Since fire not only does the most damage but has the lowest magicka cost why wouldn't you use it. Aside from the times where the enemy has fire resistance of course why use the others the only advantage lightning has is instant travel time but that doesn't seem to help accuracy much in most cases as your usually close enough that it doesn't matter. And most creatures/people have resistances against ice.

No scaling.

Master Lighting is essentially a laser beamer, its perfect for taking dragons down from any range even when flying. High level frost spels will stop 90% of targets getting close to you as they will have zero stamina to run/attack with.

you mean fire spell vs frost and ice? well frost slows melee enemys getting towards you.

but yeah, destruction spells in general just dont cut it after a certain point. none of them =p

Well I was using ice spike aginst a dragon and it slowed it down to like 1 mph while flying. It was weird.

I use fire mostly, but ice a little and lightning for mages

The fire attack is worthless, it's friendly fire central. At least with the shock spell you can kamehameha a dragon out of the sky, if you can aim right

Although, Ice Spear is good for slowing down enemies. And does a fair amount of damage.

doesnt lightning sap magicka?
pretty good against magic users.

Not everyone has to use what is best.

The effect is spoiled because enemy mages have shedloads of magicka to start with. Though everyone has stamina and slowing them down makes a fight way way easier. Dont get me wrong I prefer lightning for blasting away with, but the magicka drain its essentially worthless.

Fire does the most damage, and has the DoT effect, but it has friendly fire issues and many tougher enemies can resist it and it doesn't stop enemies from beating you like a drum.

Frost is used to stop melee enemies in their tracks and slow enemies down - its the "crowd control" destruction spell.

Shock is used to hit distant targets and stop other mages.

it actually doesnt sap that much magicka out enemy mages. plus enemy ages regen magicka faster among other things.

lighting magic is pretty much only useful for its *nothing resists it* ability.

Not really since not only do enemies have crazy magicka regen, you're also more likey to kill them before emptying their magicka pool.

Frost destruction takes down enemies stamina which is helpful is plenty of situations and lightning does take down magicka, but honestly, I get the feeling it doesn't really help much. If you're fighting a full going mage, they're going to have a lot of magicka anyways. It is much easier to just use a sword and charge at them really. Fire destruction is just to cause damage, but it eventually becomes useless. Unless you have enough magicka to cast fireball after fireball. The master destruction spells are actually pretty devastating.

Fighting warriors I summon Frost Atroach and use frost spells, Mages and dragons get lightning magic, and animals get fire for the most part. Case by case thing. Somethings I summon to fire ats so that can tank while I ready a fire storm.

Not really you're defenseless, stationary, and could do more damage with less cost in the time you can cast them unless you are talking about lightning storm.

with lighting magic you can stop an enemy mage from using an adept or expert level spell and make him fall back to apprentice spells, I've seen it.