Well, it depends how you like to play. With my first mage character I felt I got svcked into being a destruction mage, since that's the only way you can kill anything during the intro. It was difficult to switch paths afterwards as my other skills were undeveloped, but if I tried to increase them rather than destruction, my destruction skills also fell behind, and I was thrashed. But as there is not a lot of strategy involved with destruction, I got bored quite quickly.
I did really enjoy playing a full-on Illusionist healer - Harmony is awesome, and I rather liked rushing round Rallying the townspeople against dragons rather than fighting them myself. You pretty much have to get all the Illusion perks and spells and Necromage as soon as you can, though - and avoid raising any other skill much (or going into barrows) until you have.