Less QQ, more pew pew. And magic is ridiculously awesome if you know what you're doing.
I think you just won the thread. Remind me that I owe you an internetz.
Poster's right; if you know what you're doing, you're indestructible (and as another poster said, if you're a one-trick pony, you're bound to lose).
Mages are difficult to
not be awesome with at any level. If you mix and match your schools of magic (or even use all five), you'll be friggin' spectacular. I just started a new mage who uses all of the schools, and if you spread yourself thin with perks (getting every novice-level perk your first five levels and so on) while investing in Magicka, you'll be able to cast your way out of anything.
Sure, some schools deserve more attention than others depending on your playstyle and for sake of simple survivability. For instance, you'll want to get Apprentice Destruction early on so that you can shoop some whoops at more than three meters away, and Illusion Dual Casting is a must for making those novice spells keep their utility. But as long as you even things out, you'll be fine.
Battles should go simply for you. Just cast fear/calm on an enemy or fear/frenzy if you're up against more than one, maybe throw on some mage armor if they have a chance of getting close. Throw out a summon to distract/use as a meat shield/deal some damage, focus on zapping a single baddie and reanimate him/her/it to keep things interesting (and keep you alive), and it'll be over in no time at any level.
At higher levels, you could throw down a rune (several if you have a mod) and a wall of fire to protect yourself (I'll explain more Destruction below), bring out stronger (and more entertaining!) summons, paralyze a bloke and set him aflame, use staves for great damage at no cost, turn invisible (and silent with Muffle) and escape, set all undead in the area (if that's what you're fighting) on fire and running for their "lives," mass paralyze, or even make peace with everyone just so you could pack them all in one tight area for a Firestorm. The possibilities just get better and better.
Personally, I had a sort of battlemage I was very fond of. Imperial with investment in Conjuration (only Novice and the weapon tree up to but not including Oblivion Binding, so very few perks there), Restoration, Alteration, and One Handed. Bound Sword on my right, armor spell on my left and a hotkeyed heal spell and I was good to go for two minutes (battles usually didn't last that long). Eventually, I leveled to the point of having more perks than I knew what to do with (since I was pretty specialized), and since I had so many souls, I invested in Enchanting and Smithing (up to Deadric). Had me some nice toys, but still loved my lightsaber. Voice of the Emperor came in handy often (but luckily not often enough to warrant using more than once a day), especially since it worked on any level humanoid and I had no Illusion spells or perks.
See, mages are awesome no matter what you do (unless you only do one thing). Make it up as you go and have a blast.
Edit: Some notes on Destruction:
There's a lot of hating on stun-locking here as well as some people pointing out that it's all you can rely on sometimes. While it has its uses, it's not what you need to worry about. What you should focus on is what each Destruction spell actually does.
Stun-locking requires a lot of magicka and a single target. If you can stun-lock multiple enemies at a time and have no worries for MP, then you're probably "playing on easy" (0% spell cost). Personally, I don't look down on that as cheating so much as just not fun.
If you've got the Arch Mage's Robes and say,
one well-enchanted ring (~25% cost reduction), you're looking at -40% Destruction spell cost, while still giving you room for other enchantments both on that ring as well as on a necklace, circlet, gloves and boots (I'd call that balanced, close to overpowered if you play your cards right). That's enough to get off some good spells without forcing you to focus on Destruction, something a "pure" mage generally shouldn't be doing.
There are spells that cannot impact (stun) which are very, very useful. The runes, walls and cloak spells can be a wonderful (and heavily damaging) line of defense, and that's before you'd even consider attacking. While AOE spells like Fireball can cause an impact, only direct hits will do the job--and direct hits obviously aren't what AOE spells excel at; hitting all five trolls is better than stun-locking one. Then there are Master spells, which are obviously useful of their own accord.
Don't forget staves! While they're fun and pretty, they also have utility. You'll never stun with a staff, since even using two of the same staff with the proper perks still counts as a single cast in each hand, but they're an
excellent way to deal damage. I cannot exaggerate how great it is to have a staff of flame wall to count on. Same effect, but it costs you zero magic (highly useful to circumvent the 0% cost enchantments, since you'll have room for other goodies instead!). As I said about Wall of Flames, staves work especially well if you have one with a usually costly effect (any expert level ones, basically, but I prefer defensive damage dealing staves, like the wall ones).
More staff usage=less magic used AND more room for other enchantments in place of lowering costs. Also, staves, and in fact all enchanted weapons, are affected by spell cost--the less costly the spells of that school are to you, the more uses you'll get out of an enchanted weapon.
» Thu Jun 07, 2012 7:04 am 
