My Conjuration is actually higher than Destruction by 10 levels. Honestly, now I'm wondering why I went mage. I expected fun combat and got handed a crap sandwich. And I've spent so much time on this character that I don't want to re-roll.
I expect that you're playing on a higher difficulty than me, but I havn't found mage that challenging yet...except for trying to run through a Dwemer ruin at around level 1-3 (SPHERES).
Spellcasting doesn't seem underpowered to me at all, it's just not overpowered like thief/assassin builds or even straight melee
