Standard melee enemies and frost mages (with ice spikes) are significantly much more powerful than dragons. This is not right. For example, for a "silver hand" it takes 3 blows to kill a lvl22 character, health 270, heavy armor rating 190. It means that they do about 90-per-blow damage through the heavy armor. The same holds for frost mages and warlocks, who deal 90-per-ice spike. I, actually, don't understand how they can do such a damage with silver swords and ice spikes, but it is deadlier than a blood dragon. I find it disturbing.

PS. I mean, for Normal difficulty, of course.

I'm playing on Master and i don't seem that have that problem.
I'm not saying that your numbers are wrong, maybe you should try this game on Master.
I'm gonna change to normal cause that sounds hardcoe tbh =/

With you stating your health, and armor rating while wearing Heavy armor. It almost sounds like you're spreading yourself thin. Are you spreading your perks around?

If you're a melee character, blocking with a shield nearly negates most damage, without really putting perks into blocking

My melee character, Mages were blowing me up throughout the whole game, So I leveled up blocking just for the Elemental blocking effect, tied with spell eater.

Also, Blood dragons are pretty much baby dragons.

Quit trying to take on high level enemies.

I experienced the same as the OP. The only two enemies that I actually have to prepare for in battle are ice mages and two-handed meleers haha. I can't really explain it either! All others are a cakewalk.

Or you could just lower the difficulty?

Odd, the only time I ever had issue with melee characters (from about level 14) was if I was getting completely overwhelmed by Falmers or bandits. After I got a complete set of armor and started placing perks in the necessary spots, it wasn't an issue.

Now magic on the other hand was devestating until I found a mag resist item that I could disenchant. At this point in the game (level 53) magic is pretty much the only thing that hurts me (noticeably). There are still times when getting overwhelming by Falmers drops my health though, those little buggers are tough.

I think what the OP is getting at is that everything in the game seems to be more powerful than dragons, which is not the way the game should have been. Dragons should have been generally stronger than most enemies.

Can you read? The OP was stating that its stupid how Bandits and mages are more of a threat than dragons. Read before making smart comments.

Same, high power mages were the only enemy to trouble me, until I invested in enchanting.

@ OP: Have you taken on any Ancient or Elder dragons yet?

I agree, they messed up on the dragons in this game.

I think they should buff it Master becomes to easy later on in the game

Blood dragons are the weakest dragon. There are weak mages, there are strong, "Holy Crap I Just downed 7 potions to kill this guy" Mages. There are weak bandits, then there are bandit Chiefs that on their first swing against me, automatically went into a cinimatic kill

Draugr Deathlords/Overlords are top notch meleers


Blood dragon hurts a little, Elder dragon hurts a lot, ancient dragon, with 600 armor and 400 health can two shot me. All enemies vary.

Blood dragons still compare to chief bandits in the time they take to kill, Draugr Deathlords and Acendant Casters compare to Elder dragons. Dragon Priest so far is the only foe that compares to ancient dragons

Yes, lets make already weak bandits even weaker.

The solution is to increase the strength of dragons not weaken everyone else. That or the OP can simply up his difficulty every time he comes across a dragon.

Last Dragon Priest I fought was nothing compared to the Ancient Dragons I run into, in terms of raw damage dealt. The only reason Dragon fights tend to be on the easy side (in my experience) is because they are not focused attacks. You fight a mage/bandit/Falmer/Dragon Priest etc, they will hack/cast away at you as long as your visible to them. The Dragons attack pattern is the "saving grace" if you will.

I couldn't imagine fighting an Ancient Dragon toe to toe if they just sat there and "breathed" on me all day.

Ice Mages are pretty hardcoe, especially when they double cast...try dodging before you get hit as you approach them. Raise your block skill to get the 50% damage reduction from elemental spells. Also try getting the shield "Spellbreaker" from one of the Daedric quest...Sorry, I don't remember which one. Spellbreaker stops 50 pts of spell damage from reaching you, pair that up with 50% reduction from your Block Perk tree and you have a good defence against elemental damage...you can also use a ward spell as you approach mages instead of dodging, however they burn through your magic pretty fast....with all this said unfortunatelly an Ice Mage can still hit you with a double cast spell even while you are constantly hitting him with your attacks. I have walked up to an Ice Mage unscathed and stand hitt ing him with a 1-2 combo repeatedly only to have him One Shot me just before he dies...good luck.

EDIT: You get Spellbreaker from compleating Peryite's Daedric quest, located NE of Markarth on top of a small hill/mountain.

If I ever had to fight an ancient dragon toe to toe, I'd actually start running from fights. Dragon fights are sadly predictable, which makes them a lot lot easier. Have time to heal, spell wise, even if you're crap at magic. Most other foes in the game, specially in dungeons, its a hectic, back and forth, no downtime unless you sprint behind corners.

I was having a lot of issues, until I made some better resist gear & acquired Spellbreaker. Very good item, that.

Spellbreaker is given to you by Peryite (spelling?) As far as fighting mages, my best results have been in shield bashing them ever other swing. This typically staggers them and prevents them from just spamming me to shreds with spells.

I never said I agreed. I was telling you what he meant.

Pretty much. Just the other day I got reminded how out of hand some dungeon battles can get. I'm pretty sure it was during "Discerning the Transmundane", before entering into Blackreach, but either way it was a Falmer den. I screwed up and had about 6 or 7 of them swinging away at me. I haven't seen my health deplete so fast in a melee fight for a very long time.

My way of Killing stong Enemies is using an Powerattack , make 2 normal swings and Powerattack again. if Stamina goes low i powerattack and use my Healingspell ( includes the stamina Perk). Works well on Most Enemies for me.

I allways forget about Shield Bash....thanks for the tip.

Sometimes I think Armor Rating (at least when gained from Alteration Magic) is bugged and non-functional. I can't really tell a difference between using one spell for 80 rating and another for 200; I still get 2-shot by Snow Sabercats/Bears, and 1-shot by Bandit Chiefs. My hitpoints could be better (around 250 or so at the moment), but it's hard to up them very much and still have a good amount of magicka for a mage (since I refuse to abuse enchanting for "free" spells - seems like a major oversight). It just seems like I take enormous amounts of physical damage regardless of what protective spells I use.

You need to keep in mind that depending on your level, armor ratings below 400 or so isn't really gonna do much. At about 420hp I barely notice a health drop at all against Sabercats/Bears, but i've also got an armor rating of 1165.