So I decided to make an all out mage character in Skyrim and I noticed some major flaws. First Ward spells are practically useless mainly because they svck up your magic so fast that I can't use destruction effectively enough. Next higher level destruction magic is impractical. Say I fight a giant camp, all of the destruction perks, and a very high magica. I can use 10 dual cast lightning bolt spells and stagger them so they can't hit me. Or I can use 4 thunderbolt spells and hope nothing else attacks me while my magica reloads. The point is if I use an expert level spell it should be much more effective than an apprentice level skill. It does say 3x more damage but costs more than 3x the magica. Its really dissapointing. Next illusion is fairly useless aside from invisibility. Also restoration is too hard to level up, especially with wards being impractical.

On some points I agree, on some I disagree. I'd say the main thing about mages is they are generally considered "squishy" against melee characters, unless you use Mage Armor or actual armor.

• Wards: With the Ward Absorb perk, you can easily keep a ward up at all times, so long as you are fighting 1 or more magic users.
  
• Destruction: A lot of people say Destruction is very weak and it can be a lot of the time. But if you stack your gear and perk properly, you can basically cast for no Magicka at all. So even if the spells aren't that strong you can cast a lot of them.
  
• Illusion: One of the most powerful schools in the game, hands down. Look at http://kotaku.com/5867385/hes-level-35-in-skyrim-he-makes-villagers-kill-his-dragons link. A guy got to level 35 without ever killing or even hurting a creature or NPC. One of his main tools is the Illusion school. Got two hostile enemies? Frenzy or Rally one. Use Calm or Fear to pacify an enemy who is just a little too overbearing for you. Illusion (and conjuration) are usually key elements of surviving at Max difficulty, and especially were in Oblivion. But master difficulty this time around got a lot easier.

Magic is weak off the bat, but stick with it and it will reward you immensely.

I guess illusion works wel if you wanted to play as an imperial Jesus. I mean it works if you don't want to fight, but a lot of perks are needed to keep it effective. And like I said I agree that weaker destruction spells are more effective than stronger ones.

Also I got up to lvl50 on my high elf mage and I pretty much only raised magica. Destruction was at a 94 and everything else was 90+ except restoration.

Thats not what he said, read it again; he said that the expert spells are crap because they cost too much mana compared to the lower level spells. Which means basically, once i've gotten my destruction to adept leve, there's no reason at all for me to purchase the expert and master spells. Because they're crap in terms of manacost/damage.
Yes of course there's the 0 magicka enchantment, but playing it that way i might as well toggle god mode eh

At the very least expert spells need to be changed.

And i find that illusion spells are more of a prankster type; i like to cast fury from sneak mode on a guard, then watch all the guards in the barracks swarm that guard

What are your perks and what gear are you wearing. Also, Illusion is much more useful for someone who wants to fight than someone who doesn't. My link just showed someone who got to 35 without fighting by using it a lot. Take my previous examples. When you frenzied or rallied one of the two enemies attacking you, you can attack both of them while they kill each other, then take out the last man standing. Same with causing an enemy to flee or be calm. You use the distraction to your advantage to attack without being attacked.

Edit: @Azuron: I understood what he meant, but I was just saying that playing a mage can make using the right gear more important than a different class. I agree that the magicka cost and damage don't even get close to scaling properly.

If you look at the spell Firebolt it does 25 damage for 41 magicka. That's .61 damage for every one magicka the spell costs. If you look at Fireball it's 40 damage for 133 magicka, which equates to .3 damage for every 1 point of magicka the spell costs. So yes, it does get weaker, and that makes no sense. Whether that is an oversight, bug, or intentional I cannot say.

As for toggling god mode with the 0% destruction spells, to get that you need Level 100 Enchanting (unless you use potions or exploits, then it can be lower), 8 specific Enchanting perks, and 4 Grand Souls. That also means that you use 4/6 armor enchanting slots (not including shields).

I like to kill things most the time as a mage, so I don't really see wasting my perks on getting them all. I did see a use for a thief though (or just a stealth character). I kinda just wish there was maybe a better illusion combat spell other than frenzy. Also usually when I use frenzy in combat they still attack me anyways.

I often find myself using things with magica regen on them because I use destruction/conjuration a lot. So I usually use master robes of destruction or something.

Real mages conjure Daedra from Oblivion to do their bidding. I really find Conjuration to be the most rewarding tree, really fun to fight with a conjured demon on your side and you don't really need to worry about traps killing them.

Compared to the battlemages of http://www.imperial-library.info/content/response-beros-speech-0, in-game magic users are incredibly inferior. Compared to in-game warriors and thieves, they're still incredibly inferior.

It seems like Bethesda set out to create a system that was on par with weapons after they scrapped spell-making. Sounds great, but they didn't think it through. Once the CK is released, modders will likely try to fix the issues you were talking about, OP. You could hold off on playing a magic user until then or whatever. Supposedly, it should be out by next week (in January, and February is next week already).

I was more under the impression that they deliberately made magic weaker so that it wouldn't conflict with or overshadow the Shouts.

My current character is a sneaky master illusionist, and it is greatly overpowered, especially as he is also good at conjuration and bows.

In a situation, if there is just one powerful opponent, then I revert to conjuration and sneak attacks, but if there are more than just one opponent, then it is an quite easy to overcome them, just frenzy the most powerful opponent, or a group of them, and let them kill each other, and then kill the last one which should be greatly wounded, by the time.

My first character started as a pure mage type. Compared to my other characters, he was a punk regardless of level. The master level spells, particularly the destruction ones, are severely nerfed. I'm not thrilled with their progression either. I don't consider the ability to enchant equipment to the point of making them free to cast--generally a very high level thing to do anyway--as any sort of consolation.

I switched up a lot, trying to find a sweet spot for magic users. Conjuration is an excellent tree, and is typically more effective than destruction. One can have a lot of fun with Illusion, as previously stated, but it just didn't seem to be my cup of tea.

At the higher levels, after I enchanted my uber-equipment, I decided to try using a sword as an experiment. I was considerably more effective with a single-handed weapon than destruction and conjuration combined. With no single-handed skills trained. It doesn't feel right.

Just my personal experience. I usually play mage types, but something simply doesn't quite click for me with how it is done in Skyrim. Really not sure how one would go about "fixing" it, or even what is broken, if anything. Are the spells too weak? Too short? Take too much magicka? Take too long to cast? Progress oddly? Maybe a combination of those things.

What I do know is, I make a lot of noise, and while by no means do I feel like a weakling, it definitely feels like a much more "fiddly" road to take than some of the other damage dealers.

Then again, hasn't that always been the case for magic users, all the way back to good ol' pen and paper D&D?