Fully daedric armour(1000 def 300 hp 750mana)/100 heavy skill+conjur destruct+illusion all perks=a god incarnate @_@-i left my hp as is just cheated and got 100 reduction on illusion destruct conjur/alteration just to be a [censored]-its hilarious stun locking groups with chain lighting

good point.. I use enchanting, I don't exploit the restoration potion glitch or the dual equpping in jail glitch. I have been known to wear a falmer helmet and circlet however to speed up reaching the enchanting/alchemy caps.

be careful with dead thralls theres been quite a few bugs associated with them

Haven't seen any yet... Fast travel is funny, sometimes they don't show up right away, but for me they always do eventually. xbox 360 btw. Also, I can store loot in them and retrieve it later. They appear to equip weapons, but I haven't witnessed my thralls equip any jewelry or clothing/armor. I have read posts of others that say they will equip armor after a while, but I haven't witnessed this myself.

edit: the moaning is a bit disquieting, though! Also, I have one former NPC named Kornalus, who also hits me up with some of his normal random NPC comments from time to time. I laughed pretty good the first time he told me not to goof around with magic because it gives magic users a bad name. Hehe... "moooaannn" .... "lecture" ..... "mooooaaannn".

Oh, absolutely. I disregard anyone that calls it exploiting. How can you take that seriously? They are /dismissed

I play on Master difficulty, dunmer mage. Finished the main quest at level 46.

It was quite difficult to play until I acquired a follower, and then swapped out that follower for a better one. Then, thinking back to Oblivion, I assumed I would need conjuration for added tanking and crowd control. That formula worked very well. My final spec was 100% destruction, 100 alchemy, 100 conjuration, 100 alteration, 100 enchanting. The alchemy was mostly to get potions to up my destruction damage and get better enchants. You could probably do fine without that. I use enchants that eliminate magicka use for destruction and to improve the armor of my follower. I use the perk from destruction that staggers them on every hit.

All that together makes for an effective mage. But I certainly remember jumping around a lot in the beginning to avoid damage and running out of mana all the time.

you can buy a master robe of destruction, a eminent helmet and ring of destruction, and craft a amulet of destruction and at least get one field of magic super low cost, lets say destruction and thats with no exploits, its a game mechanic to reduce magic cost, the fact you can reduce one field of magic by a few more percet by using enchanting is very insignificant, and the problem with magic is it doesn't scale, it lacks some oomph and magic regeneration is slow, but dropping a field of magic cost down to 80 or 90 % isn't an exploit since its part of the game design to be able to do that, and even at that, thats only one field of magic, you don't get to lower every field of magic down to zero%, so as a mage i use all fields of magic and sure i make sure the destruction magic is low cost cause i use a lot, but when i cast an alteration or illusion or conjuring spell, it uses up magic reserves plenty so these so called "exploits for magic are totally over exaggerated. reducing magic cost isn't an exploit at all and thats like saying using heavy armor or potions or bows which do incredible damage is an exploit, magic isn't balanced well. but its still fun to use. if you don't just rely on one field of magic.

You need to mix it up with other skills, namely alchemy and enchant for it to be viable at higher levels. Despite what some may call it, optimizing your character with developer intended features is not called exploit and is as legal as Daigo parrying his opponent's super attack. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O-hFZh6Od8

Most mages struggle because they're missing a key Skill. Offense is usually covered by Destruction, which scales fine for the most part as long as you're purposefully leveling it and buying news spells at the earliest opportunity. Defense is covered by either Smithing + Light/ Heavy Armor, or Alteration + cloth. I prefer the latter as Alteration offers lots of other benefits first. Lastly, you need crowd control, which is provided by either Illusion or Conjuration; a lack of proper crowd control is what causes most Mages trouble early on.

So just level Destruction, Conjuration/ Illusion, and Alteration as quickly and equally as you can. Take Enchanting to 100 ASAP as well, because free casting for Destruction and your chosen form of crowd control really makes Magery enjoyable.