Illusion magic is actually broken and nobody realizes it

[DragonbornVet]

I'm on my 5th playthrough and just hit level 40 illusion for the first time on purpose, and I have to say this school is completely underrated. Like, everyone talks about how useless it is compared to destruction or conjuration, but the perk tree is actually insane if you know what you're doing.

The perk that makes affected enemies fight each other - I think it's called something like Mayhem or Mass Hysteria - just breaks combat encounters. You cast it once on a group and they literally kill each other while you stand back. The scaling is nuts too. By the time you get the higher tier perks, you're essentially removing enemies from the fight without ever touching them.

The thing is, illusion gets a reputation for being weak because people try to use it like a damage spell. They cast Fury on one draugr, it doesn't work because of magic resistance, and they go back to fireballing everything. But if you build around the crowd control perks and actually invest in the tree, you can trivialize fights that would wreck a pure destruction mage.

Also the invisibility line is genuinely broken in the best way. Not in a glitch sense, just in a "why would you ever need stealth archer when you can literally become invisible and walk around" sense. I'm convinced half the people who complain about illusion just never got past level 20 in the school.

Anyone else actually use illusion seriously or am I just weird?

 

[RiftenWanderer]

I'd agree illusion gets way more hate than it deserves, but I think you're underselling why people bounce off it early. The problem isn't that it's weak - it's that the early spells are genuinely unreliable garbage. Fury barely works on anything with decent magic resistance, and by the time you're level 40 illusion and have those high-tier perks, you've already spent like 30 levels using spells that fizzle half the time. Most people aren't patient enough to grind through that slog.

That said, yeah, once you actually get the perks that matter - the ones that boost your spell effectiveness and the crowd control stuff - it does get pretty ridiculous. I had a playthrough where I spec'd heavy into illusion around level 35 or so and ended up just watching groups of bandits tear each other apart. It's definitely a "late bloomer" school in a way destruction never is.

The invisibility thing is kind of its own beast though. That's less about illusion being broken and more about stealth in Skyrim being fundamentally overpowered, which is a different conversation. But yeah, invisible + muffle spell = you can walk into any dungeon and nobody ever knows you were there.

I think the real take is: illusion is actually good if you commit to it, but it requires way more investment and patience than people want to spend on a magic school. Destruction just works from level 1.