Adept difficulty, ust hit lvl 12，spreaded perks into one-hand, marksman, light armor, alchemy and sneak, wearing full set improved light armour and a very nice bow does about 22 damage. So i decided to join the Companions, after the initiation "bring a sword to skyforge" quest, that Farkas guy gave me a mission to clear some Falmer cave northeast of Whiterun, the boss fight is an elite Falmer with his robot servant, and the fight was just impossible, that robot's steam wave kills you in 3 second, the Flamer can 1 hit your 20-30% HP, after died 5 times i triggerd some bug both of them got stuck on a rock so i stand there shot about 30 arrows and killed them both, and this is just the first quest in this faction.
The level of difficulty seems crazy, is this because i didnt put all of my skill points into direct combat perks? I thought the level scaling is improved and i can feel free to develop non-combat skill and enjoy the game at same time.

At the same time though, you can't not level your bow skill and expect to kill things. You have to level your main form of attack as much as possible, in my opinion.

try doing Meridia's quest. it's seriously the hardest fight I've ever done.

Im doing the exact same thing as you and at level 8 I one shot bandits w/o sneak and get a bear to 1/3 health with poisoned arrows before it reaches me. My friend who is much farther in the game than me was also having trouble at one point so it may be just a high level area or something.

Also you may want to make your post a bit less spoilerific, I'm planning on joining the Companions soon.

Wait what? I don't recall having to clear a cave with Falmer in it?

I initially started out going archer/rouge but after 3 hours or so of getting the crap beaten out of me by anything that moves, I decided to go mage instead.

Maybe your just not ready for that quest yet? I'm level 9 I think, playing master diffuculty, and ran into one falmer. He killed memos I left the pass I was in. Besides him there was 3 hired thugs popping up that would destroy me. And a bear, and giants. Everything else I've been able to kill no problems so far. Just back off and level some more.

Also I've only put one perk in light armor, two in sneak, and the rest in archery and one handed.

On Master, I cant even kill a deer to get some leather. Hit it once for 1/5 its HP and its gone. At least with a mage I can chase it dual flamethrow style.

Or you could always use Fury and lol as it runs to its death

This! Exactly this! People thought I was crazy to suggest there's something fundamentally broken about stealth in this game. It just doesn't work. How you can go from perfection of it in Fallout 3/New Vegas to this... is... is. Mind boggling! Sneaking is a complete and total waste of time. You put in more effort for less reward than any other play style in the game. Dungeons aren't built for sneaking around in, all the enemies are on a linear path facing you making sneaking quite impossible without magic, But then you gimp your combat skills so when the [censored] hits the fan (and it always does) then your more screwed because then all of your sneak skills are useless and you have no combat. I've made the exact same mistake as you, check out my topic on the matter.

Forget one-handed in the beginning. Get archery and sneak to 50 asap and it starts to feel like a proper thief.

at level 5-10 i was doing well too, a good sneak shot one-hit kill a lot of enemies, but as i level up( and a rouge levels up extremely fast by stealing and sneaking often), the enemies grow stronger faster than you are cuz you level up by sneaking and stuff so your combat effectiveness scales worse and worse every time you level up. I think a pure warrior with a nice 2 handed weapon is 10 times easier to play than a pure rogue .

Are you all seriously having issues? I'm all sneak 1h and bows and i've yet to run across a problem, no offense guys but you're just bad. Guess what you do when the robot is doing his steam attack? Well IDK.... how about moving out of the way? I feel like the entire game was built around sneaking, i'm 20 hours in. Maybe you just need to play more, or maybe you're just bad :/

I'm level 17 and one shot nearly everything when I sneak and attack with a dagger or bow, maybe you're not specced right?

What difficulty? If its normal I dont see why you are posting

but that is what people mean when they say level scaling is unbalanced and unfair to characters that are not solely built around combat. like a thief for example, would not be as combat oriented and would be leveling many non combat skills and thus be at a severe disadvantage in a system that dumps hp into enemies based on your level.

have to agree with OP , although i wouldnt use the word insane it is definitly alot harder. My main problem is that when i see a humaniod in the distance i'm often not sure if its ok to shoot them , i remember in oblivion killing innocents at a distance by accident.

esxpecially if you start as a race without bonuses to archery and sneak. Starting with 15 sneak and archery does make it hard at the start. A bit too hard.

haha ok that is actually kinda true. but apart from that its not hard except for the occasional troll or bear