Reading things like this make me glad I've never tried to use Destruction.

If they had just left in spellmaking...

An update: I went ahead and took the advice given in this thread. I took 2 grand soul gems and enchanted my glass armor thusly:

Helmet +21% fortify destruction
Armor +21% fortigy destruction

Then 2 more grand soul gems:

Silver Ring: +20% fortify destruction
Gold Necklace:+20% fortify destruction

That's 82% reduction in cost of casting Destruction spells.

It works quite well now so I'm a happy camper. I can still run out of magicka but now I'll only have to carry 5 or 6 potions instead of the 40 or so I was before. It's really nice to be able to use the Fireball spell (and all Destruction spells for that matter) with effectiveness. I've been blowing up everything left and right. There's a bunch of crispi-fied elk outside of Whiterun.

But note that it took a high enchanting skill to make it happen and 4 different slots. I still have a sneak enchantment on my boots and an archery enchatnment on my gauntlets but all health enchantments are gone. That's okay though.

So there it is. That's how you make Destruction work on Master level. Thanks Udey. I probably would have just given up on the skill otherwise.

No problem, have a good game.

Yeah, I always use -cost% enchantments on any character that will cast spells, because anything above about Adept costs ridiculous quantities of magicka even with the related mastery perk.

The catch being that Enchanting is rather feeble until you have 5/5 Enchanter and certain other perks, and even then you're hard-pressed to cover more than about two schools until you get Dual Enchantment. Fortify Enchanting potions help, however those are feeble as well until you have high Alchemy and certain perks in that tree.

Even so, Destruction is still viable on Master, albeit a bit tedious at higher levels if you don't bring Fortify Destruction potions for boss fights.