I am intrigued by this. I wonder if spamming spells, and then running away like a madman during assassination missions, is more fun than the damage multipliers you get for a nice and clean long-ranged stealth kill.. Also, does fortify destruction magic also increase the base damage of a spell or is it limited to only lowering the mana cost? If so, how hard is it to play on master difficulty? (solo, or with followers and thralls)
it works fine until around lvl25-30 at which point it begins to suck due to the fact that neither the destruction skill adds damage to your spells, nor is there an enchantment that adds to the damage of your spells but the opponents continue to gain health.
you are virtually indestructible in your heavy magic resist enchanted armor, constantly staggering your opponent though, so it's a matter of time until your opponent is dead.
the damage curve for a dedicated destruction mage looks a little like this:
0 20 40 60 80 character level
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/Well, I do spend a lot of magicka. There is the summoning of 2 dremoras, a dragonhide spell, sometimes some healing during combat and then various destruction spells. Your concept doesn't fit my playstyle, I thought that was easy to comprehend as well.
the word you were searching for is "magically scry", not "comprehend". if i'm talking about a dedicated destruction mage; dremoras, dragonhide or healing spells are obviously not the first things that come to my mind.
even in those cases magicka is a pretty worthless stat. especially once you have mastered conjuration and are running around with 2 permanent thralls you will question yourself why the heck you would need magicka for this (just to be able to gain more character levels i skilled conjuration too - enchanting some gear with conjuration cost reducers whenever you need to resummon your thrall (or astronach with lower skill levels) is a considerably more efficient approach than using actual magicka for it.)
alteration as a whole seems weak to me (why wear cloth to cast a spell that nets you 80% physical damage reduction if you can just wear heavy armor that stops even more damage, only constantly without casting anything? and lol@ebonflesh)
casting restoration spells is a valid argument. considering the rarity you actually get to use those even on master level as a cautious caster in heavy protective gear with considerable health i would argue that being able to cast 3-4 of those with your 100 base-magicka should be more than sufficient.
so while this might not be your "playstyle" it's the most efficient approach. were we come back to my premise (which i assume you were trying to argue against, and not just talking out of your butt) that
the oddest and most counterintuitive thing i noticed in skyrim up to now is that as a dedicated destruction mage it's more effective to put your levelup-statpoints into health than into magic.
i was never proposing that it was impossible to play a suboptimal destruction mage build based on magicka instead of health.
in my opinion it's a grave oversight that a magicka-less approach is even feasible. not to mention the horrible scaling of destruction magic that goes alongside it.
it's a fact that at 100 destruction (or any other magic school for that matter with the right perks) you have a 83% reduction on your spells manacost whether you want it or not. just by filling those last 17% (the arch-mage robe would nearly cover that alone!) with enchants on your armor you increase your mana pool to infinity - so it does not matter whether you have 100+infinity or 500+infinity magicka.
