I am a Dark Elf- I play stealth class, but this is how I play it- I use illusion--> invisibility, play with peoples emotions to avoid fights and muffle. Than invest a lot of perk points into sneak (damage, silent rolls, no pressure plates triggers and basically everything except the last perk since I have invisibility from illusion).
I have all illusion perks, all except last stealth perks and only damage perk for one handed.

Now my problem is:
I have encountered a dragon yesterday and noticed, to my dissapointment, that my strategy of invisibility>>>stealth attack>>>quickly back to invisibility does not work on dragons, because they are somehow able to detect me anyways and it is still hard to stealth attack them with dagger while invisible.

So what do you think? How do I make up for this?

I was thinking:
1. Conjuration- quickly summon atronachs and pop to invisibillity, which would prolong the battles, but at least I would survivie.
2. Alteration- I was thinking about maybe getting armor skills there and getting also a backup sword and try to go head to head with the dragon, but that would mean that I would also have to get full on robes, because right now I wear a mix of db armor and thieves guild armor and the only way you really benefit from the alteration armors is by wearing robes and getting the 3x armor rating bonus. This skill would also make sence for an assassin because of the life detect and waterbreathing
3. Archery? Didnt really want to do it because I wanted this class to be primarily spellcasting stealth character as I already have a regular stealth+archery.


The thing is that I also did 2magicka:1health investing meaning that I now have 300 magicka and around 150 health (with bonuses from armors and trinkets). When I yesterday tried to kill a dragon head to head with my db armor and the dagger it killed me in 2 bites.

Conjuration I think.

I ran into the same problem with an identical build... I really didn't want to use archery, but I simply couldn't kill the dragons so I went with conjuration. it kind of fist with the stealth mage class because you're creating a distraction with your summons.

I dunno, at the end of the day it's all personal preference.

Use conjuration. You won't need to go invisible (which btw does not make you completely undetectable as in Oblivion; stuff can still hear you so that's probably how the dragon knows where you are) I dont think. The summon should be capable of keeping the dragon's attention, giving you free shots on the dragon when it lands. I'd recommend keeping a nice enchanted sword around for boss battles like this for your build. Obviously daggers are the way to go for sneak attacks, but you aren't gonna get sneak attacks in when fighting a dragon so you are better off using a good sword on it while it's distracted by your summons (which will also be doing damage).