Ice storm is an adept level destruction spell.

There's a difference between intelligence and obligation.

Here's the thing people don't get: a mage does not have the luxury of choice. You need cost reduction like an addict needs his fix, since Bethesda's set things up in such a way that the vast majority of spells actually become less efficient with regard to damage: magicka ratio. Firebolt and Incinerate are functionally the same spell, with the exception that Incinerate does 2.4x more damage for 7.5x the cost.

A smart mage ends up being forced to use lower level spells anyway, because the higher level spells are so ridiculously cost-inefficient that you need ridiculous amounts of cost reduction if you want to do more than cast the same spell twice. That's like stronger weapons consuming progressively larger amounts of stamina per normal swing, with Daedric gear only allowing you to swing 3 times unless you've poured everything into stamina and neglected everything else.

Had Bethesda introduced better damage:cost scaling, there wouldn't be much of an issue, but the exorbitant costs make me wonder if they even tested their own game.

So how's about chain lightning and those mages?

Oh wait.

Oh I totally understand what you're saying. All Im saying is that every mage should want to do whatever he/she can do to have the most powerful spells with the least amount of magika used. Thats why on all my mages I always get my destruction reduction to 100% on my enchnted items, so I can cast firestorm or whatever for 0 magika cost, while still havign a boatload of magika to use on other things.

You said it yourself, a shield. You'll be taking little damage though.

I didn't think regular shields offered any protection against dragon breath attacks. Well I guess you learn something new everyday. I had no idea since I dont use shields.

Who in Bethesda thought it was a good idea to let gear make an entire line of perks utterly useless, and to make the mage's resource system utterly redundant?

Ah, Bethesda. You claim that magic is too spreadsheety and that spellmaking took magic out of magic, and then you put in this nonsense.

LOL. I guess it's like if it's there, who wouldn't use it?

they're at least useful earlier in game, and are useful for the schools you don't reduce to 0% i guess