I was thinking about making one but I've heard a lot of people talking about how horrible the destruction tree is due to the skill not scaling it's damage like melee. Is it really that bad? Is conjuration good at a higher level? Overall would this type of character be useless? I'm getting a little tired of the 2-H nord and for some reason I think the arrows in the game sometimes go through other characters.

No they aren't bad. Destruction is bad, yes, but mages are not. Illusion and conjuration are quite potent, well mostly conjuration, but the quiet casting perk from illusion is worth so much that I'm pretty sure every mage should have it.

A lot here on the forums is really a very few minority, you can play however you want to play.

This. Destruction is horrible, but the other schools do okay, especially when used together.

Is this a copypasta?

Some people just feel betrayed they can't spam higher and higher DPS Destruction school spells at higher levels.

Mages can still be wicked effective if you just use strategy. Conjuration for body guards, Illusion to turn enemies against each other, THEN using your fireballs. And mages are quite powerful using just Destruction for quite a while anyway.

Stay away from destruction magic, and you should be fine. They seem good at first, but later on after level 40 they start to become bad, cause they don't scale. If your going pure mage try conjuration, get it all way up use conjure bow, summon 2 companions to aid you in battle and your g2g. For other schools I went restoration for healing, and illusion for frenzy/clam spells, but its your go on what you want to level.

Destruction is the only one that has problems. So if you want to play a mage that doesn't use destruction it should work out well enough.

Pure Mage. Don't use destruction. Hopefully they will patch this and if they do then use destruction but until then a pure Mage should focus on this build

Conjuration
Illusion til silent casting
Alteration
Smithing
Enchanting

Apparently you can't rely on or might not be satisfied with destruction ONLY at high levels past 40 and playing on harder levels, it might be OK if playing on adept or lower.
Don't listen to people that say "don't use destruction" , they are overreacting, sure it's weaker at higher levels but not useless as long as you augment it with conjuration or other schools of magic.
On higher levels it's all about strategy and complementing all magic with each other, not relying on only one thing. But to say destruction is to be avoided is just plain dumb.
It is still fun, in that you can conjure some creatures to fight for you and you stand back and blast enemies with destruction, it will still harm them and the damage combo of what the summons do in damage along with your own destruction makes up for it and it's potent.
All alone destruction might not be enough, BUT on low levels of difficulty it MIGHT be OK all by itself.

Otherwise playing a pure mage that also dabble in conjuration and use enchantments to help out with magicka cost reduction and it should be fine.
Also if it is ever too hard or you feel not enough damage, just lower the difficulty settings,

Most of the complainers about magic, play on the hardest setting, they seem not to use their head and lower the settings to compensate for destruction not scaling well.

Also if you play on PC you can always mod the magic to make it more powerful, even though the mod-kit isn't out yet there are already at least two mods that make magic much more powerful.

Also you can play with heavy armor to have more survivability to become some kind of caster-battlemage.

Destruction on its own blows, especially in early levels. Destruction becomes much better at higher levels once you have leveld up enchanting aswell. The the magicka cost of spells by then does not become an issue.

Conjuration is very powerfull try it.

If you use enchanting and reduce your destruction spells mana cost (preferably NOT to 0, as it would become mindless spamming then) you could probably have quite some fun with destruction and its quite viable on adept difficulty at least.

I playing pure mage on master difficulty - and im using conjuration and 1 follower for tanking.

When im getting out of mana in combat, i use dual wield 1 handed.

Its gone be pure mage + 1 handed.

Not really.
You just summon two of your almighty dremora lords and watch them as they annihilate your enemies.