Illusion magic is actually broken and nobody realizes how broken it is

I've been running an illusion-focused assassin on my 5th playthrough and I think I've figured out why people say the tree sucks. They're not using it right. Everyone talks about how Mayhem spells are "fun but useless" but they're actually one of the most broken tools in the game if you understand enemy AI.

Here's the thing: cast Mayhem in a dungeon with 5+ enemies and they will literally kill each other while you sit back and watch. The perk that makes enemies stay affected longer (I think it's called Aspect of Madness or something) turns it into a permanent crowd control button. Add Quiet Casting and you're invisible casting spells that delete encounters without ever drawing a weapon.

The real problem is that early Illusion feels completely dead because the spells are weak, so people bail on the tree. But if you can get past level 30 or so and grab the perks that actually matter, it becomes arguably the strongest skill tree in the game for stealth builds. Better than Destruction, better than Conjuration. I'm not even using my daggers half the time.

Am I the only one who thinks the tree gets unfairly trashed because people don't stick with it long enough to hit the good stuff?

I think you're onto something but also kind of proving why people dump Illusion early. Yeah, the high-level stuff is genuinely strong - that perk that extends spell duration is real and Mayhem is a legitimate encounter eraser if you set it up right. But "stick with it until level 30" is asking a lot when you're slogging through Muffle and Fury spam for the first 20 levels while Destruction just deletes things immediately.

The other issue is that Illusion gets hard-countered by a bunch of common enemies. Undead don't care, automatons don't care, dragons laugh at you. So on a typical playthrough you hit a Draugr dungeon and suddenly your whole toolkit is useless, which feels bad. Destruction has the same problem technically but at least a fireball still does damage to undead.

That said, if you're specifically building around stealth and you're willing to respect the tree, yeah it goes nuclear. Quiet Casting plus invisibility plus Mayhem is basically "win button" in most situations. I ran something similar on my second playthrough and once I hit the mid-tier perks it was stupid overpowered - way more broken than people give it credit for. The problem is the tree demands you commit to it and most people just want to try everything, so they never get there.