Just wanted to pitch in a little on this. I play on console and can't manipulate that sort of thing, so I just tend to avoid destruction. There's probably a happy medium for destruction where you do 0.75x damage (expert) but receive 3x damage from enemies (legendary). I enjoyed playing that character but it felt a bit like a shooting range when the enemies weren't capable of doing much damage back to me. I played an electromancer build (shock spells, conjuration and a dagger with shock damage) not long ago and it was fun to play, but I had to start the game on expert and only bumped it up to master when I'd maxed out enchanting. Try killing a restless draugr with firebolts that only do 6.25 damage per shot, when every one of those spells takes a significant chunk of your magica away Destruction could technically be viable but it would be too much of a grind to actually kill anything, and dungeons would take far too long to complete for the game to remain enjoyable. With archery, one handed, two handed and dagger characters legendary is challenging but still fun. I play every build on legendary, and destruction just isn't good enough to hack it at that level.

Yes, they up the skill points, but it's hard to justify doing it as I RP strongly. None of this 'cast soul trap on a corpse' over and over and over again or 'use detect life in a city' over and over and over. They're my true passion.ДЄlso understand that I do not use any exploits at all if I can help it. I love my warriors and I love my mages, but I truly love my spellswords/sneaky types. You need to pay attention to your magicka and recovery speed when using magic. It doesn't even matter if you're using anything that needs stamina (power moves, draws, etc.). On a warrior - bang, bang, let 'em hit me, bang, bang, let 'em hit me and your up 2 or 3 points in both the skill and your armor. You just have to manage your resources better than when you're a warrior. I think it's based on the amount of damage you do to your opponents and, since both are kind of AoE spells, I just go to Falmer Hives or Bandit camps and go to town.ДЄdmittedly it's easier if you have 0% cost, but, even standard reductions and high magicka are fine.Дon't get me wrong, I agree with you that simple things like block, one-handed (basically any weapons skills), sneak or any armor skills are easier to up than any magic school (especially restoration or alteration - those are my banes), but it's certainly not difficult at all to up destruction IMO. I like chain lightning or ice storm for upping my destruction. Sure, Flames may not be much, but, early game, I can raise my destruction by 10 or 15 pts in the first 20 minutes of so just by using it. Obviously, casting higher level spells will raise it quicker. I almost always max it out by level 40 or so. I just dual cast whatever my preferred spell is and away I go. Even when I'm not playing a mage, but just a spellsword using destruction, I never have any issues. I wonder why you have so many issues with destruction.

Skyrim increase spell damage console