@ Federally - I have a similar setup (and a similar distaste for pausing the game for pots) Magic resist is your best bet. Get it to 85 percent and the breath won't be a problem anymore.

Posting on the forums implies knowledge of not being an ass.

If you can't figure that out when giving advice, you aren't ready.

Yeah I wasn't sure if magic resist worked on breath attacks since they are shouts, thought they may be a different category.

Enchantment.

Do Sanguine's quest, and use the Sanguine's Rose to summon dremora to attract attention for you. Make sure to use Dragonrend to ground dragons first! You can then use invisibility and get that massive Sneak Attack Critical!

Magic Resistance and Elemental Resistance, and you can have up to 85% in both.

So 1000 original damage -> 150 after magic resistance -> 22 damage after elemental damage... I guess you get the point though....

Spell absorbtion is a flat % to absorb the spell, and comes first....

I have a similar rule about using health potions or any potion at all except during crafting.

There are a number of ways to deal with dragon breath.

Having high magic and elemental resistance helps lower breath damage. You can get them easily via a large number of ways. However that not what I'm here for. That way you must have already know, what i'm here for is to teach you the secret techniques:

1. Spell breaker. It throws out a ward far more powerful than it's description suggests. It is by far, more powerful than what a restoration master can throw out.

2. Ethereal shout. Get talos blessing and amulet. If you have the morokei mask fix which uses the real morokei enchantment (100% magicka regenerate and 20% faster shout cooldown), use that as well. Using only the first level of the shout should allow you to go ethereal whenever dragon breath is incoming.

3. Atronarch standing stone + breton's dragon skin makes you invulnerable to all magic (including dragon breath) for 60 seconds. Kill him within the time.

4. Conjuration/companions and invisibility. Invisibility WILL force the dragon to switch target even if you are almost immediately detected afterwards. This is how shadow walker works.

Dragonrend. It's not just useful for snaring the dracs out of the sky. Use just a quick low-tier shout (just "JOOR") to stagger the drac in the middle or even before he lets fly with a breath attack. Then patch up with healing if you do get singed a bit. The five-second cooldown from just the tier 1 shout means you can do it again in short order.

It's also useful in such a manner against Alduin himself.

Yeah the resistences are only somewhat helpful, my health pool is so low relative to damage dealt they just can't save me.

Your other suggestions are what I was really looking for, something more creative I hadn't thought of yet, thank you.

Problem with Dragonrend is Alduin is kicking the [censored] out of me in the fight directly after learning the shout. So I haven't played around with it much seeing as I can't yet defeat him and had to revert back to a save prior to reading the elder scroll.

Wards.

You say you use Restoration, so that shouldn't be a problem, especially since you only ever need the Lesser Ward, as far as I know. If you can predict breath attacks correctly, you'll never take damage from them that way--always works for me.

I don't know if you should invest in more powerful wards and therefore more magic/Restoration perks, because by the time I was fighting Elder and Ancient dragons, I was already using the Greater Ward. I do know for a fact that Steadfast Ward works for their breath, though.

Spellbreaker works perfect for me. Even Ancients can't hurt me (provided I get the shield up in time).

I've always just pretended my character was more resilient and only used health potions after combat because it seems ridiculous to me as well.

Shouting is an ancient form of magic.

He'd like to play the game like a real warrior/theif/whatever without the lame final fantasy pausing in combat stuff , ot like some people play dragon age/mass effect.

Being a melee in this situation you'd be really surprised at just how extremely awesome a simple thing like a tree is.I can't believe nobody has mentioned simple cover.Pick YOUR place to fight , don't just think , ok this is it I HAVE to fight eaxactly right here , use the terrain to your advantage keep close to a rock interrupt/get some hits in wait for the next breath jump behind the rock etc.When you find them by the word walls the wall itself is seriously useful for not only cover but making the dragon place himself perfectly in front of it providing a great target in a clear area.If you're dual-wielding save your stamins for power attacks to do the interrupting for you which is just icing for the compounded damage.STrafe your enemies always , this doesn't apply to just dragons , as this isn't WoW where it doesn't matter where you stand the combat "hit" has already been decided.There IS real-time player reactive avoidance in this game.

Patience seems to be a virtue that is being lost in this age of speed and iwantitrightnow. A little patience , and good awareness of your surroundings and all the sudden you're not overburdened anymore with 500 lbs. of potions and optional gear to tailor a fight to the point of trivializing it.This applies to every fight in the game , everything can be manipulated to your advantage with some patience and planning.Melee , though , sometimes you gotta just let it all fly and take a calculated risk and burst like crazy. Afterwards though , you wanna get right back minimizing damage. Example , you have some "smarter" ranged that simply won't budge from their perches , and you want to avoid a deathlord and a couple other mobs from gimping your face around a wall. Avoid the melee mobs , run past them avoiding getting hit and go stomp the guts out of that ranged guy. Find cover again find the next ranged target take assessment of your health levels etc. and go stomp the other. You'll get the idea pretty quick once you've done it successfully and modify it to your liking.

The only problem with cover is sometimes it doesn't work. More then once I've been behind an object and had a breath attack come through/around and kill me. Kind if frustrating.