Now that you mention it yea they did.

The Necromantic healing spells are pointless seeing how you have one real undead follower who's essential anyway.

The Dawnguard spells are cool looking but gimped. Kind of amusing actually it's like they said hey lets make an undead vampire / vampire hunter DLC we can add cool undead destruction spells. And then they realized oh wait that will make the standard player cut through the hordes of draugr that we over saturated the game with.

Look at Auriel's bow, sunlight damage tripled against undead. And who exactly is that going to be useful against the vampires that attack mostly at night or the hordes of draugr inside the dark crypts.

Just keep balancing things like an MMO, gimp everything to make sure everything else is fun.

Oh and don't get me started on the robes. It's weird with this DLC they seem to have realized that the players wanted more customization hence the multi-colored light dawnguard and vampire armor. But then they utterly forgot about all the cloth / mage armor players, lets not add any color variation to those. Not to mention the vampire hood and gloves I wish I had but I can't because oh they only drop on an NPC that spawns for a dawnguard mission and silly me joined the vampires.

Also something that makes me irate.

Some pretty good mage stuff if you do the Aetherium quest.

You can get them from containers in Castle Volkihar too. I know I have.

there are mysterious stranger style vamp assassins that wander into towns with the express goal of killing you. They typicaly wear unenchanted black hooded mage robes and either the light armor vampire gloves and boots or the black cloth versions of the same. Wonderful for those of us wanting to go back to our old school Black Mage roots.

You can buy unenchanted College Robes at Radiant Raiment in the vanilla game.

Lets also not forgot that in skyrim the cast costs do not decrease nearly as dramatically as they did in oblivion, and as to what you said about spell making, it doesnt matter if ti was well thought out or not, they gave spell swords better enchanting, they gave warriors smithing to make them uber powerful, they gave thieves and assassins better alchemy to make them uber powerful, and completely screwed the mages by taking out spell making, they should have worked on it to make it better than flat out scrapping it. Let's also not forget the INSANE butchering of the variety of spells too, i dont care what anyone says, lockpicking spells should be there for a mage, period, mages should have the spells, warriors should be able to smash locks, and thieves can lockpick. And continuing, we lost spells to increase our resistance to magicka, thats ridiculous, we lost absorption spells, we lost carry weight spells, and for mages that used to like to enhance themselves with alchemy, thats no longer an option ,because lal the potions weight half a pound, even if the ingredients only weigh .2 when combined , which again would be no problem if fortify carry weight spells would still be there. The magic in system is an abomination compared to oblivion no matter which way you turn it. OH YEAH, and i cant block with my staff anymore, thats a little lame.

Is it just this forum where folks seem to commit more time to finding new ways in which they've been oppressed, hurt or marginalised by a game, rather than actually playing it? Or is it a culture-wide thing?

My general only complaint about skyrim n general is the major shafting of mages. All the other classes got perfected in skyrim. That and the tiny quest lines, but mostly the ladder.

In the soul cairn. Shoot the spell at the balls of light set in stone pillars near crypts with bars that prevent you from entering.

You realize this is only the first DLC right? Rumor has it next one will be more about mages.

here is hoping, wishing, and praying to julianos that it is.

What I would love to see, once the technology becomes more readily available, is a Mage: The Ascension-type magic system.. you have the same "spheres" of use (ie-illusion, destruction, etc.) but you can mix and create spells that have varied effects based on the combinations. Prior to Skyrim there was a limited format for this, but a comprehensive system to give players complete control would be so sweet that I would be amazed if this will come to fruition.

I agree to a certain extent, sun fire only working on vampires and it doesn't even do that much damage is a bit dissappointing it should do alot more damage since it's a specialized spell personally. When you can use a fire spell that is much more powerful.

On the other hand though, things dawnguard has given my wizard is a cool zombieish look with glowing eyes, not being attacked on sight at level 4 vampirism anymore, stat boosts from the necromage perk, illusion spells working on higher level creatures. Also I don't have to worry about bringing a stupid horse all over the place, now I just summon Arvak when I need a ride and he looks awesome for a necromancer type character.

Ok, so I played Dawnguard for a bit, and I haven't found any cloth armor, only light armor (I joined the vampires).

Also the healing spells are't that great..for me at least.

I am only level 16 and not being able to level while in VL form is not that great .

Minor correction. Magicka Absorbtion is now a passive trait. You can have up to an 80% rate with no need to enchant gear or casting required. This can go as high as 130% with the dragon skin racial ability. Also Wards will absorb the magicka of the spells hitting them once you take the Ward Absorb perk. The options are there, if not in spell form.
Yes mages got a collective kick in the balls.. as did every one who was a fan of athletics, unarmored, unarmed, spears, hand to hand ect over the last two games. The feelings you're having about skyrim I had when going from Morrowind to Oblivion wich effectively nuetered and gutted the system i'd come to know and love. Thus i was disapointed about manythings but not suprised. The game play itself is still amazingly addictive.

You can find a neat summoning staff from a sidequest (involving finding a forge)

The sun damage applies all the time. It doesn't matter if you're inside or out, if it rains, snows, night, fog, etc.

You might be confusing with Sunhallowed Elven Arrows which if are shot at the sun WITH Auriel's Bow will create light strikes or whatever it's called to ennemies nearby - any sort of ennemies. Not just undead.

Or the crown which is more of mage type artifact, although I guess a warrior can wear it but will lose armor bonuses and such.

Wards are great and all, but when they run out, thats it. There is also no magic reflection, no other class got shafted as hard as the mage at all. None.