You aren't doing it wrong.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1369350-and-this-is-why-destruction-is-broken/page__fromsearch__1

This thread (second post) explains the ways you can make destruction work. They are workarounds, but it is possible. A scale would be best but until then these have to do.

Thank you, but i won't be using it. ill stick with my warriors and illusion/assassins for now =)
also, one thing i find odd is how the NPC's can pretty much 1 hit my guy with a fire bolt when mine was doing close to zero damage. my current warrior is lvl 44 and i don't stand chance against mages unless im up close.. does the NPC's damage scale? or is the magic resists broken?

The npc magic damage does scale- isnt it utterly effective?

haha, yep i must say.. how the hell could they have missed that.. sometimes i was forced to get help from the console which pretty much ruins it.. can't even inmagine how much ps3/xbox players are suffering..
a fix right about now would be much appreciated

If you time it right and have enough magica you can get a dragon to land and then dual stun it again and again until its dead.

Yeah NPC magic is way OP, dragon priest fireballs pretty much one hit me on master difficulty.

I use potions to increase destruction skills when the enemy is stronger than the average bandit party or draugr.

And then armor enchaments help too. And then you have to know what your enemy is weak against. I only use lightning spells.

I wish that the game didn't force you to use fire/ice spells in certain quests. =/

Personally I would avoid the cost reducing perks and use enchanted gear to reduce the cost of spells. 50% reduction from the perks is just not enough to cast your higher level spells. The master level spells cost around 1400 magicka to cast, so that is still 700 even with the 50% perk, which is more magicka than most people will ever have. The adept and expert level spells are very magicka hungry as well, so to reliabley cast these you need the perk and some decent cost reducing gear. I'd rather save the perks (and put them to better use elsewhere, like enchant) and put on a couple extra pieces of magicka cost reducing gear. The gear and the perk do not stack, so you get more bang for your buck going with the gear. With the four perks you save, you can get the extra effect perk from enchant (although it takes a total of 8 to max the enchant power and get extra effect).

Also, the Aspect of Terror spell from the illusion tree will give you an extra 10 points of fire damage on your flames, firebolt, fireball and incinerate spells. That is another good place to invest perks saved from not investing in destruction cost reducing perks.

EDIT: My incinerate spell does something like 105 points of damage with the two augmented flames perks and the illusion perk. My novice level flames spell does 27 points and remains viable late in the game because the burning effect of the flames stacks, so you can fire a burst of it and then hit them with a few seconds of sustained flames and watch their health bar decline pretty rapidly (or at least you could if your HUD is turned on, mine is perennially off). I usually use the flames spell on ice waiths who tend to be hard to hit with your bolt type spells because they move so fast.

Wait the perk cost reductions do not stack with the equipment cost reductions? That can't be right.

My understanding is that they do stack, but the bonuses are applied seperately, so 50% + 50% = total of 75% reduction, not 100% reducation

That could be right. The perk must add some additional reduction. All I know is that 50% from perk plus 50% from gear does not equal 100%, but 25% from four pieces of gear does equal 100%. So, if your math is right (and it sounds right to me) if you were going for a 75% reduction you could either take the perk and wear two pieces of gear, or you could wear three pieces of gear without the perk.

Since it takes four perks to get to Master (you need novice to open up the rest of the tree), for my money, I'd rather save four perks and wear one additional piece of gear if I were going for a 75% reduction. If you want more than 75% the math weighs even more heavily against taking the perk, since four pieces of gear will give you 100% reduction whether you have the perk or not. At that point the perk becomes superfluous.

The system of destruction magic skill progression is pretty screwy. Your reward for increasing the skill is perks that decrease the cost of higher level spells by half, however this is pretty pointless because at adept and higher spells get more and more inefficient. Mages don't progress properly. Here are some numbers from the wiki:

Lightning Bolt-51 mana-25 dmg
Chain Lightning -156 mana-40 dmg
Thunderbolt-343 mana-60 dmg

Do you see the problem?