Is it just me, or is the dungeon really really easy and the fight at the end one of the hardest in the game? (so far for me)

It doesn't take much to get to it, but by christ does it take effort to finish!

I just watched my roommate play through it about a billion times. Kept getting one-shotted by the frost spell of the guy at the end. finally, he won somehow. He even bumped it down to novice and had trouble.

Thank god im not the only one!!

I kept getting 2hit killed, I'm a level 19 "warrior" with 200 health and 190 stamina plus exquisite steel plate armour. He doesn't have much health but jesus that spell hurts!
I managed to lure him into the hallway and hit him with the Ice form shout then smash him to death.

Get some magic resists Armor is useless vs spells.

As a nord (50% frost resist) any frost mage is a joke

I just did that fight last night, and it was just the right side of hard - I had to reload and retry lots of times, but it never quite seemed impossible (although some of the one-hit kills on me were annoying), and it was very satisfying to eventually pull off the kill.

As a (level 17 or so) destruction mage, I found the best tactic at the start was using some fireballs to weaken all the shades while using the pillars just inside the room to break line-of-sight with the boss so he couldn't hit me with that nasty frost spell. Once the shades were down, it was just a case of dodging his spells, drinking lots of potions, and wearing him out. I guess that nasty frost spell of his costs lots of mana, because after a while he stopped using it.

My fight didn't last long enough for him to run out of Magika. I must have reloaded a dozen times.

It was a really, really well done fight.