Why doesn't destruction magic scale?

The other day, I decided to test out the magic schools of the game, having already done a lot with both stealth and melee characters. As I get higher level, I'm starting to notice that going into battle without a companion (and often even with a companion) is becoming more and more suicidal...I just don't do enough damage to justify my low defense. Playing as a destruction mage seems...Pointless. My dps seems much higher on both my stealth and melee character, and it's also much easier to survive on both those characters.

It seems to me as though the absence of spell crafting has weakened mages an awful lot, particularly pure mages focusing on destruction. If they really had to remove spell-crafting, couldn't they have at least made destruction spells scale with your level? Playing as a warrior, you can upgrade your weapons and armour, increasing your damage output even after getting all the perks in your chosen school...As a mage, you're stuck either with spells which either take forever to cast and get you killed, or that don't even do enough damage to justify playing as a mage...So yeah, back to the question; why don't destruction spells scale?

quote eljopa

if im stilling taking damage with my summon out, i can switch to fireball/ward combo and kite my enemies while timing my ward spell to reduce incoming damage.

How are you managing to survive any hits at all playing on master with no armour? I'm on adept, and when against enemies around my level, I can't kill them before they get to me most of the time, and if they do get to me, I'm dead in a couple of hits. If there happens to be an archer around that I didn't see...Well, I can pretty much consider myself dead. Maybe it's me who sucks at playing as a mage, but it still seems to me as though the damage I'm doing does not come close to justifying the lack of any survivability at all, and having to worry about magicka. It could be that I'm just whining, but it's just pretty annoying.

quote swk3000

What's annoying is that they got it right with Illusion. The entire tree is dedicated to making Illusion work on anyone. For example, a High Elf starts off with the Novice spell Fury. That affects any person or creature up to Level 6. With Rage, Animage, and Kindred Mage, that spell can hit any person up to Level 22, and any Animal up to 20. Dual Casting doubles that, so you hit people up to Level 44, and Animals up to 40. And that's the weakest spell! The strongest spell affects any person up to Level 92, and any animal up to Level 90 when Dual Cast!

Yeah, illusion looks interesting. I'll have to check that one out soon.