Hello ! In fact, Saruman is an old man and one of the powerful characters of Middle Earth, he looks rather weak. But what is the reason? After all, his ores of abilities are very good at first sight. And the answer is: Yes! but only need to finish them before the end. Here are a couple of examples and suggestions:
1) Fireball - it can be remade for attack on a single target (for example against heroes). Saruman is catastrophically very weak against the heroes because he has very weak armor, but that's the way it should be, (he's not a soldier), if you change the fireball to defeat a lone target (and increase a little damage), Saruman will get a chance to confront the heroes.
2) As for the lightning, this is done justly! which indicates its weakness. But ! Here the problem is not the damage (And it's really big!) How much in the problem of its implementation! Imagine that you want to hit a strong single target (hero, heroic detachment or super-armor gnome squad), you choose an area and want to destroy this goal, but you do not succeed for one reason: enemies move and you have a fixed area and even with insane small area. But not everything is so bad and the way out of the situation is very simple: You can make the realization of this ability different: the damage and the area of defeat remain the same, but now you just choose the target and the lightning will hit it regardless of its movement, that's the solution to this problem.
3) If Gаndalf has a magic shield (and most point to the fact that he has it from BFME 2), then why is he not at Saruman because he was at level 10, he too was ???. The solution: when the ability from the book of spells "Saruman of many colors" is revealed, Saruman also receives a magical shield (how often he will be activated this is already a matter of balance)
And in the end, just a remark: Saruman is known in Middle-earth as a character who owns an exclusive weapon - the power of speech and oratorists, through which he performed miracles (stupefying, doubting and quarreling, convincing, leading into despair, strengthening his spirit and will and many other joys for mental rape of the enemy), but for some reason the Sauron's Mouth has more opportunities for this kind of action.
So if you take into account these proposals, then you can with minimal effort and without changing his current abilities to achieve his wallow power, which befits the head of the Istaris!