Ok I got Conjure Familiar and I like the wolf and think hes cool but he gets killed by one hit no matter what enemy it is. Hes totally useless, he disappears as fast as I can summon him into battle. Wish they'd make him more powerful or boost his health like crazy cause he must have like 1 hit point or something.

Well, he's level 2.

Welcome to wizard school, the land of the forgotten and unwanted apparently.

poor poochie

Get the Flame Atronach. It's not a difficult spell to master and she can dish out damage and take attention off you.

The Frost atronach is the best summon until you get Dremora Lord. It has only melee attacks, so it works as a tank as you can throw spells out at a distance. I haven't gotten the Dremora Lord yet, but I've heard it's a 7 foot tall demon warrior with an enchanted greatsword. My conjuration skill is 80, so I look forward to getting it.

I know there's other cool and powerful ones out there but I was hoping to see my wolfy gnaw on some bandits. They should level along with your character.

The problem is the summons don't level with you and so the wolf quickly ends up being useless but you have to remember that he is just a starter spell for Breton's and all the spells that any race can start with end out being literally entirely useless by level 10 (Flames, Fury, Summon Familiar and Sparks).

Spells should get more powerful as you improve levels/skill. I hate games where your early spells stay super weak and become obsolete. Maybe a balance patch will fix things. Each summon should be good at something (eg atronachs immune to particular element, dremora good for hand to hand, familar can stealth and backstab).

Magic really got the shaft this time around in TES.

Flames and Sparks get better, not sure about Fury, but I think it gets a bit higher to. No idea about Familiar.

I wouldn't say magic was totally bad, but it could have been waaaaaay better.

In what way do they get better? Without perks or enchantments/potions the damage stays the same whether your destruction is level 1 or 100.

Flames, Sparks and Frostbite only get better by perks and before those perks can be chosen (30), you can get the Apprentice perk (25). The damage bonus from going to the Apprentice spells with the 50% reduced magicka cost is better then the extra 25% bonus you can get from all 3 of the other perks put together as a low leveled mage character.

The wolf can be improved by perks too but again just like the novice level destruction spells, you might as well go Apprentice and summon Flame Atrontch(sp) which is far stronger and has long ranged attacks which do more damage then the familiar is capable of.

Illusion spells are level based and using fury on level 6 mobs is a joke, later on illusion spells can all be increased by 10 levels, but you'll likely be higher then level 16 when you get that particular perk and so will need to use higher leveled spells instead. Also fury is unpredictable, it just makes the target attack the closest thing to it, if that's you then it'll just continue to attack you anyway.

My wolf always ran at the first sign of trouble. LOL.

The familiar is probably only worth it for bretons who get it at level 1. Everyone else will likely get it far too late in the game to be useful.

I got the wolf when I was level 3 or 4 and he was useless in the beginning too, not really sure if he would have any value in aiding fighting even if you are level one. Seriously Bethesda he has 1 hit point right?

Flames and sparks become more powerful with certain perks but fury which I have hasn't changed since level one and is now useless for me.

Great... you can make Flames and Sparks 25% more powerful at destruction level 30, and then add another +25% more powerful at destruction level 70. But Firebolt and Lightning Bolt both out put damage quicker then Flames and Sparks and both have a better damage:magicka ratio.

Base spells with no perks:
flames 8:13 = 61%, Firebolt 25:36 = 69%, Incinerate 60:262 = 22% (this is why mages complain destruction is broken, this ratio is DREADFUL!)
with 50% damage bonus and 50% cost reduction...
flames 12:6 = 200%, 37.5:13 = 212% 90:131 = 69% (yeah incinerate has far to great a magicka cost, you pay 3 times the magicka to kill a mob in just under half the time of firebolt, missing the spell WILL hurt)

The only advantage Flames and Sparks have over the apprentice spells is that flames and sparks can hit more then 1 enemy at time, since they're small cone AoE attacks but this means you have to be almost in melee of two enemy which is the place a mage is vulnerable at and should be avoided. Just incase you do not get the figures above, the higher the percentage the better! The apprentice spells effectively have the best straight up Damage to Magicka cost ratio in the entire game.

Flame Atronach is just slightly less useless than the ghost wolf. Sad, isn't it?

The flame atronoch is awesome against mages.In tons of fights where they would put the NPC version of ward up(you know the one that actually blocks things) and I could not get a damn thing through on them even throwing my most powerful spells at them as quick as I could cast the flame atronoch would come in and 2 shot them.

Get the exploding Familiar, more fun.

Really, now. Name an RPG in which anything called a "familiar" hasn't been absolutely worthless. (D&D, I'm looking at you, right now.)

Summon "familiar" should summon a pack of wolves, bears, foxes, sabrecats, mammoths, and deer to assault your enemies. FORCES OF NATURE UNITE!

I wish Summon Familiar levels according to the player's level, from fox to sabrecats

The Damage Spells got way better at level 30 by Perks and Enchantements.
Only 1/6 the cost and X1.5 the damage with X4 the Magicka Pool vs enemys with around (If 2/3 of their ups went into Health) X3 the Health.
I still use them sometimes when there are fast moving enemys like Ice Wraith or Wisps.
Its tedious using them on Master but my guess would be that they are still okay on Adept at level 30.
Lightning Bolt for example is better when it hits, but it is also better then Thunderbolt, so...

Edit: Forgot to add Destruction Dualcasting.

I dont really know about Fury, but shouldnt it affect higher leveled opponents by Dualcasting it ? Wasnt Illusion Dual Casting = more Powerfull ? Iam not sure what it did exactly.
By the time you get the +level Perks it is useless if you didnt went into Illusion heavily.
It simply gets replaced, thats right.

Short answer: NO!

Long answer: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I think you're supposed to use that spell primarily to level your conjuration.