Let me start off by saying when I bought Dark Souls I could not stop obsessing over the viability of my character build. Over the course of two weeks I ended up starting over from scratch too many times to count. Two days ago I picked up Skyrim and it was a breath of fresh air. Years after beating Oblivion I could finally jump back into the sandbox. I rolled a spell caster but as I played I felt that magic was underpowered. Despite having rolled a mage and with the game set on master difficulty I continued playing unfazed.

"Isn't that hypocritical of you?" you might have asked. "Why devote so much time to an underpowered character?"

Well, because unlike Dark Souls, Skyrim is not a game about numbers. I would rather be struggling as my mage than using a warrior build that one-shots dragons with a stare. Its partly because I like the challenge of planning out and executing strategies instead of wading in guns blazing. Its mostly because Skyrim is a role playing game and god dammit, I have a specific character in mind.

My point is, don't spend so much time worrying about whether or not your class is underpowered. Skyrim is a sandbox, go [censored] play in it.

Were playing it, but its currently an unbalanced sandbox. Every build must be viable or else its not really a sandbox; you cant play as you like without feeling punished for your preferences.

Mages arent bad in all respecs mind you. Only high level destruction is utter [censored]e. The other schools are fine-ish. Once they review high end destruction spells and destruction perks everything will be fine.