I just started another Dawnguard playthrough (having finished the Dawnguard side) and this time I accepted the cursed gift with my lv7 redguard.
I have 2 problems:
The first one is I have a disease that drains my stamina in addition to the 60 damage from lv4 stage vampire. So I have 15 stamina

The other problem is that when I switch to Vampire Lord, I have to first go to ground, then go up again to have the possibility to cast the standard spells/attacks. I have seen some videos and that doesn't happen there.