I'm sure many have thought of this, but for those who haven't, I think this build is pretty funny.

• Increase destruction skill but perk heavy armor and smithing instead.
  
• Put everything into HP during level up.
  
• When at 100 Destruction, start using the best 2 Destruction Staves available (charge cost per shot based on your destruction skill).
  
• Now magicka and magicka regen don't matter, they are essentially replaced with the enchant reserves on the staves.
  
• Put on full heavy armor and start shooting. Now you are a big, fat, beefy pew-pew machine.

Of course, you'll need azura's star and a weapon that soultraps in your inventory to keep the staves full of charge, but it's still funny that you can have maximum hp and armor without much penalty to your firepower, having no need for stamina, no need for magicka and you can't be silenced. Plus you save a bunch of perks... actually don't even know what you would use other than enchant, smithing and heavy armor.

So anyway, the "funny thing" is that a staff seems to work best on a tank with very little magicka.

You could do that for every school of magic, yea it's OP but it takes away the joy of roleplaying. Anyway you could just level in wizard robes untill 100 magicka since it provides mana regen.

This. I'm not playing this like I would play WoW. I don't need to be 1337. I enjoy the experience and immersion that is TES. I know not everyone plays this for that reason. For those that want to be OP, this would seem to be a way to do that.

Haha, if you look at my sig you'll see that this isn't really my style of play (Im focusing on illusion + pickpocket, so basically Im useless against dragons)

The only reason I would do this would be to RP a humorous character, probably a really fat orc shaman.

Sounds doable, based on the info we know. But in order to meet all the prerequisites you list, the game would have progressed significantly by this point, any viable path will be well on its way to being godlike anyways.

Seeing as staves only take up one hand does this mean its possible to duel wield them?

You can increase a skill via skill teachers or you have to use the skills.

In order to increase your destruction skills, either you have pay a lot for 85 destruction lessons, or you would have to cast weak *unperked* destruction spells at enemies, and get beaten while doing that.

Not for me.

Can't combine staff casting and you'll have to carry around an awful lot of staves. This is like saying that healing magic is useless because you can just carry around a bunch of potions.

The only prereq is maxing out destruction. The other skills are a plus but non-essential, you would probably be ready by level 12 (or earlier if you grind). Although I guess getting Azura's star and a soultrap weapon might take some time in Skyrim? The build would probably be more efficient with only one staff and a soultrap weapon in the offhand, but that wouldn't be as funny.

@Greg: You mean you would have to carry around back-up soul gems, not back-up staves. And with Azura star, that is one gem. (Although I am assuming staves last a while at max skill in the respective school. If they only shoot 20 times then this would be a pain. Either way though, the staff works better for the tank imo.) And I am not saying magic is useless or that this makes magic casters obsolete, just that the tank get much more out of the staff than the mage would.

I already posted tank build that uses staves a few days ago, but I put perks into it since I thought it was needed. Frost staff is godsend for a warrior when you have mages and archers kiting you. I still don't know if having master destruction reduces cost of spells cast by master stave, but we shall see.

Haha, sounds so funny that staves are a godsend for warriors, you would think it should work that way for mages. But yeah, I figured people would have talked about this already, I just find it humorous. I sort of wish staves used magicka somehow rather than enchant reserves but oh well. I guess if the magic school perks do influence the staves then it would be a different story, good point. Although staves would still be better suited for the armorclad, low magicka battle-mage imo.

If the argonian racial ability is proportional to max hp, I might try an argonian tank with dual staves, assuming I can get an argonian to look silly enough to fit the part...

Do you know how many shots you get approx out of a frost staff?

I'm sure its viable, but it doesn't replace or over-power a full mage who simply has way more utility and ease of use. Just a different playstyle.

Problems/Drawbacks

->I highly doubt you'll find a stave of every spell. Runes, spray, pbAOE, etc. Very limited action.
->You won't get the mega awesome benefits of destruction perks. (50% more damage, stagger, duel casting for more "powerful" effects)
->Tedious upkeep. Better keep that soultrap spell and a ton of gems handy.

You know what else is funny about staves?? they dont go on your back anymore un sheathed :/ they just disapear

You might want to consider enchanting too.

Right arm fire/ice stave, left arm soul trap spell, fully upgraded heavy dragon bone armor, enchanted with maximum magic resist.

Of course, meeting a magic resistant boss would be bad. Where normal mages can just quaff magicka potions, you are burning filled soul gems like crazy. The saving point is you can just bring out that legendry greatsword you have on your person just for him, if you didn't leave it at home to make space for loot.

You don't have to worry about recharging with the Soul Squeezer and Soul Siphon perks.