we need to focus on enchanting along with destruction? It's only after a playthrough and reaching higher magic levels that we get to know about it.

You can get enchanted items without learning enchanting. These provide a fairly obvious hint that becoming a better enchanter would be beneficial.

Not that you need to enchant things. It's just a heck of a lot easier than the alternatives. For example, simply becoming a decent alchemist effectively gives you all the mana you could ever want... but it's less convenient in that you need to keep chugging potions.

Originally posted by mugen:

2) What do you guys enchant really? Weapons are useless for a mage. Staff doesn't grant experience while fighting. So armor then?

Enchant everything you can equip, whether you use it or not!

The most important effects, in my view, are elemental and magical resistences. I aim to keep them all at their caps, 85%. This requires four bits of equipment to do, assuming you're about as good at enchanting as you can get.

That only leaves two bits of equipment (assuming you're keeping both hands free). I like to boost my total mana and mana regen rate a bit with what's left. I don't actually use any spell cost reductions on my main suit of armour, but I suppose it'd be possible to bottom out the cost of a single school while maintaining my protection level.

Remember that spell cost reductions also apply to weapon effects! For example, if your armour allows you to cast Alteration spells for free, then you'll also never wear out the enchantment charge on a sword with the Paralyse effect on it.

[Taiwan Number One]

I enchant my gear to reduce spell cost. Currently, I can cast Thunderbolt(Expert Spell) for 8 magicka. Best way to level enchant, without power-leveling, would be buy any filled petty soul gems, while collecting light weight weapons from enemies. The enchanted weapon will almost always sell for more then the petty soul costs. Banish Daedra is most expensive enchant. Make sure to get any XP buffs prior to speed things up.

Edit. Be sure to get the "Impact" perk if you go Destruction as it allows you to chain stagger any enemy in the game. Vital for mages who die in a few hits, arrows, or spells.