It's easy. Stunlock everything, use an atronach to tank while you regen magicka, calm everything, fury rooms of enemies until only one is left, etc. Lots of ways to slice and dice them, though destruction is always the main damage dealer, unless you do some type of hybrid like dagger+illusion. It has the most control of any class - you can cripple a room, calm everything then walk away, etc. Always safe. I wouldn't recommend armor personally, as you should never be getting hit, really. Arrows are easily dodged (or let them shoot your atronach/thrall), and nothing should be getting near enough to melee you. Level 1-10 you need to be careful, because you don't have much magicka/spell skill/-cost so you can't afford to waste much. As always mages are weakest here, but not unduly so. Level 11-20 starts to get easier, you get impact and enough magicka to start doing what you want. 21+ is a walk in the park. With free spells you can do whatever you want. That's all for a pure mage, my favorite class in every game that has it :P Hybrids would obviously be different. Personally I get all the magics+enchant+alchemy. Fortify destruction potions are nice to speed things up (and easy to make), plus you can make resistance potions for dragons, that sort of thing. You could go sneak instead, sneak+quiet casting is pretty funny. The strongest/most important perks are destruction and either illusion or conjuration (for control, otherwise you have to dodge 5 arrows at once). The rest is just gravy, whatever you find fun really. Personally I find it the second strongest class/playstyle, behind broken archers obviously.
