Oblivion talk:Shock Damage

Using Shock to Increase Speed

Since this is the fastest spell in the game, is it possible to put a weak shock damage effect on top of other normally slower offensive spell effects to increase their speed? How is it determined which spell effect will be the "dominant" one? Is it the one that costs the most magicka? The one that's added first at the spell making alter? Something else?

This might also be useful for offensive area effect on target spells if you could get frost damage to be primary, and therefore make it travel as a huge projectile with a "tunnel" area of effect for a spell that does shock damage? Honeybunch 20:36, 11 October 2008 (EDT)

Well, I haven't tested it with shock yet, but I did test it with a frost spell. I used a few combination light/frost spells to see if the light part of the spell would affect enemies in the "tunnel" area of the frost spell. It didn't. The light spell only had any effect if it hit a living target, as usual. This was true whether or not the light spell was area of effect or targeted with no area. Still haven't tested how electricity works in conjunction with other spells; it might still be worth it to put a weak shock damage effect on spells to increase their speed. Honeybunch 12:31, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

I'd say you would have to test that. As far as my experience goes, the spell effect with the highest magicka cost gets picked for the visual effect. Which would ruin the idea of using Shock Damage to speed up the spell projectile. --Timenn < talk > 01:04, 14 October 2008 (EDT)

I remember that I once made a spell, where I accidently set the frost damage one point higher than fire and shock. Even though the shock effect was listed first, the spell was a frost projectile :( I haven't tested it with other effects though. Blue deep 10:55, 31 January 2009 (EST)

Greetings, sera/muthsera! Can't believe it's already 2011 :). 5 years have passed and still playing this game, tough...

By the way I tested these with nearly every possible combination. The statement in the article is incorrect, or half-true at the most. Surely, the fastest spell CAN influence the speed of the custom spell projectile... But does NOT influence it unless it has the STRONGEST damage effect. The explanation is simple: Frost, Fire and Shock have different magicka costs. More simply the Frost is the lowest level, Fire is intermediate and Shock is the highest level. This results in an interesting, but logical calculation one might find useful when roleplaying. Let's say you create a 100 Dmg Frost, 100 Dmg Fire, 100 Dmg Shock combined custom spell. The result is a Shock spell icon and a Shock spell animation (lightning bolt) when you cast it. Because Shock is the STRONGEST (most magicka cost) element here. The damage values are equal so the highest level is picked for it. If, by some reason you would like to cast the highest possible amount of damage combining only the three Elemental damages (no Damage Health and such) but still would like to have a Fire spell icon thus a Fire spell animation (fireball) then you must create it as the following: 100 Dmg Fire, 100 Dmg Frost, 98 Dmg Shock. The total amount of damage is 298. If, by some reason you would like to cast a Frost projectile (thus having a Frost spell icon) because, say, you have a Frost Mage type of character, then you must create the spell as the following: 100 Dmg Frost, 98 Dmg Fire, 96 Dmg Shock. The total amount of damage is 294. Note, that having all three on a 100 Dmg results in the highest damage and the fastest projectile BECAUSE the shock is the animation. Not because the shock is part of the custom spell. If you make a custom spell, say, 100 Dmg Frost with 50 Dmg Shock, adding the Shock spell DOES NOT increase the speed of the projectile because the Frost spell effect is STRONGER (more magicka cost). It will be just as fast as the simple Frost bolt animation would be because it will be a simple Frost bolt animation with a non-animated Shock effect! So adding the Shock is completely useless if you add it for only the increased projectile speed. Following the same logic, if you add Damage Health as an additional effect, and would like to have a Frost spell animation, the maximum damage is the following: 100 Dmg Frost, 98 Dmg Fire, 96 Dmg Shock, 68 Dmg Damage Health. Because pound-for-pound the Damage Health is more magicka-consuming, or simply put, stronger. Hope you'll find these infos useful. May the wind be on your back! Aran Mafre 12:34, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Either this rule only applies to spells that deal HP damage or it has some other exception. With a skill of 50 in destruction I was unable to make a spell with a one second on target paralyze effect combined with an on target shock damage effect in which the cost of the shock effect was greater than the paralyze. I went ahead and created the spell with the maximum amount of shock damage possible at my skill level, despite the higher cost of the paralyze component. The resultant spell was delivered via a bolt of lightning instead of the green orb produced by illusion magic. 67.149.196.9 23:41, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the Destruction Magic spell animations will override the others. The other spell effects always act like they are "secondary". Aran Mafre 12:34, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

The effect depends in first place of the range of the spell. "On Touch" spell effects will go on top of "on Self" spell effects, and effects of the spells "on Range" will go on top of the rest of the spells. At equal levels of range then the effect on top will be the effect of the spell with the higher magicka cost. You can make use of this for a faster spellcasting. If you are practicing restoration then you can create a 3 Dmg 1sec Shock "on Touch", 3pts 1sec Restore Health "on Self" custom spell. It will be a restoration spell but with the shock effect (a lot faster).

Shock damage area.

I know that for fire damage spells, the "AREA" modifier bar thing affects the explosion radius on impact. Also, the"AREA" bar on frost increases the projectile size. But what does the "AREA" bar do for shock? Does it increase projectile size? Does it arc to multiple enemies?

It affects the distance from where the bolt can 'fork' to reach its targets. With wide area shock spell, you can fire the bolt at a wall, but if there are targets nearby, the bolt will instead split into multiple ones, hitting all the enemies with the same amount of damage. In other words, the area effect on shock spells is not visible until you fire it with someone standing nearby. 37.203.49.130 12:29, 12 December 2022 (UTC)