The next character in development

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As is always the case, I start planning another character before I'm done with the present one. Of course, it's not worth starting something new unless you can do something significantly different than what you've already done. And I'm thinking I'm going to keep on doing characters that specialize in one of the mage schools, along with some melee fighting style.

I started with a ranger-conjuror, featuring bows and summons primarily, and dual wielding weapons for melee. Then I pulled out the very successful mind flayer build, focusing on illusion magic along with sword and shield. All told, I think the mind flayer turned out more successful, even though she basically topped out at level 74, whereas the ranger-conjuror went all the way to the level 81 cap.

(Although it should be pointed out that unless you're playing a character with the intent to get to the level cap, it is unlikely that you'll actually reach the level cap. If you're just playing to play like most people, even if you train every level, it is unlikely that you'll ever reach the cap. It requires a lot of planning ahead to actually pull off successfully, and, truth be told, there isn't as big of a difference as you'd think between a level 71 character and a level 81 character. Having 10 more perks is nice and all, but at that point, it's more frill material than acutally improving the overall effectiveness of your character. It's for this reason that I don't foresee me planning out future characters to get all the way to the cap.)

Anyway, it keeping with the theme, my options are now somewhat limited. There are five school of magic (I don't count enchanting as a school, as it has no direct combat function - there are no enchantment spell). I've already done conjuration and illusion, while restoration and alteration are inadequate as a primary form of offense - although they are both usefull as supplemental magic schools. That leaves me with destruction magic.

I've discussed my overall negative view regarding destruction magic at length, and I'm not going to rehash it all again. I decided to give it a fair try if it can offer at least comparable damage to similar skills. Since destruction magic is ranged, the most fair comparison to make is with a bow. Assuming no triple crafts and the like, a skilled archer with good smithing skill can reasonably expect to be able to get about 250 damage per shot with a bow. And that's the benchmark we'll set for destruction magic. So what do we have?

Let's just immediately jump to the expert level spells to give destruction its best chance. Icy Spear, Incinterate and Thunderbolt are the three ranged spells, and they're all the same in terms of base damage (60). That's obviously no where near 300. However, you can spend a couple of perks in Augmented Flames/Frost/Shock and get it to 90. With a perk in destruction dual casting, you'll get 220% damage from those spells, bringing the damage total to around 200. And there ain't nothing else that permantents adds to damage. (Fortify destruction potions make for a temporary boost, and could be useful in situational combat against tough opponents, but it would be impractical to carry around so many that you'd use them all the time.) I'll be honest - I'm not thrilled. I can easily get 50 more points of damage out of bow with a comparable number of perks spent. OK, we'd say we'd give it a fair shot - what about the master level spells?

That's Blizzard, Fire Storm and Lightning Storm. Does that get us anywhere? Well, Bilzzard does 20 points per second for 10 seconds. That can be raised to 30 with Augmented Frost, but you can't get the dual cast bonus. So over the course of 10 seconds, it can do 300 points of damage, or a little more than one arrow, and you can definitely get off more than one shot with a bow in 10 seconds. Fire Storm does 100 points of damage, Augmented Flames gets us to 150. It will hit multiple targets, but still not great. Lightning Storm does 75 per second, which with Augmented Shock goes up to 112. It takes about 3 seconds to get off a second arrow, so in that time, we're looking at 336 from lightning storm, and we've finally found a destruction spell that can keep up with a bow - albeit one that would necessitate wearing four pieces of reduced casting cost gear to cast.

So what else can I add to my arsenal to help destruction along? Well, I suppose there's some strategic use of runes, although we'll need to quiet casting perk to set them strategically, and I suppose I can use the cloak spells for some added damage in melee. Is that enough? I'm not sure, but I suppose it's worth a try.

Looking at a melee skill to pick, the only one I haven't picked yet is two handed. (I've used two handed, but I haven't made a dedicated character yet using two handed.) From my experience from a damage perspective, dual wield > two handed > sword and shield. Although it's the exact opposite order in dealing wtih melee utility. Dual wield you melee consists of continual swinging until you are or your opponent is dead. Sword and shield is definitely safest with bashing - it even interrupts a dragon's breath attack. But you CAN block and bash with a two handed weapon. Now I've blocked with a two handed weapon before, and it isn't nearly as effective as using a shield. However, the beauty of blocking is actually in the bash skills, and if that works just as well with a two handed weapon, there may be something to it.

So this character is developing as a different take on a spellsword. Instead of having a melee weapon in one hand, and a spell in the other hand, it will be alternating between a two handed weapon and dual casting destruction spells. And given the above discussion, a lightning mage makes the most sense. The next question is can we pull it off perk-wise?

Well, if I'm using lightning storm, I need four pieces of reduced casting cost gear. That means I have to train the crap out of destruction and rely more on melee combat in the early going. After some initial training, I'll train it all the way to 90, and then I'll need to use Thunderbolt, Lightning Bolt, and Lightning Rune to get me to 100. I don't know if mutliple runes can be cast, but if so, with quiet casting, I may be able to get a minefield on the way between me and my target. This just might have a chance at working.

With reduced casting cost gear, I don't need any of the half casting cost perks other than the ones that are prerequisites for other perks I'll need. What other perks do I need? Destruction Dual Casting, Augmented Frost, Impact, and Rune Master. That means I only need Novice and Apprentice Destruction. That's just 6 perks... not bad!

Two Handed needs Barbarain 5/5, Champion's Stance, Devastating Blow and Great Critical Charge. That's 8, so we're at 14.

Let's through the obligatory 3 in speech 4 in pickpocket, and 8 in enchanting, and we're at 29.

Now I said I wanted some bash skills, so Shield Wall, Quick Reflexes, Power, Deadly, Disarming Bash. Now at 34.

I'll assume 4 early in archery for some form of ranged comat until Destruction comes online, and we're at 38. We can forego alchemy, but keep Smithing, so another 6. That's still only 40.

Finally, I need 2 in Light Armor to get to the cap, and four in illusion to get to Quiet Casting. I can pass on the entire Sneak tree and just cast Muffle to be silent - there's nothing in my skill list that will benefit from Sneak anyway. In fact, given that, let's go two points in heavy armor instead of light armor and go that route. That also means I need one more on the smithing tree. Total of 47.

Hmmm... This actually has some potential just from a build flexibility standpoint if nothing else. With just 47, I can grab two in restoration later on for Regeneration, and as many as 5 in Alteration for the full magic resistance, and STILL have points to play with. And I might have to play an orc for the sheer hilarity of it all. I'll give it a go - and thus the "Lightning Smash" (say it like The Hulk would for fullest effect) build was born.

 

There's alchemy. Potions and poisons are the only items that allow Destruction to actually scale with monster HP and are essential for higher difficulty settings.

My experience with destruction magic spellswords has been negative, sooner or later my characters always revert to either a pure caster (got tired of constantly shifting between spells and weapons) or a fighter who just casts 1 or 2 spells and then melees for the rest of the fight.

 

In none of the three ES games I have played have destruction magic really been competitive. Not that it has stopped me from using it but I always used a weapon if I actually had to kill something. The closest thing to strong destruction is in Morrowind where you can enchant items to cast destruction spells without a cooldown which means you can unload insane amount of dmg as fast as you can click. That is technically enchanting though.

 

Potions can really up your destruction damage, however, at with a duration of just 30 seconds it is impractical to carry around enough of them for constant use. Yes, you can chug one when you're fighting a giant, dragon, or something else tough, but unless you want to carry around like 100 of them, it's not something you can use every fight.

Well, that pretty much is the plan - to only use a couple of spells. Although this isn't the standard spellsword archetype either with a weapon in one hand and a spell in the other. The plan is to use a two handed weapon and dual cast spells.

And while my ES experience is limited exclusively to Skyrim, I've come to a similar conclusion. Why use a destruction spell when an arrow can hit for comparable damage? And without the magicka requirement the only limitation with bows would be running out of arrows, which I don't think has ever happened to me.

I'm more or less doing it for the sake of doing it. Although one thought that hit me is the potential of combining two schools of magic with the character. Destruction + something else. I may even consider pairing it with alteration, although I admit that I don't know what the success rate is for paralysis and mass paralysis. I guess the question really becomes is the success rate better than what you get on your weapon enchantment. Because the chance of paralyzing someone with my weapon seems like a 50-50 proposition. And if that's the case, it's not really worth it, as it cannot be relied upon.

The other thought is Destruction + Conjuration, as that is a cheap perk investment too. Dremora Lords don't NEED any perks to be effective, as there would be no problem placing reduce conjuration casting cost on the helm and armor - I won't need anything else there. I would really like to build a character that doesn't use a bow as his only ranged combat method.

 

It depends on how you plan to tackle the game I guess. I've still pretty much kept to my old playstyle of amassing massive amounts of gold as quickly as possible (by moving from city to city, town to town constantly, and doing quests along the way) and using my wealth to buy all the raw materials I come across. Sometimes my character is a merchant, sometimes just a wanderer. Gold also allows me to quickly upgrade my gear/craft better ones early and buy powerful spell scrolls. In this way alchemy and mixing all kinds of potions in bulk just comes naturally for me.

 

Paracelsi is right in that soon enough you're producing far more potions than you can ever unload on the merchants. So what you do is a checklist on the potions you could potentially put into use - of which Fortify Destruction would be one for this character obviously - and consequently reserve the ingredients for those into mass production into own use. The rest of what you buy off the alchemy shops goes into feeding your money production.

For example, since you're planning on wearing a full -100% magicka cost set for Destruction, try combining Glow Dust + Glowing Mushroom + Hanging Moss for "Damage Magicka + Damage Magicka Regen + Fortify Destruction + Fortify Health + Resist Shock". Note that you'll be out of mana by drinking it but you'll have access to some pretty nifty bonuses that are otherwise unavailable as a combination with it. Check other options from Useful potions list.

Generally though, Fortify Destruction is only available with rather bland and/or negative traits due to the ingredients it uses:
Beehive Husk, Ectoplasm, Glow Dust, Glowing Mushroom, Nightshade, Wisp Wrappings

 

The problem being that I can't be arsed to even switch over into alchemy gear to MAKE potions after I've accumulated enough wealth. Especially since discovering that completing the No Stone Unturned quest turns even an average dungeon into a 50,000 septim goldmine.

 

Yeah, it's a playstyle thing. Not to mention a nice big chunk of the gain is redundant by that point. Ideally it's something you should start as early as when you first get to Riverwood.

 

The next character is keeping with the original theme: i.e., destruction magic, and two handed weapons, but I think I'm making a stagger build. Every type of attack I do staggers opponents, whether it's dual casting a destruction spell, using a crossbow with power shot, or power attacking with a two handed weapon (a war hammer of course). It's going quite well.