Rebalancing Skyrim

[e7tophat]

I agree with most of what you said. Whilst I enjoy the game a great deal, I don't even like continuing past your first dragon encounter [outside of Helgen]. I'v got like 150 hours into Skyirm already, and i'v not once went past the Throat of the World. I enjoy the start of the game so much. The start feels like the game should. Like it works and it's balanced. I play until around level 15 and the game immediately breaks.

 

For me, my main problems lie, in as you said, the balance. I had a dedicated assassin, btw, who used daggers and a bow. Archery for the player is trash. The players range to hit a target is gone. I don't know WHY. But from testing, i'v been shot from 2.5 times FURTHER than I can shoot someone. Stealth characters are BROKEN for balance in this game, and I don't understand why. Like, I realize I should be able to insta-kill anyone I can sneak up to with a dagger [and you can], but the AI is so absolutely f***ing dumb, that if they start "wandering" to me, I can shoot an arrow at a rock 12 feet behind them, and they will go LOOK at it.

 

Magic as you said is a joke. There are a few balance mods out now for Magic, but it doesn't address the major problem. Stuff costs either NOTHING to cast with enchantments [which, btw, is f***ing BROKEN when you can lob fireballs from 100 yards away before anything gets remotely close to you], or you CAN'T play at all at a certain point. I'v now had three Mages, and at level 15, every single one has trouble doing any real "dungeon" with a Flame Attronarch [which, btw, hits harder than I do for some reason] on apprentice. There are still easy kills, obviously. But when my fireball does like 10% of a guys health in damage at times, and I can only cast it maybe 5-6 times without dual casting. It's pretty lame. I JUST deleted my third mage tonight to, and remaking.

 

My other main problem is enchanting., smithing and alchemy. Why? Because this game FORCES any and all classes to max all of those to be effective end game. A mage without light or heavy armor cannot, literally, take a hit. And everyone but a heavy armor sword and shield or 2 handed user requires mass enchanting. Potions become scarce when you've gone to every town and keep buying up the supplies to be able to effectively DO anything without dying.

 

I want to delve into modding when the kit comes out. If I can manage to learn to mod, I am definitely going to be trying the following:

 

::Adding in Oblivion stats. I will keep the three current ones, but also add stats for people to pick. Maybe give three points each level to put into strength, intelligence, etc.

::Scale damage -- Magic Damage, Physical Damage, etc. And base damage off the corresponding stat, like strength and int

::Would remove the NEED to enchant, smith or do alchemy. Will be good reasons to learn it, however the change won't force you to do it to compete with the later levels of the game

::Wider range of spells, allowing for people to use spells more efficiently without fear of doing no damage or running out of mana immediately.

[dull4h4n]

I will say after over 100 hours played, my biggest beef is NPC mages especially when fighting multiples or those of "Master" level (Master Necromancer, Master Frost Mage etc). I've played on Expert first 50 or so hours, then Master after I was able to craft and improve and enchant my armor to fit my build.

 

I often get killed by many mages in under 1 second. I have +40% or better resist gear for each element, carry resist potions for each element, as well as have general +magic resist jewelry which I equip when necessary. I also utilize all my shouts, as well as wards where appropriate, so I'm exhausting most avenues before stating my complaint.

 

Mage NPCs have the ability to spam spells that do over 200 damage with no cast time whatsoever. That blizzard type spell that shoots a cloud of ice, though slow, is something they often just spam at me 10-15 times in a row like a frost sub machine gun. Also, it often comes no where near me, and yet I still take a full hit, though, while in 3rd person, I see the spell passing 5-10 feet behind me. This is just buggy and ridiculous. Even if the hit detection of these cloud type spells was close to accurate, the damage is still way to high to be justifiable.

 

It makes me wonder how NPC mages can be so powerful, but master player mages seem considerably weak compared to my melee build.

Edited November 26, 2011 by dull4h4n

[RavingRavec]

Once you can combine dragon shouts like Become Ethereal with things like Fire Storm, any enemy can be overcome with a bit of skill and timing. Alduin fell before my Lightning Storm and summoned minions in mere moments. Magic, if developed properly, is plenty good enough to play the game with. And, because this is a SINGLE PLAYER GAME, that's all I care about.

 

You think it is OK that you can defeat the last boss as if it were a normal mob, because it is a SINGLE PLAYER GAME? Every game needs balance especially RPGs.

 

Where did I say he died faster than, or as fast as, normal mobs? I didn't. "Mere moments" is a pretty ambiguous amount of time, which generally implies it "wasn't very long." But, it also implies that it was not instantaneous, and that it took longer than "seconds."

 

Also, this thread is about magic being too weak. So, the Alduin example was my counterexample illustrating why it is not weak when used properly. Your incredulous response makes next to no sense in this context. In fact, it's a bit of a non sequitur.

 

Out of curiosity, what level were you? Once you get 40+ as a mage IN COMPARISON to everything else, you have a much much harder time, in other words : Underpowered. Wether enchanting is a must or not, i would say yes, others may disagree. But if I spam the strongest destruction spells on a single opponent for about 20 seconds straight they die. If I play my warrior I 1 shot master difficulty mobs, and even bosses with 1h swords, 1h axes, and bow.

 

There should be some changes in magic, but not making the spells twice as strong or anything, I love playing as a pure destruction mage because its basically putting another difficulty level on top of Master, actually using tactics in a fight is what makes it fun. Not just randomly slashing your way through enemies.

 

The disagreement I have with this logic, is that because it is a single player game, you should only weigh how well you do versus the environment, not other hypothetical characters which do not exist as far as that particular save game is concerned. In multiplayer games, balance is much more of a comparison between what different players can do. In single player games, the comparison is weighted more heavily to how one fares versus the game's content. If mages are overpowered, and melee is MORE overpowered, then BOTH are overpowered. Mages are not by comparison underpowered in this scenario. That type of logic only makes sense in a multiplayer environment where the player community will tend to exclude classes/builds viewed as less powerful. In a single player game, being effective enough to be chosen for a group is a non-issue, and so the measure of overpowered/underpowered is a matter of whether or not a particular build can plow through the content without gratuitous challenge. That said, I've found my experience as a mage to be completely fine, and perhaps even a little bit easy. The game may need tweaks, yes, but it is a bit misleading to call destruction "underpowered."

 

I'm also curious which enemies take 20 seconds to die, and which spell you're using against them? What level are you, and how many levels have you invested into Magicka?

 

40, 100 destruction 100 conjuration 2 flame thralls, incinerate and wall of frost. 100% reduction on cost 24/7 spamming. Still takes ages and a lot of duck&cover action.

[RavingRavec]

Rather than trying to turn Master difficulty into Normal difficulty, just play as if you normally would and don't look for exploits and have fun. I currently have a mage at level 16 on master difficulty and it is quite challenging, but I manage to keep on going. No exploits here.

 

A great part of the fun of RPGing for me and many others is optimizing your character. As soon as a game becomes broken when you do that, it is the game's fault and not the player. Holding yourself back is extremely frustrating and is not a sollution for lack of difficulty. Master difficulty should be balanced with the best players in mind (hence the name "Master"). It should assume that you will use the maximum of your abilities. You call smiting an exploit, but it is has been designed to function this way by the programmers, so it is not an exploit, it is an example of bad design and it is up to the community to fix this.

 

This exactly, I'm a 7 year WoW player in top end raiding guilds, I can't help it that I'm looking for the best way to do/approach things, the best ways to enchant and improve my gear. It's in my nature since thats what you are required to do on a MMO like wow. I play like this on Skyrim aswell, I maxed my enchanting and blacksmithing as first skills and that made me too strong even though I had a way to high level with low skill in the combat skills because of the maxed BS/Ench. So I put it on master difficulty and im still facerolling through, what I'm doing now is fighting naked, or with just visual items to feast my eyes. You can blame me for maximizing my character with every way the game allows me, but is it really my fault I just make use of/take advantage of the things the game offers me? I don't think so personally.

 

Regardless, I spend 200+ hours in the game, I still love it, reaching level 75 soon on my main char and i've yet to reach 50% on the main quest line.

[RavingRavec]

I will say after over 100 hours played, my biggest beef is NPC mages especially when fighting multiples or those of "Master" level (Master Necromancer, Master Frost Mage etc). I've played on Expert first 50 or so hours, then Master after I was able to craft and improve and enchant my armor to fit my build.

 

I often get killed by many mages in under 1 second. I have +40% or better resist gear for each element, carry resist potions for each element, as well as have general +magic resist jewelry which I equip when necessary. I also utilize all my shouts, as well as wards where appropriate, so I'm exhausting most avenues before stating my complaint.

 

Mage NPCs have the ability to spam spells that do over 200 damage with no cast time whatsoever. That blizzard type spell that shoots a cloud of ice, though slow, is something they often just spam at me 10-15 times in a row like a frost sub machine gun. Also, it often comes no where near me, and yet I still take a full hit, though, while in 3rd person, I see the spell passing 5-10 feet behind me. This is just buggy and ridiculous. Even if the hit detection of these cloud type spells was close to accurate, the damage is still way to high to be justifiable.

 

It makes me wonder how NPC mages can be so powerful, but master player mages seem considerably weak compared to my melee build.

 

Sorry for my third post, cba to multi-quote.

 

Yea, I am playing a breton with 75% resistance from gear enchants and the shield perk with 50% resistance to fire/frost/shock. I rape through everything, but when I fight against a mage that uses shock spells I sometimes just get two or even one shot. And I've got 600 health... Seems like shock is immune to a targets resistance lol. And when you play mage it does f*#@all damage in comparison

[screes]

 

#1 - You are required to level every skill in Skyrim to reach max level

 

This is a huge flaw because if I want to play a pure mage character, I shouldn't be required to hit monsters with bows 2000 times to maximize my magicka count or spell potency.

 

Soft cap is level 50, which you can get by only leveling in your specialized role. Think about it this way, what if Bethesda had released the game with a hard cap of 50 without changing anything else? Leveling up other skills would not grant you additional perks, or allow you to gain additional levels, just make those skills work better. People would have complained with things like "why not give us the option to keep leveling and getting more perks if we want to?". So they make the hard cap a soft cap for people who want the option to keep going. If this is not you, then stop at level 50. You can get all the best gear in the game, finish all the quests and the main story line without exceeding level 50.

 

#2 - Most bottom-end talents are all you need

 

This is a huge flaw. What is the point in perks if there's no choice to be made? The first perk in 1H and 2H weapons is essentially +100% damage. Who wouldn't want that? What are you giving up to get that? Everyone is going to pick these perks if they're going melee, or hell, even mage. Double your damage output? Sure thing.

 

I don't know about a huge flaw. Yes most perk tree's have a starter perk that everyone is going to have to get if they want to use that style of play. I don't know if that's a bad thing. You give the boring baseline upgrade perk first, and then the fun and interesting perks come later after some initial investment. It's a perk sink for sure, but it's not required for every perk tree. For instance, you may want "Extra Pockets" in pickpocketing, but don't really care about your increased chance to pickpocket with the 5/5 initial "Light Fingers" perk, so you just put 1 point in light fingers, and 1 point in Night Thief, so you can get the perk you want.

 

#3 - Pure magic-based builds suck

 

They really do. They drop off a cliff at around level 20 if you don't immediately specialize and utilize in a melee weapon too. It's kind of ridiculous really. Spells cost too much magicka, they don't deal enough damage - even with +50% damage perks. You need to invest way too much in magicka to be able to support casting spells on a single target, let alone multiple targets. Area of effect spells are too easy to interrupt for their paltry damage output.

 

Mages are generally giving up heavy armor (or they should be, in theory anyway) and sustainability (spells cost mana afterall) to be able to deal damage. They should have strong skills to make up for these sacrifices. But they don't. With 500 magicka, you can cast one very high level destruction spell or two high level non-destruction spells and then you're out of mana for a good minute, depending on your amount of magicka regen gear. This would be fine perhaps, if you could kill your average target with them, but you can't.

 

Low level skills are horribly mana-ineffecient. Holding down "sparks" to kill a single Whiterun guard will run you completely dry. It's kind of ridiculous that there aren't more effecient or powerful versions of these spells for high level characters. They become obsolete after level 10!

 

I havn't played a mage yet, and this is the one thing i worry about. I see all these ways to do 20-30k damage hits with melee weapons, and 7-8k damage hits with bows, and i worry when i don't see any way to scale magic damage up anywhere close to that high. I plan on doing a mage class next, so we will see. At least i get to look forward to casting all the high level destruction spells for free as many times as i want all day long with the right gear.

 

#4 - Theft is too strong and too annoying at the same time

 

It's too hard to fence things, or at least in my experience so far. The thief guild is the only fence I know of, and she has a small gold pool. In order to fence with every merchant, you need over 70 speechcraft, which takes forever to level up.

 

It's also way too strong, it is far too easy to walk into a house while crouched and steal everything valuable and sell it. There should be more repercussions for thief-based players, be it locked out from certain alliances with quest-givers or guilds, or some other penalty. Fencing needs to be made easier and theft needs to be made harder and more of an active choice instead of a simple pastime.

 

There are multiple NPC's that will fence things for you, and all you have to do is wait for 48 hours and the NPC's will have more gold for you to continue selling your stuff if you don't want to go around and sell to multiple NPC's. It's a little annoying, but once you figure it out it isn't so bad. While burglary is fairly easy, pickpocketing isn't. Highest chance to steal something is capped at 90%. You know how annoying it is to have 100 skill level pickpocketing with perks and get caught stealing 10 gold from an NPC who is sleeping? Drives me insane. If anything they need to make pickpocketing easier, or at the very least drop the hard cap and let it go up to 100% chance.

 

#5 - Horses are too costly

 

This is pretty basic and obvious. I know everyone fast travels, or at least most do, so there's no reason a horse should cost so much when it is so easily lost to its AI or the random mobbing of a hungry monster.

 

I don't think its so much that horses are too expensive, it's that as soon as you dismount them they run away and you have to rebuy them every time. You don't have this problem with the Dark Brotherhood quest reward horse though, so if you want a horse that doesn't cost you and doesn't run away, there is at least one in game.

 

#6 - Enemy archers are too strong

 

I haven't explored archery enough, but enemy archers are simply out of control. It's ridiculous. They need to be toned down. On the average difficulty, in legendary glass armor, I'm being 3 shot.

 

I have noticed that archers hit for a good chunk of damage, but I've also noticed it's pretty easy to dodge incoming arrows. Though my damage reduction is fairly low. You can easily get up to the cap of 85% damage reduction in light armor and no shield, which would make archers pretty easy mode. Just takes a bit of crafting and thought before running into battle. The game requiring you to think about your gear, and craft up something good before you go into battle isn't a bad thing.

 

#7 - Armor and weapons need rebalancing.

 

Period. Firstly, heavy armor should not contain a perk which negates its major downside (slowed movement speed). Secondly, weapons will need a lot of rebalancing when you touch the perk trees anyway.

 

I don't really see the problem. A high level perk giving a good effect, arn't you complaining about none of the high level perks being any good in #8? I'm not sure what you mean by re-balancing, do you think armor and weapons are too good, or not good enough? With a little effort you can make the best gear in the game fairly early, like around level 25ish. Then around level 35ish you can upgrade it to get the highest possible stats on them in the game. Considering the game is supposed to end (soft cap) at level 50, it doesn't seem too ground breaking.

 

#8 - End-tier perks are garbage

 

In most skills they are. It's seldom worth fully investing in an entire tree. This is especially true when all end tier mage tree perks simply reduce mana costs so spells become castable (I think Firestorm goes from 1300 mana cost [unusable by anyone without the master perk] to 400~ or so.]). You only invest because you have to, because there's no other choice.

 

The fact 1H and 2H weapon end tier perk (25% paralyze on back power attack) are the same only shows Bethesda's carelessness here.

 

I personally love some of the higher end perks. There are some you stated sucked in replies to others that i think are amazing. Like "Shadow Warrior", which if used properly allows you to pull off a mid fight sneak attack which will likely one shot whatever is kicking your ass. "Perfect Touch", while more of a role play perk, is a really cool ability. "Twin Souls" lets you have an extra conjured pet out. "Atronarch" turns 30% of all magic damage taken into magicka. "Extra Effect" in enchanting is probably one of the best max skill perks in the game.

 

Now i will agree, that max skill perks like magicka reduction are kinda lame, but they are far from required. You can get 4x -25% casting cost enchants on gear for two schools of magic with the Extra Effect perk, which will make all spells from 2 schools free to cast as long as you want.

 

#9 - Conjuration is too weak and too strong at the same time

 

Summoning Daedra (especially with that easy to get rose-staff from Whiterun) will let you deal with any number of foe for practically the whole game. Summoned familiars don't do squat by the time you can acquire the skill. Summons don't last long enough for their mana investment and don't scale well at all.

 

I think it really depends on what skills you are leveling. If you focus just on conjuration you could have dual permanent Atronachs by level 20, which would be pretty amazing. But if you level tertiary skills like pickpocketing and lockpicking that don't help your combat capabilities, then yes you will get your high level summoned familiars late game when they arn't as good. You need to be careful what skills you level and when.

 

I do agree that conjuration should be a possible primary damage school of magic, but it's not. It's just something you should know before going into it that your familiars are meat shields so you can kill enemies with your destruction spells without getting messed with.

 

#10 - Not enough perks

 

Perhaps not a balance problem, but truly, there are simply not enough to choose from.

 

I would love to have more options, but there are a fairly large number already. You compared this to a game with over 700 perks, well lets look at other games. Diablo 2 was hugely successful, and you only have around 30 skills to invest in per character with the ability to invest 1 point per level. Same amount of perks per level as Skyrim, with more possible skills to invest in than D2 with a lower level cap. Seems way more robust than Diablo 2. Diablo 3 is going to have even fewer skills. So while you may personally feel 100+ unique perks is not enough, it is by no means a low ball number compared to other successful RPG's out there.

 

 

 

*Spells now gain 2% more damage per 10 points of maximum magicka (this means that spell damage is 20% greater for all characters on default)

 

*You now gain 2% more physical defense per 10 points of maximum health (again, this means 20% more armor), and 5 more maximum encumbrance

 

*You now gain 1.5% more physical damage with any weapon per 10 points of maximum stamina

 

I like how spell damage would scale with magicka, it makes sense honestly. An alternative would be to allow better enchants or crafted gear to increased magic damage. Then it would work like the armor/weapon crafted gear and scale similarly. There should be a way to craft magic staffs/swords/daggers that increase magic damage.

 

Increased physical defense with health is going to be pointless unless you overhaul the current way armor mitigation works. With the right perks you can craft hide armor that hits the 85% physical damage mitigation cap in game without a shield. So more physical defense would just be a waist with the current setup.

 

Increased physical damage with stamina would be broken if you don't overhaul the way the system currently works. There are ways to get 20-30k 1 handed sneak attacks, and 7k bow sneak attacks, and 5-6k normal 1h and 2h damage attacks. More physical damage without somehow balancing the way crafted items work is only going to make it even more ridiculous.

 

You need to pick one way or the other. Either primary stats are going to effect damage/mitigation, or crafting and enchanting will. I say stick with the system already in place, and just add ways to increase magic damage with crafting.

 

Spells

 

*All spells have had their costs halved

 

Why when you can easily make two entire schools of magic free to cast as much as you want? Just because you haven't figured this out yet doesn't mean the game needs to be fixed.

 

*Three to five completely new spells have been added to each discpline:

Destruction: Corrode Armor, Drain Magicka, Weakness to Magic, Corrode Weapon

Alteration: Feather, Open Easy Lock, Open Average Lock

Conjuration: Bound Armor, Bound Boots, Bound Gauntles, Bound Helm, Summon Skeleton

Illusion: Silence, Dispel Other, Dispel Self

Restoration: Fortify Health, Fortify Stamina, Fortify Magicka

 

More spells are always cool.

 

*There are now "Lesser" "Minor" "Greater" and "Legendary" versions of each spell. Lesser spells are equivalent to existing Skyrim spells after aformentioned mana and damage changes. Minor spells are slightly more magicka-effecient. Greater spells are slightly more magicka effecient and deal slightly more damage. Legendary spells are slightly more effecient and have a pronounced amount of added damage, but either have longer casting times or come at some cost (such as reduced defenses or self-damage while used).

 

There definately needs to be some way to scale magic damage better, but i don't know if tired levels of spells is the way to go. Just use the crafting system to boost current spells so it will work like armor/weapons do currently.

 

*Those specializing in magic of any kind will be able to acquire and customize a familiar of their choice which will scale and level with the player. This will occur through an obvious early game quest. Those who do not wish a familiar can opt out for 10 permanently increased magicka, stamina and health.

 

Familiars definitely need to scale better with your level. Followers also need to scale with your level, currently they are capped to the stats when you first enter the zone as them.

 

Social

 

*Many merchants can now be turned into fences without the necessary perk, provided they are "corrupt" in nature. Deepening relations with a specific merchant now improves their buy/sell prices over time and gradually causes their wares to improve.

 

This is already in game, usually you just have to do a quick quest for them to unlock them. Again, just because you haven't figured out an aspect of the game yet doesn't mean it needs to be fixed.

 

 

*Marriage is now more complex. All marriage candidates have had some added unvoiced dialogue. All marriage candidates have had at least one quest added. Some marriage candidates no longer open a shop upon marriage, but offer other unique services instead.

*Choosing not to marry provides its own bonuses now, providing you with the ability to interact with some NPCs differently to improve prices, acquire unique weapons, armors and temporary buffs.

 

I think you should also make it so if you are married to your follower, that you get some sort of bonus.

[MelficeCyrum]

Magic is fun, but Destruction definitely doesn't seem to scale properly. Basically you have to abuse the Stagger perk to stunlock things until they die.

 

Meanwhile sword and board can easily abuse things like the 50% damage reduction and Spellbreaker.

 

And don't get me started on the ridiculousness that is 60x sneak attack damage per dagger + Shadow Warrior. (30x from Assassin's Blade and DB gloves + Armsmen)

 

 

Destruction feels underpowered compared to Conjuration or Illusion.

 

 

Edit: Bound Dagger would be nice!

Edited November 29, 2011 by Melfice_Cyrum

[BlueShiftSolo]

I agree with some of the things you're saying, but I'm curious...Do you need to hit level cap? Once I max out my three trees for my character, any left over perks will most likely go into that fourth skill (Alchemy in this case), then leveling will come to a creeping halt. That's fine. The game scales with you, so it's not really twisting your arm to level up. If you want to define yourself a very specific roll (e.g. Conjuration with a little bit of Destruction), then just be prepared to level up slower than a jack of all trades? It's not the end of the world if you don't hit 999/999/999 stats by the time you finish the main quest.

 

Edit: Also, Archers are OP? Sure, they do a ton of damage at the cost of being easy to dodge. Whose fault is it that you rambo'd into a fort without surveying the enemy location and just got plucked away by their "strategically placed" range?

Some of us don't like character development "grinding to a halt" so early in the game. It's very likely that a specialist will be able to get their primary skills to level 100 before the main quest is finished, and then what? The Dovahkiin has returned, but he can't kill a Giant?

 

My character uses a shield and short-range Destruction spells in combat. Unfortunately, there are no powerful short-range spells in Skyrim. It's not like Oblivion, where I'd craft touch-range spells that sapped a third of my magicka (as an Atronach, mind you) to down things in one hit. I'm not expecting anything that ridiculous, but it would be nice to no longer need to use the standard Frostbite as a staple spell (for RP purposes) at level 40. The proposed changes would mitigate this problem, if not eliminate it entirely. Bravo!

Edited November 29, 2011 by BlueShiftSolo

[skyekross]

just a suggestion. remove or cap fortify weapon enchant. to make daggers the better sneak attack weapon rather than a waste of perk in late game. my sword and mace outdamaged the blade of woe by a mile even without doing the enchant alchemy loop.

 

there is little reason to use lightarmor late game. since you only saved 1 perk point because of smithing. you lose more if you take the light armor smithing perks. so i think. make smithing 2 way, on the right is about crafting and upgrading both light and heavy. the left is about modifying material. since unique items are fixed we should be able to change the material to make it stronger and/or change it from heavy to light or the other way around keeping the unique enchantments it has.

 

remove the enchant alchemy loop. that was the 1st thing that made the game easy. possibly remove the fortify enchant & alchemy potions and armor. not sure with enchant smithing since thats the only way to reach the armor cap easy allowing you to wear whatever you want.

 

speech and lockpick tree sucked.

lockpick should be a part of pickpocket "thievery?" but pickpocket isnt very good either.

 

speech should enhance shouts. making 2handed fighters better since 2 handed are crap slow and its non versatile.

[haerual]

I think the late game is problematic for all casters, Illusion and Summoning spells hit their caps as hostiles and your level keeps going up (50+). Not sure about how summoned Daedra and Atronachs cap their levels, but as far as I know, the elemental Atronachs damage doesn't scale at all(?) or at least well later on. Bound Weapons are ridiculously strong in the early game, but weak in the late game. Restoration might have trouble keeping up with the increasing health pools past 50, but I might also be wrong.

 

But when re-balancing these things, it it would somehow have to be half tied to perks, half tied to percentual modifiers in gear. Melee characters tend to spend quite a few perks in the early tree for both armor and damage upgrades, where destruction has only 2 damage perks and the rest are utility/cost reductions.

 

EDIT: Actually, the thing I really want to say is that Destruction is ridiculously strong if it's the only thing you skill up until it's at it's cap. At lvl 25 forward the damage starts to dwindle down as your secondary skills level you up, so when modding Destruction, it's incredibly important to not touch the perks in the Destruction tree itself as if you do that the early game destruction will be imbalanced, but rather fix the problem through adding synergizing talents to the support trees. In example, perks like Necromage are brilliant. Something could be added to Speech, Illusion, Enchanting, etc.

 

I think the game needs more perk dumps in all trees so that you don't end up generalizing your character too much in the late game. Having 3 trees to focus on is fine, any more than that makes the character feel like a hybrid that gets more and more gimped as levels go up.

 

Non combat skills like thieving skills, speech, crafting and the like need to contribute much less to level progression so that you can pick a few of them early on, without the fear of gimping your character too much. It's also silly how fast conjuration levels up just by summoning bound weapons. It should be toned down somehow.

 

I feel like potions should also restore a percentage of your maximum mana, rather than a fixed sum.

Edited December 8, 2011 by haerual