Destruction needs to scale with you or something.
The destruction school and the entire magicka system is one dimensional we have few options as mages. Spell creation would bring back our options and power. We would then have the freedom to make our mages as powerful as we allow them to be. Then we could mix effects that suit our characters roleplaying persona's.
It should be up to us how powerful or weak our characters are, however with the current magic system we are limited as spell users. With destruction taking the biggest hit.
I agree with this, and it's what's been keeping me from playing Mages. I play Mystic Archers instead, since I can buff my bow damage to ridiculous levels even without the Enchanting+Alchemy loop trick.
With it, I have a Legendary Daedric Bow that does 562 damage outside of sneak, thanks to armor enchantments and over-smithing, and that's before quaffing a Fortify Archery potion.
Leaving the 'exploit' portion aside, the bow would still do a lot more damage than a Thunderbolt, and I don't have to expend Stamina to do it. That's
without the sneak-attack modifier;
with it things only get worse, since even with the Quiet Casting perk Magic attacks don't qualify for that multiplier.