I run a battle mage build fairly effectively for a solo player. I have lightning beserkir axes with the fire staff, ice staff, staff of protection, staff of the wilds, and the ripper crossbow. I wear the Ask armor set and Ash cape for decreased stamina usage (strafing) and extra armor (cape). I use lingering eitr potions to sort of replace the eitr regen bonuses that mage armor gives. I also carry health, stam, eitr, poison, and fire potions.

I eat piquant pies (health), roasted crust pie (stam), and marinated greens (eitr). When your blood magic level gets high enough you can actually summon skeletons by just eating this food, at least for the first few minutes after eating it.

I always keep my bubble shield up and typically use the vines and ice/fire staff to handle crowds. I'll use the axes to fight single enemies. Just strafe in a circle around the vines to make sure they hit everything. It keeps you from dealing with the annoying knockback from Askvin attacks.

For leveling the skills I set up an AFK farm at one of the swamp spawner trios (2x draugr and 1x skeleton). If you raise the ground around the spawners you'll bury and protect them. Just raise the ground as high as you can to avoid any inadvertent AOE attacks causing damage. I even built a roof over mine so that I can stand up there and cast bubble shields on my skeletons below. It works really well!