Fury and muffle. My main character is primarily a melee fighter, so these spells are good support abilities.

It's not just you. As a destruction mage, your choices are (1) rely primarily on other schools of magic (illusion and/or conjuration) and only use destruction as a supplement; (2) spam potions; (3) spam low level spells and rely on impact stun lock to slowly whittle them down or (4) create a free cast (or very low cost cast) enchant suit.

Fireball (seems to be a popular choice ) & dead Thrall.

Nothing beats making bandits explode with a pair of zombie werewolves in tow.

Any of the fury and frenzy spells. Then probably the healing spells.

For ky destruction I have a seventy five percent reduction and I am fully perked to master and that allows me to use destruction better without the hundred percent reduction I tried that and it felt not suited to my character. I just wish we had spell creation.

I've only started playing my first ever pure mage, and for now my heart (and Magicka) goes to Lightning Bolt and Lightning Rune. I'm an offensive type of mage, so I use Destruction a lot. I also have a thing for Shock spells.

I'm more of a Crusader, but I have two favorite spells as well. The first is Close Wounds which is a powerful, yet lowcost healing. The second is Firebolt and is basicly an effective ranged stun effect when dual charged with Impact.

Fireball and Lightning Bolt

Conjure Dremora Lord , two handed Lighting bolt, decintigration! Toys

Illusion as a school is hilariously useful. I use Muffle a lot, which saved me from having to invest perks into Sneak outside of the Assassination branch, Invisible obviously, but my Nightblade doesn't have expert skill yet (I don't powergrind skills), Frenzy and Fear Spells can't be underestimated, fear in particular is great from crowd control, especially up north when 3-5 Snow Bears can rush you, and Close wounds/Heal Other.

For my Witchhunter, Paralysis is the Go-to spell, with Grand Healing and Greater Ward coming in right behind it. Sadly I haven't found a tome of Paralysis on my Nightblade, I and I refuse to join the college of winterhold, Usually the mages can be found outside the college grounds, but not the Alteration master, who is locked in the Hall of Elements for the first quest in the College of Winterhold quests.

As sad as the loss of Spellmaking is, I can't help but feel it is justified. In previous Elder Scrolls games, I had great fun making RP or purpose-build spells, but when it came to actually playing a mage, it was much less fun, indeed, I found it actually quite boring. Now I find myself using magic and enjoying its use and behavior in-game.

Dead Thrall and the highest fury illusion spell.

Muffle and Stoneflesh. I cast those 100% upon entering a dungeon.

Dead Thrall, Storm Thrall

My favorite to cast and watch are Circle of Protection and Conjure Flame Atronach. Most used are probably candlelight and detect life.

Yep. It's an even larger Spike that does more damage, and costs more magicka. I've taken Ice Spike out of my favorites menu.

Fireball is pretty fun, though I honestly don't use it a whole lot.

I just got dead thrall last night, but haven't tried it yet. I suspect it will quickly become a favorite.

Restoration and Illusion. But Alteration and Conjuration are a close third and fourth.

Conjure storm/frost atronach plus bound sword for up close combat. If I'm in a really good mood i use mass mayham (the one that makes multiple people run in fear) with bound bow using the 3rd slow time shout to create really awesome cinematic kills. Gives it a Matrix effect when i'm picking them off as they run in fear (use a true shot potion for quick kills). This is as close as one can come to getting a killcam sequence for range/mage attacks and damnit if it doesn't shimmy my jimmies when I take down an entire camp of bandits then nothing will.

Brb, just made myself want to do it.

Fireball, fireball andddddddd fireball. Sometimes I spruce it up a bit with a little Ice Storm.

The 3 master destruction spells all pwn though.. especially when you're megaOP with gear reducing the spell costs to 0.

Blizzard always seems to make my game a little laggy though...
...but that's probably because I cast it indoors a lot so there's a bunch of sh*t flying around (on Xbox).

Storm Thrall and Hysteria

if i choose by the use of the spell, it's definetely heal(no matter how strong) and candlelight(yes, i use the "realistic lighting" mod. damn dark draugr dungeons)

Frenzy & Dead Thrall ( All raise dead spells )

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/imageshare/image.php?id=33440.

Fury + chicken = hilarity.

I also rather like Telekinesis. It's fun throwing cabbage at people's heads.

It's an expert lvl spell. Just an FYI.

And my 2 faves are Lighting Storm and Wall of Flames/Frost/Storms. I've really enjoyed these