Weak destruction magic

[Lord Garon]

So I'm on my second play through and have a lvl 54 specializing in archery, light armor, sneak, and one handed (I also have smithing and enchanting maxed, so my gear is very good). I wanted to go back and start leveling magic skills because I haven't played a mage character yet, but all of the destruction spells seem SO WEAK compared to my archery and one handed. There are no enchants to buff destruction damage, only lower the magicka costs, and regen magicka. I made a new set of gear and enchanted it with full destruction magicka reduction, so mana is not an issue, but the damage output is VERY low.

 

Are there mods that can help with this or is destruction magic just inherently broken and weak? I was gonna download the Midas Magic mod, is that any good and will that solve my problem? I really want to TRY to play a magic-user character, but with it being so weak I don't see the point...

 

I play vanilla Skyrim and am running a pure mage right now with no perks outside of the magic schools, enchanting, and alchemy. She only has enchanted clothes (no armor) and a dagger. At level 38 and destruction skill 92, she just owns. Much more powerful than my previous Archers or Warriors. The last time she died was many levels ago to a dragon bite.

 

I was only able to build this mage due to the advice from people here. (See "Sacrificing Lydia" in the Spoilers forum). Magic damage scales with skill as more powerful magic is available at higher perk levels. If you can stand it, start a new mage character and level magic early; I'm having a blast wreaking "revenge" upon all those enemies who used to give me a hard time, especially Briarhearts and master vampires. Destruction magic with enchanting is SO strong that I am playing Conjurer now just for something different.

 

Damage output is relative. Enemy skill and armor will reduce most melee damage. It seems there is less resistance, in general, to magic than to arrows or melee weapons so the "low damage output" of destruction magic may be misleading. Just watch out for archers.

[Lord Garon]

Warning: There may be spoilers in some of the linked videos at the end.

 

Don't mean to spam the forum, but there is a neat video on Youtube that relates to this topic:

Edited June 22, 2012 by Lord Garon

[Matth85]

I've tried a game without using ANY magic, and a game using ONLY magic. Neither got to a massively high level but I found it much easier with magic but no weapons than weapons with no magic. There wasn't that much in it though.

 

The only point where it started to tip into weapons being noticeably easier was after I'd seriously levelled my smithing/enchanting up.

 

I found magic does compare pretty well to melee in vanilla, until you grind smithing and/or enchanting, THEN it becomes unbalanced towards melee, but that's because grinding smithing and enchanting unbalances melee, not because magic is too weak.

 

(All IMO from experience in game, not based on comparing damage stats etc).

 

Neither got to a massively high leve

 

Found your problem.

Vanilla Skyrim: Magick doesn't scale. Spells are as good as you get them. This means:

A) You use master level shock spell and hope that dragon doesn't kill/intterupt you.

or

B) You can keep a guy/dragon stunned forever, but it will also take you about 10 minute to kill it.

 

Both these is also considering you got 0% destruction cost, which I would considered just as bad as using alchemy to boost a weapon damage to the closest thousand you want to.

 

This is why we get mods.