Well you can just wear armor and have 80% physical damage mitigation up all the time.
...at no cost to spell-casting. I don't mind if Heavy Armour allows 100% spell effectiveness, but at the very least robes should allow more, like 150% or even 200%, as well as higher Enchanting thresholds. At the moment the best way to play a mage is to 1) wear Heavy Armour, and 2) invest no points in magicka or perks in spell cost reduction, because you can just Enchant your spell cost down to 0.
So mages should wear Heavy Armour and don't need magicka... and people still claim the magic skills aren't broken? :facepalm: