Another View on Destruction Magic

[Nighthaven]

So, I was seeking a challange, and to gain it I thought, play something that everyone says is underpowered. Welcome to Destruction Magic ! But, alas, I found it not simply underpowered, but simply overpowered O_o

True, the damage output leaves a lot to be desired at times, and playing on Legendary, the kill scenes have costed me my life a few times around, though fact is, dual cast stun and long range of some spells make it so that even a legendary dragon has no chance against you !

All you need is No mana cost, and then, the whole world is your B****, kind of dissapointing :(
Sure, I could do without the stagger effect, but in such case, coupling it with illusion, or simply with a Hireling to aid you, and you can dish out still impressive amounts of damage within a short time, Few things that bother standing for long with chaingun casted Fireballs or Thunderbolts.

Suggestions ? I want a challange, right now I am trying a rather comon attempt, Sneak,daggers, bow, assasine style if you so will. Although, I wont be touching Enchanting for more then Perk points, and no Smithing beyong Steel and Magic Smithing. Take away fast travel too, and I do hope to find something new of a challange.

Noted, I am considering a Stamina heavy build, if only to make traveling and dungeon crawling a sustainable adventure without heading for the city after every dungeon I visited.

[Wolfsun]

Who is this "everyone" saying Destruction magic is underpowered? Compared to what?

I whole heartedly agree with you. Destruction magic is the way to go if one isn't looking for a challenge.

[Moa Chiin]

Destruction magic is extremely weak at first, but later in game it easily becomes the strongest power by far.

[KiraTsukasa]

Try playing without smithing, enchanting, or alchemy. The crafting skills can easily break the combat.

Or if you really want a challenge, there are certain mods out there that can really ramp up the difficulty.

[TEA || IT'S CHRISTMAS]

A lot of famous people threw away destruction magic because it's slow to level, but eventually nobody can touch you if you use it right (NOT RUNNING STRAIGHT INTO THIER FACE TRYING TO PUNCH THEM)

[Nighthaven]

Well, I havn'T seen much in the way of positive mentioning about Destruction, all I been finding is *Destruction is underpowered*.
That being said though, I do play without Enchanting for a change, hardly ever have touched Alchemy as is, though I do a bit of Smithing, mostly because I do enjoy Crossbows, and for weapons, I do want to go till steel at least, not bejond though. Vampire leather armor for looks, and thats it, lets see how far I get, been a challange so far not racing sneak and one handed weapon skill in Helgen, albeit a lot more fun not being able to instantly kill everything :)

[Brandybuck]

People say it is underpowered because the only thing in their head is DPS. They can't conceive of the idea that magic is more than just a sorcery version of a blaster. A plasma rifle without the rifle.

Destruction is your only source of area damage in this game. Other than a couple of new spells in Dragonborn, it's the only source of settable traps. And you can stunlock dragons. Dragons! Frankly, the only thing it's missing is sneak multipliers. If you're hidden and have Quiet Casting, you should get the same archery bonus that sneak shots get. But then it would be TOO overpowered :-)

And don't forget that there is more to magic than Destruction. Using the different magic schools together is what allows the 98 pound weakling to kick sand in the face of the musclebound fighters with impunity.

[Gyrmadet]

there are many problems with the vanilla magic system imho:
1) it doesn't scale: at high difficulty settings you will find yourself tickling the strongest enemies, while the melee counterpart is simply lethal
2) master spells are mostly useless, especially if we consider their casting time
3) if you are, say, an highly specialized "storm mage" (i.e. focus on thunderbolts and such) and you find a foe with 100% air/shock protection, you are in troubles, while an axe dibbled in your nose will always be effective.

I tested many mods that tweak magic, so far the one I like the most is this:
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/4374/?

it's balanced and fair, and made magic enjoyable again for me without being game-breaking. Against powerful melee opponents, however, it's still much better to use melee weapons, because they won't allow you to cast Master level spells.

[Brandybuck]

Originally posted by Gyrmadet:

1) it doesn't scale

It does scale! The better your skills the cheaper the magicka cost. This is significant. You are making the mistake I just mentioned above, assuming that magic is only about the raw DPS.

Originally posted by Gyrmadet:

2) master spells are mostly useless, especially if we consider their casting time

Cluestick: Mages are not melee combatants. If you're standing in the middle of a melee spending five seconds casting a spell, then you deserve to get your ass handed to you. Use some tactics, man! Invisibility, summon some tanks, cast before you're detected, etc. Sheesh.

Don't forget that magic is more than Destruction. As an illusionist you can clear out an entire bandit hold with Mayhem and never be seen. As a conjuror you can have dual permanent summons. As an Alterationist you cast Dragonhide before melee starts. Etc.

Originally posted by Gyrmadet:

3) if you are, say, an highly specialized "storm mage" (i.e. focus on thunderbolts and such) and you find a foe with 100% air/shock protection, you are in troubles, while an axe dibbled in your nose will always be effective.

This is why you don't specialize that narrowly. When attacked by a storm atronach you should switch to fire or frost. Or use paralyze, calm, etc. If you're going to specialize as DPS mage then you need to specialize in at least two types of damage. Otherwise you'll quickly find out why they call your type "glass cannons".

[Gyrmadet]

Originally posted by Brandybuck:

It does scale! The better your skills the cheaper the magicka cost.

let's apply your logic to a different field: let's talk about cars.
We have two cars, a Lamborghini with 600HP and a Citroen with 90HP.
I would agree with you that the Citroen is, indeed, cheaper oil wise, but the topic is all about "DESTRUCTION", which implies focusing on concepts such as "raw damage output" rather than "economy management". A fair index to determine the efficiency of offensive power is to calculate how many enemies of the same type you can defeat with magic and with melee weapons (of course, in the same amount of time).
Many gentlemen already made such tests and you can find them easily: the sad truth is that at higher levels and master/legendary difficulty settings, melee efficiency (ratio between time and corpses left on the ground) greatly surpasses vanilla magic.

If you're standing in the middle of a melee spending five seconds casting a spell, then you deserve to get your ass handed to you. Use some tactics, man! Invisibility, summon some tanks, cast before you're detected, etc. Sheesh.

Don't forget that magic is more than Destruction. As an illusionist you can clear out an entire bandit hold with Mayhem and never be seen. As a conjuror you can have dual permanent summons. As an Alterationist you cast Dragonhide before melee starts. Etc.

aside the small detail the thread is about Destruction Magic, I would underline how many situations (in particular from new players on their first runs) put the player in dire straits without notice, you simply walk into the wrong dungeon room and find yourself bathing into hordes of buffed Gym Death Lords of The Gnashing Superpower.
Spellcasters have always the short stick: long casting time, clothes armor, need to cast the mage armor (which can be hard or impossible, say if you are in the water being a target for powerful bow rangers, you cannot cast your mage armor... something that a brute wearing fullplate do not even notice), and more important of anything else weapons deal damage even when the character is out of stamina, while you cannot deal any kind of damage -as spellcaster- if you run out of magicka.
So nope, at the end of the day, weapons are far more efficient than vanilla magic.
Note, I am saying "more efficient": that doesn't mean you cannot "win" the game anyway with enough struggles as pure spellcaster, which was indeed my first run.

my character is now completely immune to magic and can be only damaged by highly enchanted weapons. The fight with Miraak was fun.

[Brandybuck]

Originally posted by Gyrmadet:

but the topic is all about "DESTRUCTION", which implies focusing on concepts such as "raw damage output" rather than "economy management".

If you can only cast one ultra-strong fireball before you're magicka runs out, versus repeatedly casting fireballs all day long, the the DPS winner goes to the latter. Imagine a Lamborghini that only gets 5 MPG with a one gallon tank, versus the Citroen getting 50 MPG and a 14 gallon tank. Guess which one is going to win a ten mile race?

Originally posted by Gyrmadet:

A fair index to determine the efficiency of offensive power is to calculate how many enemies of the same type you can defeat with magic and with melee weapons (of course, in the same amount of time).

Last time I played a Destruction mage, no Stormcloak soldier got through the first barrier at the Battle for Whiterun. None! I was wondering why the hell the battle was not progressing, when I realized that it progresses when the enemies reach the barriers. But fireball was stopping them from even reaching the gates. Behold the power of AoE! Can any archer or sword-n-board do this? Heck, not even using AoE, a plain firebolt can be cast far faster than an archer can shoot, and could probably hold off the same army if the cost were cheap enough to keep firing.

Originally posted by Gyrmadet:

aside the small detail the thread is about Destruction Magic

Magic is more than Destruction! That's the whole point! It's like saying Blocking sucks because you need Light or Heavy Armor to go with it. Destruction isn't that great if that's all you use. To my mind, Destruction is just for mopping up after the fight is over. Drop a few summons, frenzy the foe, and snipe with fireball from a hidden position. Yes it takes a bit more preparation, but pure mages are still more OP than pure fighters.

And besides, no one says you have to be a pure mage. If you want to be a destruction mage that wades into combat, you should strongly consider a heavy armor shield mage.

Originally posted by Gyrmadet:

my character is now completely immune to magic...

So is my mage! Bwa ha ha!

[Gyrmadet]

Originally posted by Brandybuck:

Originally posted by Gyrmadet:

but the topic is all about "DESTRUCTION", which implies focusing on concepts such as "raw damage output" rather than "economy management".

If you can only cast one ultra-strong fireball before you're magicka runs out, versus repeatedly casting fireballs all day long, the the DPS winner goes to the latter.

if not for the fact that casting weak fireballs all day long won't prevent your violent demise after the few steps required for your brutal foe to reach you.
If.

Last time I played a Destruction mage, no Stormcloak soldier got through the first barrier at the Battle for Whiterun. None!

same here, but I was already using a more balanced mod

Magic is more than Destruction!

we absolutely agree on this, just the thread is about Destruction!

And besides, no one says you have to be a pure mage. If you want to be a destruction mage that wades into combat, you should strongly consider a heavy armor shield mage.

assassin mage here. Dagger with vampiric drain + slay living, 13x damage with assassin backstab perk, invisibility and muffle = oneshot everything

[pedantic_roc]

Sorry, I couldn't find a better thread to necro.. Re: Destruction Magic, a view of.

Destruction magic is useless by itself but there are even more woeful issues I've noticed lately - aside from the accepted damage not leveling up with you etc.

I've long been wondering why 'Destruction' leveling up appears to be all over the place, so I recently began experimenting (in-game) which led to some further reading on the subject.

My observations and findings.

Adept spells are a waste of time. Well, a waste of Magicka really vs experience gained.

(Ignoring novice spells, including flames damage, nerfed by DB to 14/s down from 20/s)

Fire bolt (apprentice) 'base' cost is 41 for 41 experience.
Fire rune (apprentice) 'base' cost is 234 for 234 experience.
Fire ball (adept) 'base' cost is 133 for 66 experience. (HALF!)
Flame cloak (adept) 'base' cost is 289 for 0 experience (WTF?)
Incinerate (expert) 'base' cost is 298 for 298 experience.
Wall of flames (expert) 'base' cost is 118/s for 118/s experience.
Fire storm (master) 'base' cost is 1426 for 1426 experience.

Icespike (apprentice) 'base' cost is 48 for 48 experience.
Frost rune (apprentice) 'base' cost is 293 for 293 experience.
Ice storm (adept) 'base' cost is 144 for 72 experience. (HALF!)
Frost cloak (adept) 'base' cost is 316 for 0 experience (WTF?)
Icy spear (expert) 'base' cost is 320 for 320 experience.
Wall of Frost (expert) 'base' cost is 137/s for 137/s experience.
Blizzard (master) 'base' cost is 1106 for 1106 experience.

Lightning bolt (apprentice) 'base' cost is 51 for 51 experience.
Lightning rune (apprentice) 'base' cost is 323 for 323 experience.
Chain lightning (adept) 'base' cost is 156 for 78 experience. (HALF!)
Lightning cloak (adept) 'base' cost is 370 for 0 experience (WTF?)
Thunder bolt (expert) 'base' cost is 343 for 343 experience.
Wall of Storms (expert) 'base' cost is 145/s for 145/s experience.
Lightning storm (master) 'base' cost is 138/s for 0 experience (ZERO? Sigh...)

Armed with that information (totally ignoring adept spells) trying to play as a pure mage has now become a whole lot better, for me, but mid game only - and still, always my game ends prematurely. Good job it's fun staring over - lol.

I still summise that magic sucks after +/- level 50 in Skyrim. Why?

Because while I'm disenchanting stuff, the Draugr are leveling up.
Because while I'm enchanting stuff, the Draugr are leveling up.
Because while I'm making (bad idea) buying potions, the Draugr are leveling up.
Because while I'm running around casting spells like muffle, the Draugr are leveling up.
Because while I'm casting spells like detect life, the Draugr are leveling up.
Because while I'm conjuring pathetic summons, the Draugr are leveling up.

BECAUSE, by the time I can cast Mass Paralysis etc., Dragonhide, a couple of Dead Thralls, all the useful Illusion spells and casting costs are reduced sufficiently, I have all the multipliers and stacking perks - what happens then?
On screen messages is what happens then. Failed to, To powerful, Resisted. etc..

Magic is a damned joke at higher levels - and I refuse to mod the magic system because, even though I'm not playing PvP, I'd feel like I'm cheating both myself and the game if I were to mod out its failings. Therefore, with no personal satisfaction gained, I simply start over.

Now, if we're talking spellsword or battlemage - magic rocks. Even better - a well versed assassin with a full set of diabolical and devious tricks up his sleeve (SPELLS) and a decent bow and dual daggers to rely/fall back on, then we're talking business. Pure mage? Bah - too much time spent in the menu. It can work, obviously, to a degree but I find it game-breaking and, up to a point, boring - spamming stun in a tight spot soon become tedious. Whatever.

[Zlobenia]

How about not necroing at all next time?

[pedantic_roc]

How 'bout you stfu if you have nothing to contribute - next time? :-)

[Zlobenia]

Originally posted by pedantic_roc:

How 'bout you stfu if you have nothing to contribute - next time? :-)

Nice "tu quoque" logical fallacy. I won't if you won't.