Use all your schools people! Destruction and restro are great, but alteration and illusion combined with conjuration are what will define mages in the higher levels. And please stop this "Oh, if you're playing on novice" and "You must not be playing on master!". Your damn right, some of us play on Adept or anywhere in between. Respect the middle people.

I found a hood that gives me 100% increase in mana regeneration, a robe that gives +50 base mana and +100% regeneration and I still find that I constantly run out of mana which seems like a major flaw to me, although I am hoping that if I find the right gloves and boots it will improve.

I really don’t think it’s that bad, although I do agree about melee users always having a way to attack.

I started off going for a melee character, but then ended up being a mage in armour that switches to a 2H if his mana runs out. After a while I changed to robes due to the bonuses you get that are pretty nice and finally I got rid of all my weapons.

I found a hood that gives me 100% increase in mana regeneration, a robe that gives +50 base mana and +100% regeneration and I still find that I constantly run out of mana which seems like a major flaw to me, although I am hoping that if I find the right gloves and boots it will improve.

My final strategy is to first summon a monster to help, than give myself an armour boost after which I fire a fire ball at the biggest target and finally summon a bow that I use while my mana recharges. If I’m feeling brave I will summon two swords and just charge in.

The biggest downside is that after investing 5 times into health, I still end up getting killed in two hits although most are no match for my bound weapons and spells.

ITT: Wizards thinking Destruction is the only school of magic

You're a Pure Mage. Use everything you have.

It adds challenge. If you don't like challenge, play tgm. Also if you are a "pure Mage", you shouldn't run out of magicka. I barely ever run out of magicka, and I'm an archer.

Let me preface with the fact that thus far I love the game overall, am a PC elitist, I've only had 1 crash in a full day of playing 2 characters, dislike greatly some of the interface changes (and no hotkeys for the pc, at least that I can find, so I hate the "Favorites" system). Some of the story lines and huge lore changes I disagree with/vehemently don't like, some I love, but that's for another thread.

A pure mage is not a viable character in Skyrim.

The magic system in Skyrim is abysmal. Unlike melee, where even with no stamina and no ability to do power moves, you can still swing your weapon. With no magicka, you can't do anything as a mage except run.
The spell costs are not even high, they are stupendously stupidly high.
Beyond the fact that cloth has no armor value and enchanting stinks as bad as it did in Oblivion (yeah, the ability to put one buff on a piece of armor..yay), which makes pure mages take a horrible beating compared to a character even in light armor. A mage will be out of magicka right after the fight starts, and carrying around 200 magicka potions is not a viable means of trying to go on as a mage character.

Finally, removing spellcrafting from the game just adds insult to injury to those of us who wanted to play a mage, Bethesda. You could have made a vastly improved spellcrafting system (even though the one in Oblivion was pretty good as it was, especially after adding the Supreme Magicka mod) but instead, you pretty much guaranteed no one will be able to play a mage in Skyrim, and if they even decided to suffer through some how (god mode for the win I guess) why bother when, without spellcrafting, the magic system is boring by default.

Oh yeah, on top of all that, thanks for putting in all the little stories about npc mages researching this spell or creating that spell. Seems the npcs can do it, but the players can't.

Can't wait til mods start rolling out to change all this mage abuse. However, it would be a helluva lot better Bethesda, if you put out a patch to add spellcrafting and reduce the grossly high magicka costs of simple spells, let alone the higher end spells. Evidently some "savant" at Bethesda thought a mage could actually kill 5 bad guys when only able to cast enough spells that can actually kill ONE bad guy. Better yet, I want someone at Bethesda to make a mage, use only the spells in the game, and just try to kill a giant and his pet mammoth on your own. Let me know how that works out for ya...

By the way, to reiterate, I'm talking about "pure" mages here, not battlemages.

To end, no I'm not nerd raging, no I'm not frothing at the mouth (any more than normal) no I'm not even shrieking a little bit. This was my discovery of creating a mage and trying to play him, and subsequently deleting his worthless carcass.

Aye, I'm quite a bit underwhelmed. Simple matter of fact being, my spells are doing far less damage to monsters than a companion with a sword.

Actually what SKyrim has forced me to do is actually untilize all my spells.

I almost never used calm, frenzy, or rally spells. Sheild spells alwayts felt arbitrary in Oblivion, (they were useful in Morrowind though), but now I'm really hacing to think of all spells.

Calm is actually extremely useful for getting out of hairy situations. the ward spells are quite useful as well if you act quick enough to put it up. Summons are also your best friend.

like others have said you have to use all schools of magic.

the outrageously high cost for spells is countering the fact that you can cast all of them at lvl 1. There's a reason why those perks exist that reduce the cost of spells as you get powerful.

you do have to be clever. Also alchemy is your best friend as potions that increase speech/other schools of magic or utility skills are very useful.