So I guess that means that Alteration is not a viable alternative to wearing armor, since the most you can possibly get via spells is 300 (base 100, with a 3 point perk that triples it as long as you're not wearing any other armor pieces). There's a master level spell that will ignore 80% of damage for 30 seconds, but my skill isn't that high yet (and I think all master level spells have a long casting time, don't they?).

I already have to forego wearing Dragon Masks (including a pretty spiffy mage oriented one) unless I want my armor rating to fall even farther, but now I see that I'll still have barely 25% of what I could have by wearing armor. Seems like a bit of balancing is in order...

NO. Do not cry NERF. Run away and live to fight another day. And in the meantime get better gear and learn how to apply better tactics to that kind of enemy in the future.
Geez, gaming is already descending a downward spiral because the current generation moans about things being too hard. What'll it be like 10 years from now?

Well, I just recently began having issues with melee opponents...but then again, they're all bosses by now (8 draugr death lords at once, you know)

Yes and the first time I fought a draugr death overlord, which one-shot-killed me with a shout, my first reaction wasn't "OMG what bull make him weaker". My reaction was "OK...I'm going to get stronger, come back in a couple levels, and wreck his ass."

That's all well and good for those dungeon-dwelling Draugr you're talking about, but; 1) out-in-the-wild enemies are a bit different (especially when we're talking about things that aren't in obscure places, but rather along the route between two major cities), and 2) things are a bit different for mage characters. As I said before, Snow Sabercats 2 shotted me constantly (with my relevant defensive Alteration spell going), even when I was in the 20's level range, and they also had enough hit points and/or resistances that I could blow through a whole magicka bar and not kill them (which was only even possible while my companion was tanking - and he couldn't take many hits either, at least partially thanks to their level scaling being broken). Besides that, the cats are fast enough that I couldn't out-run them, so if I ever got one after me it was basically hit Escape and reload my most recent save. A mage can't "come back in a couple levels and wreck" something like that; you might be many skillups away from your next rank spells (my Destruction is only in the 60's now at level 41). You also have to devote points to both magicka and health - too little of the former and you can't kill the target without melee (which has been a constant problem for much of my character's life, and is the reason my 1h skill isn't THAT far behind my Destruction, despite having the Mage Stone active the entire game), and too little of the latter means you die in 1-or-2 hits against a large variety of even generic enemies.

I don't think very many of us want a game where you can hit a button twice and kill every enemy that gets near you, but some things are a bit out of whack at the moment. Early dragons could probably stand to be a bit tougher, and some other things need to be a bit weaker. Call me crazy, but I don't think anything in the game should be capable of 1 or 2 shotting a high level character in good armor (and/or using high-end Alteration magic), unless perhaps they've devoted basically zilch to increasing their hit points (whether via level ups or enchants).

No, "Dragon" is the weakest dragon. Blood dragons are tougher.

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Anyway.... yeah, the scaling in the game is different for different enemies. Dragons, since they're the primary enemy and need to be able to be fought at any level, scale kind of directly with your character. Other things, like Bandits, animals, those Silver hand, Mages.... they all have different scaling routines.

So yeah - depending on your level, you can find enemies that are "tougher" than Dragons. Because the dragons are being somewhat tailored for you to be able to fight. And not everything else is.


It also depends a great deal on your build and your equipment. Which is why we get such different feedback in every thread ("Make it tougher, nothing hurts me!" "Make it easier, it's too hard!" etc etc etc).


Like.... I got tired of being fried by dragons, so I got a bunch of fire resist. Ran into my first Blood Dragon and kicked it's butt easily. Then I ran into my second.... which was the first dragon I'd ever seen that breathed ICE. Needless to say, it just slaughtered me.

You're kind of missing my point:
Most enemies are stronger than dragons. This is wrong. The world doesn't need a Dovahkiin to permanently kill dragons if every Bandit and their dog can just swat them out of the sky every time they're resurrected.

The only way to negate it is to have a frost resist enchantment and pump the living daylights out of your health. By level 37 I've got my health over 500 (with the help of an amulet and a self enchanted cuirass) and I laugh at other melee enemies. Frost mages are the only concern, but concern me less and less as I go longer without finding one capable of one-shotting me...

Well, you have wasted alot on armor rating. You know that a displayed armor rating of 567 is the cap, and negates 80% damage? The OP has quite low armor rating though, so its not a surprise he takes a lot of damage.

Dear Lord, Frost Mages are hard as crap. I couldn't even take out Karthspire Camp until I FUS RO DA'd that Forsworn Pillager.

As a heavy armor wearer, in master, I have to wear less armor than I could in order to make the game interesting. 340 AR at level 50

Do you have a source for that cap?

What are your hit points? In my experience that matters infinitely more than armor rating does. Increasing my armor (via spells) from 80 to 200 seemed to make almost no noticeable difference in the amount of damage I was taking, but pumping nothing but hitpoints for ~12 levels and getting another +40 from a ring seems to have done quite a lot for my survival.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Armor here is one source.

- Lower the difficulty
- There is only level scaling to a certain extent. Some enemies will just own you.

Yah, bash ftw. I haven't found/gotten that shield yet but if I have any opponent that is doing any sort of 'real' damage to me, I just pop it once or even twice to get a good stagger on, whack it with my pointy....repeat until it is dead. I rarely take much more damage. Bonus is that it works on pretty much anything, I bash Dragons, undead, animals, it don't matter. =D The only problem is getting close enough to bang on em!
Also, I recently changed to a 1H sword and now my cinematic is an actual decapitation....very nice!