Dragonborn Frost = Useless?

[boltonbrowne ●]

One of the three shout-booster rewards given from one of Hermaeus Mora's Black Book trips is an active effect called "Dragonborn Frost". The way I understand it is that when you shout using the Frost Breath Shout "FO KRAH DIIN", it gives you the icing effect of the Ice Form shout, "IIZ SLEN NUS"?

This seems kinda naff. Especially at higher levels. Why expend the time and lack of damage to an enemy as well as shout cooldown when I can simply use the first word of Ice Form?

Ice form's cooldown is almost silly when you combine it with Dragon Aspect, Amulet of Talos, and Blessing of Talos. 60% reduction time and it's a cakewalk...

Fire breath usually becomes useless at level 20+ as 90 fire damage isin't all that much anymore. Even with with the Fire Within, given by Paarthurnax, it only caps at 112 Fire damage. Add on the Dragonborn Flame enhancement, but that only triggers if you kill the enemy with the shout.

Might just be me, but it seems the only Shout-boosting reward from Apocrypha is Dragonborn Force. Well, at least it sucks the least.

[ZackyZombify ●]

I have the fire one. It kills fast and then a fire wraith looking thing helps out. The other two idk. I thought the same with the frost and I really don't like unrelenting force.

[CBR JGWRR ●]

IIRC, the destruction damage increasing perks stack, giving 160 odd damage. but even so, that's still only 2 fireball spells, (after perks) and you could use those far more often thanks to the shout cooldown time, which at best with a necromage vampire with amulet and blessing of Talos and the dragon aspect shout is still 25 seconds or so of cooldown time...

[Yaije ●]

Eh... it's one of those things that is around but doesn't necessarily factor into your build. Not everything is present to provide an obvious increase to a specific build's performance.

Still, the fire one could be useful as it's a short range AoE that you can lump into a group (at no additional majicka cost!) to help dispatch one or more things. That 90-160 damage fire breath can also change depending on the target's weakness/resistance to fire/magic, for example the times when dealing with draugr/vampires.

[CBR JGWRR ●]

Yeah, it definitely has it's uses. Both it and frost stagger most enemies as well, something destruction magic can't achieve without perk points.

[legoless ●]

Dragonborn Force is much more useful than the other two, in my experience. The vapourising effect is rare, but at least the bonus is applied to a somewhat useful shout.

[Yaije ●]

Yeah, unrelenting force is universally useful. So much that there's few other shouts worth considering for some people.

Damn the shared cooldown on all shouts imo. They should have categories splitting them into multiple groups of shared cooldowns instead of all sharing the same one. Something based on element and then the long cooldown ones over in another group or something.

[CBR JGWRR ●]

If it wasn't for the fact that thu'um is strictly a seperate magic school you could sort them by that...