A pity for sure. Such potential...

Wards are very effective against Dragon's. I would hardly deem that useless.

most of the time it is more than sufficient, my example is only when you are taking on like 5+ foes attacking you at a single time, even then, the adept level AoE spells are usually enough. Cost isn't that bad, even with only Nahkriin and Arch-Mages Robes I rarely ran out of magicka, though I was a vampire with necromage, but that is still only like 43% reduction, along with the perks. I also didn't do dual-casting on this character unless it was a master spell. I used a shield and a spell, but really its not all that much different, my shield bash was my impact.

Very much this.

http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3qzmrh/

I don't know, I just never really have that much trouble using destruction magic, sometimes yea, you will have to use the spell below the current highest one you are able to use to you can do more damage per magicka cost being used, and yea sometimes I will run out of magicka before the enemy is killed, but 90 damage, no 180+ damage, is not underpowered when you can cast it as fast as you can swing a sword. and 120+ with an area of effect is great as well.

Destruction seriously NEEDS to be improved.

I don't want to sound like an [censored] here, but, I think you are just not using the mages game mechanics to their full potential. I leveled a Breton Mage from 1 to 81, only used melee weapons when leveling them up and I was using magic to do it. (paralyze bandits then wack away at them till I maxed a weapon) I have 400 health and around 600 magicka. I have never experienced any game content in Skyrim at any level that I could not complete or didn't find too easy as a pure mage, wearing robes only. I can only assume you are not taking the proper perks or are just spraying fire bolts left handed then right handed as fast as possible rather then using them more cost effectively. So i'll give you some pointers on how from my perspective as a level 81 (max level is not 100) pure mage is acutally really boring if you put some thought into how you play it.

Wards, You need magic resistance on you, it eats up damage BEFORE your ward even starts blocking damage. Hence why Breton's are awesome. My steadfast ward will repel an ancient dragons fire for as long as it can throw it at me. 1 HANDED! Cause I took the atronach perk in alteration tree, and got a few more magic resist perks along the way as well, still that racial bonus from bretons is about all you need to see how powerful ward's can be. PSSss heres a secret, most npcs mages have some minor or major resist to magic which also affects their wards.

at level 81. I still use firebolt as my predominant attack spell, why? its cheap. it has no AOE explosion that will hurt quest npcs or followers and with dual cast + impact perks you can stagger anything. Just dual cast and stagger them. wait 1 second til they regain their footing and hit them again. Its called Stun Lock. and it works against everything but Alduin.Yes including Legendary Dragons. just hit them in the face right before they are going to Yol you into ash and you dont even need a ward. Trick Tip. Dont run around holding your firebolts ready to fire ALL the time. You wont regen mana. Click hold - release!, then wait for the best oppertunity to hit them again, so you regen a bit of magicka between firebolts, you got to play smart as a mage, its not like you are an orc berserker.

Lightning spells generally are less cost effective then fire or even ice, I didn't even bother to put perk points into electric damage, fire does the most damage if you include the on fire effect DOT damage it does after you hit them with it. Ice spike is okay, but Ice Storm is one of the best spells in the game for damage and defense in hallways, After its coating the walls and floors it still does damage to them. It also Staggers if you double cast it.

You can go through the whole game like that, but granted it might get tough if you only have 200 hit points. You need to get some serious +70 health enchanted items pronto, or any ebony arrow from a deathlord is going to kill you in one shot. You went all out with the Glass Cannon stereotype and you aren't using the tactics required to back it up is your problem.

level up conjuration and get some dead thralls. Pick powerful mages to ressurect or those mercenaries along the road wearing mostly ebony armor.
learn some alteration and pick up the increased duration of alteration spells and the one where you can cast Paralyze for half cost, against other mages, paralyze will end a fight for good and it works on almost everything except dragons. yes you can paralyze Deathlords and watch your thralls just stomp it to death. Conjured Dremora Lords are good for this because they talk alot of crap while beating up something that is paralyzed, like a couple of ghetto thugs.

The master spells are a waste, honestly, except conjuration. They take far to long to setup and do not output the damage or strategic effects that make them usefull.
If you try casting it while being attacked, they will just hit you and cancel your cast, and now your being hit in the face which as a pure mage should never happen.
Your ability to keep your opponents beyond 2 handed weapon range is key to your survival.

Wall of flames is a good one too, I'll use that on people who are paralyzed, You dont need to hold it and waste magicka, just dual cast it for a second on them and they will keep burning, then sit back, regen some magicka, paralyze them as they try to get up. watch them burn/regen some magicka. Also works on doorways but I think i'd take the range, radius and AOE effect of Ice Storm over wall of flame as an offensive attack spell.

If you can't kill a normal bandit in one hit with any spell, or even a lowest ranking mage npc there is something wrong with your character, 2 perks in ice damage and one ice spike bolt to the lowest level mage npc is an instant kill. I do it all the time cause its fun. You run in, they yell YOU"ll Die Here! and you shoot an ice spike which stabs them in the chest, flings them across a table and into a wall is very satisfying. Why I even got one before they got out of their chair and they died still in their chair with their head jerked backwards and the ice spike sticking straight up out of their face. Terrible Terrible way to go...

There isn't anything wrong with magic in Skyrim, some of it requires some creative thinking to figure out how certain things make other things work really well, and people that haven't for whatever reason put 2 and 2 together, generally find it frustrating and difficult. Its not like the mages in the winterhold college is offering to teach you the secrets of the Skyrims Mage mechanics or something, its something you just need to figure out.

I have left a couple posts about this on time, search them up if you want some pointers on spells and perks, thralls and minions. and no I am not a vampire necromage. I'm a Breton Mage / Werewolf cause sometimes I like to chase down justicar patrols and eat their hearts.

For the later half of most the main storyline I was walking around with Orchander (a bosmer boss mage from a dungeon) and Sild the Warlock (a dbag in a dungeon that tries to torture you to death) as my Dead Thralls, I gave them both a staff of summon frost atronach and then I procceded to walk through dungeons doing nothing but looting. As soon as Anything moved aggressively towards me. those two would simply annihalte everything, then proceed to run into the next room killing everything then the next room in a matter of seconds they were a good 2 rooms a head of me while I was still looting bodies, and admiring the architecture of some of the interior dungeons designs. Nice Job Dungeon Team at Bethesda. I had so much time to stand around and I actually stared at one those engravings on the walls in the ruins near dragon walls, trying to figure out if it was referencing some kind of deadric or aedric god in the etching or if it was a dragon priest. I concluded nothing it just seems like random art work loosely based on egyptian style central worship of smaller figures surrounding a larger one that is set up higher on a pedestal. But the point is, that if you use the full potential of magic, it is both Extremely powerful and often rather boring once you reach the top.

Even that quest to recover some shard. The room has like 10 Deathlords, and 15 lesser draugh in it that come at you in waves. I only had to kill 3 myself.
and my Thralls were just fireballing the entire room left and right and summoning atronachs, one of them actually killed the other thrall at the end of it. which is okay. Cause you can just bring him back. Sometimes its best to just let your Thralls fight it out and let off some anger, because they are being trapped on Nirn by you and forced to fight like dogs as punishment for trying to kill me..

check out this Topic for some good tips.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1412163-advice-for-an-aspiring-mage/

Thanks for your two posts and the one in the other thread. I just started a mage charachter and while I'm sure some will disagree with some of your statements, it really helps clarify things for me and in some case reinforce some observations I've made myself on previous characters regarding the best spells and perks. There's some good advice in there.

I'm kind of torn. I understand the issue surrounding Destruction, but after playing around with mods that do scale it's damage it quickly becomes extremely overpowered, especially in a pure mage build that uses conjuration/illusion. A more agreeable fix I think would be to simply add higher level spells in future dlc, rather than scaling all spells to your skill level.

Wards I think are fine as is. The stagger can be annoying, but I think it's fair. And it is useful for catching the occasional firebolt that might've landed on you. Especially useful against dragons due to the way it regenerates.

Has anyone ever said that Conjuration was too weak?

The underpowered parts of magic in Skyrim, from my point of view, are:
1) Destruction is too weak. Weapon damage makes Destruction look like garbage in comparison, and is less tedious to boot; melee attack don't use up magicka (or require "gamey" enchanting practices), and don't require frequent chugging of pots to do respectable damage.

2) Alteration's protection spells aren't good enough. Armor rating and duration are too low, and magicka cost is too high. If one puts on the mage oriented Dragonpriest Mask that I mentioned earlier in the thread, Alteration's armor spells become downright laughable as the sole source of protection. This means you either wear armor (way less tedious than refreshing the spell and juggling the really intense magicka cost), or get one shotted constantly.

3) Wards aren't good enough for general use, especially at lower levels. Yea yea, they're great against Dragon fire/frost shouts, but they should be more useful as general purpose defensive spells, especially if Alteration's armor increasing magic is going to be so weak.

4) Many spells cost too much magicka.

Every time I see someone defending the current state of magic in Skyrim, it's always on the same grounds:
1) Conjuration is awesome so you're doing it wrong. If you'd rather play a different style that doesn't use Dead Thralls or Dremora Lords, too bad.

2) You should be ultra-gamey like me and use enchants that make your spells free, then you can chain a bunch of dual casts over and over and stunlock everything to death without worrying about dying. In fact that's overpowered, so Destruction needs nerfs rather buffs (never mind the fact that one can [or at least, could, not sure if it was changed?] achieve the same stunlocking effect with Vegetable Soup and Shield Bash). Sure, it'll take you a lot of dual casts to kill some things, and you could achieve the same end in a much shorter time span by sneak attacking + melee/archer + a healing spell after the fight, but hey - the fact that you can stunlock while doing low damage means that Destruction is fine (better be gamey with those enchants though, or you may run out of magicka before they run out of hp).

3) Use Illusion on everything that isn't a Dragon, and one of the previous two "defenses" of Skyrim's magic on things you can't frenzy etc...

One can only hope that IF there is any reason for Bethesda to make a small patch, destruction damage/protection scaling is part of it...

Not gonna happen.

It's a shame then. Could be a nice polish.