I keep hearing how great these spells are, but they seem to barely do any damage at all to me, even on the lowest level enemies. I'm playing on the 360.

it's supposed to be doing 50 dps, but it appears to be doing the exact same as the novice spells. Looks to be about 8 dps to me. Anyone else notice this?

It seems to perform as specified for me. However, by the time I aqcuired these spells, their usefulness was moot on the level-scaled opponents. They were only awesome against skeevers, mudcrabs and wolves.