I can honestly say being at level 67 playing on expert no one gives me as much difficulty as an ice mage. this enemy is extremely frustrating as they keep up there ward and just continuously ice spike and ice storm you leaving it impossible to get in close range....most of the time.
whats your plan with them......bearing in mind if you play below expert they wont be much of a challenge atall....otherwise i wouldnt have posted this.
personally for me they always have a ward up and ice storms and continuously slowing and depleting my health by a surprising amount. .........i like to find a corner where we keep each others distance........i like when npcs are tactical and keep distance or sneak up.......hate it when they just charge straight at you and hack away standing there....no realism to it.
by anyway....i like to find cover and well.....what a ward cant deflect is poisoned arrows , especially magic damaging ones. slow time is handy for these encounters aswell.
Ok, having run an exclusive ice mage necromancer myself i made the following observation:
Due to the radius and slow moving nature of ice storm plus the inherent slowing effect of all ice magic, i swear that it can actually hit an opponent twice if you catch the angle right. Basically your opponent is within the area of effect for more than 1 second so it hits twice and completely rinses their health. Its devastating.
So if your up against a Necromage or a Master Necromancer i either:
Don't know what class you are roleplaying but... I find it useful to: 1. drink frost resistance potion, 2. Magicka regeneration/damage poison via arrow to the ice mages knee.
When all else fails Storm Call DS works really well against mages. (Shock damages health and magicka) or just lightning spells.
"but wow, playing a melee character is so much harder than a sneaky one O.O"
Ditto that. Man do I miss being able to land that first sneak attack. My new guy is an orc in heavy armor...only uses a warhammer, and no ranged attack whatsoever. And SLOW.... I can see I'm going to need to get my armor rating as high as possible, and get good at closing distance on guys like this. Crushing people to the ground with the hammer is fun though.