You want to take perks in whatever school of magic you want to build your mage around (alteration mage armor perks are essentially a necessity) and you don't want to use other skills too much. If you're going to play a pure mage, you want to be wearing clothing ie the outfit they give you in the very beginning of the game that is perfect for a mage character. They don't trust the magic system or something, so they wind up wearing armor, and using swords or bows or whatever. I have found that most of the time when people say stuff like that they weren't actually playing a 'straight' mage. The very beginning can be a little tricky, yeah conjuration will help a lot with that, and grab a follower. I've played through as many builds of vanilla Skyrim characters as I could possibly think to make, and mages were usually the most over-powered. I never understood why so many people seem to feel magic is underpowered in Skyrim. I can't honestly say much more about them as I've never used them only discovered recently, and I'm in the middle of a play-through.

At least, that's how he (and users) describe his mods. But Simon's are much more lightweight and closer to the mechanics and implementation of vanilla. Simon Magus is a great mod author who has sort of followed in the footsteps of EnaiSiaion, making mods very similar to Ordinator, Apocalypse, etc.

Skyrim se magic mods