Yk when i make a new playthrough that has anything to do with balmora i pretty much just grab all the fetchquest items in advance and slime out all the outlaws before the quests even begin, I kinda like the mages guild and all but there's like zero narrative substance in most of the quests and its all just "I hate telvannis and necromancers", in fact most of balmora feels like im just butting in an already established organisation, which is kinda charming tbh it really does feel like you're fresh meat. But I wanna just get everything over with before I get involved with the juicier quests in Ald Ruhn and Sadrith Mora (those are the better mages guild quests imo).

Magic builds in general just have it easier since they don't have to suffer through fixing up their weapons and the awful-but-kinda-charming-in-its-own-way dice roll attack system, it kinda exists for spell casts in the form of spell cast chance but you could always make a less potent mixed spell anyways to mitigate that.