Poll: Magic in Skyrim

[Professor James]

Yes yes, I know you're all tired of skyrim threads. Just bear with me now, this is probably going to be my only one and they're starting to die out. Plus, this always happen when a big game gets released.

Now on to my question. What is your opinion on magic in skyrim? I think magic is pretty effective but I met some people who think that magic is underpowered compared to warrior and thief skills.

 

[worldruler8]

Really more a case of the other two options pay-off relatively quickly. I use magic sparingly, as my method of hacking away at enemies works much better then using my basic spells. So, Magic is weaker, but only at the beginning. But I honestly don't know, as I haven't made someone devoted toward strictly magic.

 

[Ordinaryundone]

The problem is, unlike Warrior and Thief Skills, Magic is limited by a finite resource in combat (Magicka). You can swing your sword all day long with no ill effect, and most Thief skills are governed by the very powerful and easy to train Stealth skill instead of any actual combat application.

If they had tied your ability to swing your weapon to your stamina gauge, or had let you create more powerful spells, it would have been balanced. But as it is, if you are a mage you have to go out of your way to enchant your Magicka pool/regen to be able to keep up.

 

[Blank Verse]

Spells' damage/effects are set, although melee and archery schenanigans scale. One can get enchantments to increase the damage of melee/bow damage, but not spell damage. This makes playing a mage a nightmare on higher difficulties, especially with a low health pool when compared to thieves/warriors.

However, I find that, should one play a pure mage, utility such as 'fear'-- crowd control-- is often overlooked. As a mage who only invests skills into magical categories, I find the challenge of controlling enemies with illusion spells fun because I can't kill them in ~2 seconds.

I'm playing a level 55 mage at the moment, with another mage at 62, on maximum difficulty. It's way more difficult than a stealth character, or a warrior-ish type, but it's fun.

Edit: Magicka is not a problem when destruction spells cost 0 magicka.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

in my opinion magicka is balanced,(although conjurations pretty potent...)

Its just that enchantment and smithing is broken, and other classes get enchanted weapons.

 

[Raddra]

Underpowered.

It starts out seeming pretty decent, but enemies hit points keep going up, but unlike armor and weapon skills, it doesn't get more powerful as you train the skill. And neither can you augment magic via something like smithing.

 

[SillyBear]

Magic is Skyrim isn't great. I can't believe how much better Morrowind handled it - and it was released in 2002. The magic in Morrowind made you feel... magic. It was amazing the amount of things you could do with it. And that's how it should feel.

The magic in Skyrim, to me, feels like a system to help you out in melee combat when you're bored. It doesn't feel truly stand alone at all.

Meh.

Also, sneak is over powered. Bethesda really needs to work out their sneak engine. It's ludicrous. I had to stop playing my stealth character because it literally felt like I was cheating.

 

[putowtin]

I only have one character at the mo, and to be truthful it's a "stand there and let me hit you with my big sword!" I've only bothered learning healing spells so I don't have to use my potions (which I carry but hord!)

Was considering playing a mage next, but may leave it alone and go stealth instead

 

[ms_sunlight]

Magic is way overpowered. Conjuration in particular can completely break the game.

I'm playing an altmer who's a master at conjuration and expert level in illusion and destruction. She summons 2 dremora lords to follow her around. They kill everything without her ever having to break a sweat. Add her husband Marcurio as required, running around casting Chain Lightning, and even elder dragons are hardly a problem. She doesn't need to stealth, just cast muffle and invisibility.

I'm quite tired of it, actually, the challenge has been completely sucked out.

 

[endtherapture]

Magic is Skyrim isn't great. I can't believe how much better Morrowind handled it - and it was released in 2002. The magic in Morrowind made you feel... magic. It was amazing the amount of things you could do with it. And that's how it should feel.

The magic in Skyrim, to me, feels like a system to help you out in melee combat when you're bored. It doesn't feel truly stand alone at all.

Meh.

Also, sneak is over powered. Bethesda really needs to work out their sneak engine. It's ludicrous. I had to stop playing my stealth character because it literally felt like I was cheating.

Even Oblivion handled magic better, you could lighten your load and become a pack mule, charm people with magic, pick locks, increase your luck, make your own spells etc.

In Morrowind I believe you could fly absolutely everywhere if you were powerful enough.

Skyrim is just augmenting combat really, extra weapons to twat people with. Sure it's fun but it's pretty hollow when you think about it.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

Why isn't there a "boring" option? Magic in Skyrim is about as boring as magic can possibly come. I can't stand when magic more or less just boils down to a bunch of elemental attacks of varying degrees of strength.
So many creative uses for magic and it always just boils down to DPS. I know there are other spells in Skyrim but they are all so mundane and boring.

 

[NightHawk21]

Its underpowered until you get to level 40 or 60 (whichever one you get destruction dualcast at), after that the next couple levels are still difficult till you get a man pool of around 250-300 and some mana regen. After that point the game is a joke you can just sit back and stun lock anything. The only time the game becomes even slightly challenging is when they send a lot of weaker enemies cause you can't chain stun all of them, but then you can either Fus Ro Dah them and kill them 1 by 1 or cast a chain lightning or two and they're all dead.

So far I've played as a Destruction mage and an Sneaky bow/dagger assasin, and I'll say that the mage has a harder time at the beginning, but the trade off is eventually nothing can even take 2 steps towards you if you decide you want to kill it so you don't even have to invest in health (I think I have like 7 points in health and everything else ~25-30 points in magic), but the archer starts off a little easier and can deal with weaker enemies easier, but has a hard time dealing with dragons and stronger level enemies (I usually just get my horse to tank dragons for me since I can't kill them fast enough). Mind you I think you can break both classes with skillful use of alchemy and enchanting, but I've been trying not to do so.

 

[Tanis]

I'd say it's balanced, for the most part.

 

[NeutralDrow]

*glances at previous comments*

Balanced. It just depends on what you do with it. About the only thing magic can't replicate is lockpicking, and even if that weren't extremely easy, there's a standing stone for it. For the others, Conjuration means you can have things with warrior skills beat things up for you, Illusion takes the place of sneaking (at least, once you get Slient Casting), and even in a straight-up fight, Destruction stunlocking, battlefield control spells, and wards make up the difference (not to mention the handy-dandy Mage Armor perk). It doesn't even take all that much more effort to build, unless you're going for three or more schools at once. Then it gets pretty perk-heavy...but you're still left with non-magic perks that other characters would kill for (especially Alteration's magic resistance and some of Restoration's tools). Even magicka is eventually not much of a problem, what with enchantments and Alteration/Restoration perks.

Really, about the only major disadvantage I can think of for every level is limited carrying capacity; you're gonna be pumping up magic rather than stamina, and you'll probably be favoring magicka-enhancing enchantments rather than Fortify Carry Weight.

 

[EvilMaggot]

its way underpowered in the start compared to melee, but later on it gets batshitinsane overpowered

 

[DustyDrB]

It's underpowered...but that makes me happy. I have a weird fantasy prejudice against magic. Most of my Oblivion playthroughs were as characters who would never use magic once. My first Skyrim character was the same way. I've been trying stuff out in Skyrim with a second character, though, and have given magic a try. It's pretty underpowered. Yippee for people like me who would rather just put an arrow through every enemy's neck.

There are a lot of ways to increase your weapon damage (Skill tree damage bonuses, as well as potions, enchanting, smithing. Use these together and you'll end up with some ridiculous weapon stats), but not so many to increase spell damage.

 

[Sprinal]

I am playing as a mage on both my characters (well trying anyway)

First one (Breton) Shoots lightning and fire... then pulls out a pair of bound swords and hacks everything else to death... Well maybe this is because of the use of full daedric armour and my enchanting not being high enough to negate the all magicka requirements for destruction.

Second one (Nord) shoots lightning then sneeks (also in Daedric) then shoots some more...

I think the second one is closer to mage yet.... I still get the fealing of why would I use Stoneskin when I can get Legendry Daedric and then also enchant that to be a general tank and still get just as many advantages of useing spells.

Bear in mind this is still the case even with mods that are suppose to rebalance magic.

So in short I think it is underpowered in comparison to stealth yet can be interesting to use as a stealthy kind of thing...

Now one thing that I think is a waste is Torches....

Seriously never used one of the things