Yeah, they're useless: I had at least one, probably both of those as attributes with my first character, and I suspect just about everyone chooses a less than optimum skill set first time through.
On the other hand, some people take it too seriously and I didn't really have the patience for the likes of "power levelling" and its ilk.
You're not doing too badly to get to level 19 without too much aggravation, though: I found levels 10-15 were very tricky and up to about 20 not much better and found myself having to reach for the difficulty slider to not find myself being constantly killed due to my character not levelling as effectively as my adversaries.
Couldn't remember where Darkfathom Cave was so I had to look it up on
UESP, which I guess you already know about but if not, it's quite a handy resource.
Only problem with magic as a ranged weapon is it takes its time to get to where it's going so the target's often wandered off by the time it would strike. That's a double edged sword, though, since it's also easy for you to dodge a lot of the spellcasters' intended unpleasantness! Still, I wouldn't want to go through it without having at least a moderate fireball and electrocution spell handy.
