My Rants: Elder Scrolls: Destruction

Plain and simple as always, and all honestly I dont entirely blame them. The Destruction school of magic seems pretty balanced. Do you have a warrior charging at you at full speed with a fearsome axe in hand? Use a Frost spell. Have a rouge character that either uses arrows or daggers, since they are known to have small amount of health Fire spells tend to do the trick especially ones that explodes upon impact. Or if you're up against a rival mage, Shock spells are your number one choice. But over the course, those are your only three options. Sure you get spells that does alternate effects but overall it's just three basic types; Fire, Frost, and Shock. Lets just take a look at this school shall we?

So other than the basics, there is a rather new type of destruction spell that I found rather interesting; Runes. They are basically the kind of spell you would use for traps, they all deal a total of fifty points of damage and there are three runes for each of the three types and there is only one perk that is exclusive to that spell type which allows you to cast runes five times farther away. That is interesting but after looking through the spells I've noticed something rather particular; Whirlwind Cloak. This spell is added into the game with the addition of the Dragonborn DLC. Note that this is the only "Air" or "Wind" spell in the entire game. There are no perks for it, no perks that alters it what so ever, it rather feels out of place? Then it hit me, maybe that Whirlwind Cloak was a chance for the developers to add in an additional elemental type to Destruction?

There has been plenty of discussion about additional elemental types to the school of Destruction, specifically Wind, Earth, and Water. These additions I believe actually improves upon the Destruction school. Having the three additional types have mirror spells like Fire, Shock, and Frost, but with their own alternate effects. Like Wind can knock back certain enemies, Earth can cause more damage the more armor the enemy is wearing, you see where I'm going with this right? With all six of these Destruction spell types, there could've been a more wider variant of a single elemental mage or better a sort of Elemental Mage/Avatar build of sorts. Because lets face it, whoever doesnt want to have an Avatar build just once where you can bend the will of Fire, Water, Earth, and Air all together is a fucking liar.

But overall, no Avatar would be caught dead using these worthless spells. For some reason I always found that the wall spells like Fire Wall was a pretty useless spell, because even though it's a wall of fucking fire, enemies are all like "I dont give a fuck" and just run through it receiving minimal damage and still go after you. Even if you somehow make an entire circle out of the Fire Wall spell, they're still gonna rush in and beat your ass with small burns and what not. Seriously, I've invested so much time in training my Destruction skill, spent a fortune buying these spells, and spent so much on investing a bigger pool of magicka and this is what I get? Oh wait a minute, I have to invest in a perk in order to have my wall of fire to have a full effect? Are you serious? It's a wall of fire, not even a Khajiit hopped on skooma would even think on crossing an entire wall of fire just to get to me. If anything, they would go around it or just wait for the flames to die out or better yet draw out a bow and arrow or whatever. Not be a complete dumbass and just run right pass it like it was just tickling their balls!

And what about the Master level spells, as far as I can tell only one of them did it rather well, or the very least all did well besides one. The master Fire spell is as basic as you can get, just a large fiery explosion, nothing more. The Shock master spell however I absolutely love, a constant stream of sheer lightning Dragon Ball Z style as you mow down wave after wave of enemies, limited only by the amount of magicka you have left reserved and where you are pin pointed. Yeah I could say that it rather sucks that you are stuck in that one spot after casting the spell but I believe it's fair for having all that power. It's a powerful spell, so obviously there's going to be some draw backs that'll make everything balanced and what not. The Frost master spell however, is pretty piss poor for me. It's slow dealing ten points of damage per so seconds and with the right perks it can paralyze your enemies. Here's something that would make it better, how about making that spell just freeze the enemies around you entirely like the Ice Form shout and though they receive little as say five or so points of damage per second while they're frozen in ice, you deal double if not triple the damage to them while they're in ice and have a chance to completely shatter to tiny bits.

And while on the subject, hows about a sort of spell/skill combination with your elemental magic and your atronachs. Like say you struck your Flame Atronach with a fireball, it would boost in power, or the use of the novice skill Flames used on the Flame Atronach can be somewhat like a healing spell? Or have a destruction spell that turns your Flame Atronach into a much more larger walking time bomb as it is already after death where its explosion is much more bigger and deadlier than normal. It makes you have a strategy when using these elemental beings, plan out your next move with atronachs to whether summon two Flame Atronachs one for long ranged and the other for a suicidal bombardment. Or Ice Atronachs that focuses more on defense thanks to your frost spells that reinforces them where they can last longer on the field or take all the attention while you sneak pass or away from your enemies.