OK so I went back to the save and each ghost at the entrance needs 7 (!) fireballs to kill. I have mana to cast 5 before needing to drink a potion. The dragur there also need 7 fireballs to kill. And if I get below 50% health (easy when you're being gangbanged), they can do a 1-hit-kill power attack.
All I'm saying is, magic builds basically suck balls. Sure, you can kite stuff around the dungeons, drink potions every 5 seconds, and run away a lot.
But a melee build would stroll around in plate armour and faceroll this stuff. Magic, on the other hand...
1. Level caps. Perks required to continue using your spells, not to make them more powerful. Contrast that with melee/archery. They can keep upgrading their weapons (does not require perks), and get more and more power from every perk they buy.
By far the majority of mage perks simply reduce the mana cost. You are also forced to buy the same perk (again) for each new spell level. Once you get Expert spells, the perks you bought to reduce mana cost of Novice and Apprentice spells are mostly now wasted, because you won't be casting them again. Does not seem fair.
The next set of "perks" for magic users are the ones that the game forces you to buy to continue using your spells as you level up. Thanks to horribly low level caps on Illusion and Restoration spells (turn undead is capped at 26, btw, and you can't increase it further. The master spell (which you can cast once with a full mana pool), is capped at 37 (30 if you don't buy the +25% perk). Yet undead scale to 50 and make up about 1/2 of the game enemies... Bethesda logic right there!
Why do melee/archers not have to buy perks as they level up, just to stop enemies being immune to their weapons? Again, Beth hates mages.
2. Spells that don't scale like melee/archery scales. Your fireball spell will never do more base damage than the day you learned it. Yes there are two perks to give it a +50% damage boost in total. But melee and archers get to boost their damage output by +100% at the very least. In fact, much, much more than that.
3. Mana. Melee do more damage and can still swing their swords with 0 stamina. Magic users can't do jack **** without mana.
4. There are no +Damage enchantments for mages. Only -mana_cost.
5. A mage will never 1 hit KO anything of an equal level. Archers and melee with smithing can/will 1 hit KO many things, even things greater than their level. They can also kill dragons in about 3-5 hits too. As demonstrated on YouTube. You'll notice that there are no mage videos showing off their amazing 1 hit KOs.
6. Of the summons, only the Deadric Lords can actually take a couple hits. If you try to "mix in" conjuration, your summons will get 1-hit KO'd. A Fire Atronach in Yngvild lasts about 2-3 hits, and costs me 1/4 of my mana bar to cast. Wooooohooo.
7. You can't "mix in" illusion at all, due to the level caps. You need 75 illusion skill and 4 perks for illusion spells to affect level 50 enemies.
8. Mages get protection spells that a) cost a lot mana - needed to do damage don't forget, b) run out after about 60-90 seconds, c) take about 2 seconds to cast, whilst you're getting hit, and d) are inferior to armour that is worn 24/7 by melee and archers. There are no "protection from arrows" type spells either. These spells really have no purpose at all. Mages that want protection are much better off spending the points in light armour instead.
In fact, the most useless skill set in the entire game is Alteration. I've yet to see anyone rate it above "utter waste of time".
So endeth another rant
How does it work?
