Well, heres the skinny folks. I just got done playing my 3rd character on expert. I now uninstalled all spell mastery mods, Tytanis, etc so that I can do a Vanilla Skyrim master play through. Now I know alot of you are gonna be like, "master is a cake walk", but to alot of people, it is not. I do consider myself decent at games, but I am still on the fence with this master vanilla play through.

I also am worried about my build. Now I know skyrim is a "play who you want to play as " game, but I don't want to invest time to get pwnd alot. lol Here is my character, please give me advice if you can. His name is Brutus Haxim. He is a burly Breton (25% magic resist) who is going to specialize in Shields, conjured weapons and conjured helpers. In heavy armor. I am debating on whether to exploit smithing and enchanting, or just look for really good conjuration gear at smithys'. I actually just beat my first dragon on master. I know is may not be an accomplishment to some but it was exhilarating for me.

I guess if you guys could help out with some ideas. i am thinking of doing MQ until I get a special shout to help me out with ranged issues. Or should I use bound bows? The questions are driving me mad. I have a case of lvl 35+ restartitis. I want to hit 50 with this char though, so i am super worried about my build.

Thanks ahead of time for any help folks!!!

P.S. Also, are illusion spells really pointless at high levels?? I want to use frenzy and master spells after lvl 50 but i am reading it is pointless. Ok all done. no more questions.... for now!!!!

The reason you get people saying "master is two EZ lols!" and "master is impossible" usually is coming down to a playstyle.

Stealth builds in Skyrim can cakewalk through master. (Steel daggers can one-shot ancient dragons for example)

On to your questions:
Bound bows- will do perfectly fine for a ranged equivalent, they are pretty powerful even without mystic binding (unlike the bound swords.)
Illusion spells are NOT pointless at high levels, but in order for them to function- you need all the level affecting perks. If you don't have the perks, then they will be useless.
Since you are not doing a stealth build- you probably will want to use smithing and enchanting to help on master.

Here's some: Don't play on Master

Yeah that's helpful.

I'm playing a Female High Elf Destruction Mage on Master. I have played her to level 45 and I'm still working on the main quest, the Empire and the Blade story. I can say, that as a PURE mage, no weapons (aside from daggers or staves), shields, armor of any type, Master level can be very challenging.

I haven't used Illusion or high level Conjuration, but I hear it is much more fun to play as Destruction does NOT scale well at all and you will find yourself wondering why a high level mage doesn't do high level damage. Most of the higher level destruction spells consume way too much Magicka compared to the amount of damage they dish out. I supplemented her to do the conjuration track, which is only at 65 I believe, and she still uses a Frost Atronach that's getting his a** whooped by Bandit Leaders. So, as far as destruction, I'm a little miffed.

I am already getting very fed up with using her and will probably finish all her quests, complete the game quickly and then opt for a Illusion/Conjuration mage. Methinks I'll probably do a Ranger/Thief combo first to wash the bad taste of destruction out of my mouth though.

Sneak, archery and conjuration make a powerful combination even on master settings. I use light armor which works well enough since I avoid getting hit in the first place.

As already mentioned; Stealth and illusion work really well on higher difficulties.

If you're into destruction magic stay away from Master, it takes too long to kill anything. Swords/shields and such should be fine. But I'm not entirely sure about the scaling of bound weapons. At 40-50 I think you'll really notice becoming weaker and weaker because you can't really upgrade it.

And yes, fighting dragons on Master is 10 times more fun when they're actually able to kill you, if not one-shot you.

Another thing about master btw; your companion also scales with the settings (2x health) so as your damage is deminished they become stronger, relatively speaking. I think it also applies to conjurations.