You have a Mage that uses spells from all the magic schools and if magicka is empty you could dual wield two staves that shoots fireball or whatever, right.
And you can drink some potions to increase the power of your spells with such as Fortify Destruction potion, etc or just drink some other points to get your magicka back.

Then you have the Archer.
Your primary focus is wielding the bow and dealing quick damage from the shadows.
You can use a lot on time creating poisons or potions that give you Invisibility that may be useful.
And these type of potions are quite handy for a Archer so you can imagine they are not unlimited so you will be spending sometime keeping the supply up.

Now which type of play style among a pure Mage and a pure Archer do you feel is most rich?
Which type of play style bring more to the table than just banging with a sword, repeatable without doing anything else. Right.

Second question..
What within the pure Mage perk table could you avoid taking to make the game more challenging for you or is it challenging enough?
What within the pure Archer perk table could you avoid taking to make the game more challenging for you or is it challenging enough?

We're playing on normal difficulty.

My vote is pure mage. A mage is infinitely more versatile being able to summon weapons and creatures, cast illusions, go invis, quiet spells, destruction, restoration, so on and so on. A pure mage will always bring more to the table as far as different ways to approach combat. For a mage, you can avoid taking impact, but I'd never want to do that, personally.

Destruction is pathetic in vanilla. If you can play with mods, take Empowered Magic or something else that makes Destrution scale in damage, otherwhise it is not worth the effort on anything higher than adept.

Illusion will make you incredibly overpowered against everyting but dragon. Avoid it. Especially a combo of Frenzy all + Fear the lonesurvivor and kill him. Takes EVERY challenge out off the game.

Conjuration is nearly as bad.

Summary:

Magic in Skyrim is either totally pathetic (Destruction) or overpowered to the point in turning you away from the game (that means, as long as you are not one of the next gen kids that LIKE to be overpowered).

And that leads us to the following conclusion:

If you want a fair and reasonable challenge, play Archer WITHOUT (!!!) Sneak.

He's playing on normal (Adept) difficulty. Destruction magic is perfectly fine on that difficulty level. It's only when you get above Adept where no damage scaling becomes a real forefront issue.

Destruction is perfectly fine. I use it on master with no complaints. And the only thing wrong with conjuration is less variety. No consequence to me since in previous games I never used more than 3 different summons.

Archery is the only part of TES' combat that's decent IMO. Offensive magic is incredibly lackluster orb lobbing. Defensive/utility/healing magic is what it is, it's ideal to take some on any character. Conjuration can trivialize everything, but it was somewhat entertaining watching dremora lords hack things up and listening to their badass voiced lines.

Archer for me. A fully perked archer is a killing machine. Add sneak and other support skills,nothing else stands a chance really.

I guess I could start a ten paged discussion here wether or not destruction is viable on its OWN as damage skill compared to onehand/Twohand, but I guess I′ll spare it simply for the fact that the OP plays at adept where really everything is viable.To poster above: No, you dont combine Archery with Sneak. It makes the game too easy.

Quoted for truth. Sneak archery = snooze fest.

I've used destruction on its own before as well...

Yeah, have your last word here. I won′t discuss this topic here.

I'm not trying to have the last word, I'm just saying it IS viable, but you are right this is not the place.

mage would be more versatile and rich, but i always choose archer because destruction.

IF you play on PC and chose to play archer, make sure to edit your .ini files for faster travel speed of arrows and erazing the auto aiming function. Also, a mod that highers the base damage of bows and arrows would be good.

I almost always play Archer and I only use sneak for the first shot. Then I also always play with low tier weapons and armor. My favorite imperial light amor and the Imperial bow is often used other than that I need many perks in the Archery skill tree and light armor to get by.

I've played both (though to be fair, my archer isn't "pure," as he isn't afraid to mix it up with a sword and board), and all I can say is they're roughly equal so far. My mage is staying away from Illusion and Conjuration right now, mainly because I, as a player, don't like "pets" or other abilities that put a layer between me and the fighting.

Both feel very tactical - lining up shots, using suppression fire to keep my follower safe, using the environment to block LOS when necessary, etc. I get the sense, however, that my mage has become less reliant on a follower than my archer once her Magicka and M. Regen were built up. With the Impact perk in the Destruction tree, she can keep just about anything at bay if she has enough space to kite (or if she can find a narrow place to defend in dungeons). Impact also makes her much more effective against dragons and Thu'um-wielding draugr.

To make the game more challenging, honestly, I'd raise difficulty to Expert once you're comfortable with Adept. I upped difficulty for both when I realized they could easily one-shot almost everything on the default level. Other than that, I can't speak much to the Mage perks, but beware the Sneak perks. I put one point in the root node just to open it up, worked up to Deadly Aim, then left it alone. Some may say that's OP; however, my archer will open from stealth, but will stand and shoot/fight once detected (for mobility, plus playstyle / RP choice).

The other Sneak perks seem designed to take the fun out of sneaking... Maxing out the root node will make you well nigh undetectable, for instance, even in the middle of melee. Also, I'd love to get Silent Roll for my archer, but that means taking Light Foot, which I've actually found to be really annoying on my Thief.

Archery without the use of Sneak is totally where it's at. Charging in, shooting &%$￡ up.

I see a lot of these replies focus on what is dealing most damage, kinda.

But that wasn't really my question, is what more about what type of "class" has most to do? Most to do on the side when not dealing damage and killing.
Which "class" will make you go out collecting herbs or whatever it may be?

Oh, well with a Destruction focused Mage I guess you'll want to go out with the intention of soul trapping in order to raise up Enchanting, collecting and gathering magical artifacts and scrolls, spell tomes and staves, there's certainly a good reason to look out and pick up Alchemy ingredients too so you can craft Fortify Destruction potions. Seems to me like there's more on the side for a Mage than for an Archer.

However you could create an Archer that uses Conjuration for the Bound Bow, Illusion to aid in sneaking and overall assassination capability, then along with that you could mix in Destruction for Cloaks and Runes to help keep enemies at a Distance, Alteration for Detect Life and Detect Dead as well as Paralyse to hunt with, Pickpocket, Lockpick or just pretty much anything either a Mage or an Archer would do, and that way you could basically do everything there is to be done since you have the best of both worlds. That seems highly versatile and there's plenty of options to choose from.

Mix them, Bound bow = Beastly.

I'm thinking of combining archery and destruction because of runes. No unbalancing of archery but will use sneak attacks. Drop a rune like a type of trap to help when I can't take down an npc before it can get to me. Low tier bows and armor like bow of the hunt, fur, forsworn and stormcloak armor. Won't use daggers unless its for last resort.

Aye it is.

Much more fun without. But still deadly. If i do dabble in sneak i never chose anything on the right side of the tree. X3 sneak attack with a bow is too much. It's an exellent skill all by itself.

Yes. I'm running an arcane archer that only fights with bound bow. He's also a sneak thief/assassin, which makes it more interesting because I have to either sneak past, or conjure the bow before hand. Doing so in enemy range is a bad idea.

For me, neither. My archer just buys healing and stamina potions; my mage, healing and magicka potions. They'll pick up ingredients and materials as they find them, but I don't bother much with crafting because 1) I don't particularly enjoy it, and 2) I haven't needed it so far. (The only exception is that my mage "needs" more soul gems for some radiant quests, but you get those from looting, vendors, or soul trapping, so it's not really something to do so much as something that happens.)

It's really a subjective question - alchemy, smithing, enchanting, and other non-combat activities can benefit any class or playstyle more or less equally, IMO, so asking whether mages or archers have more gathering or non-combat stuff to do isn't something I could really answer.

Definitely pure mage, i mean, there are spells for everything. Well, you could use alchemy, but you can cover almost every effect with magic.
What i'm sure about though it that the most versatile build possible is smithing-enchanting-alchemy