I forgot how broken Malkoran is...

[Befuddled Honey Badger]

Level 22 with 300 health, Draught of Resist Magic and Cold along with trying Lord Stone and Atronach Stone buffs and I'm getting 1 shot even on Novice. I almost always play spell caster or rarely Bow builds but I'm sword and board Orc and I can even get close. The cold vortex doesn't even have to hit me to one shot either.

How in the actual ♥♥♥♥ are you supposed to kill this guy without magic or bows. Even then they aren't guaranteed either unless you paralyze spam him.

[Varanus]

Is he the guy at the end of Meridias quest? Regardless, ice storm is brutal. It doesnt just hit you once like other magics. Its once per second. So you'll usually get hit like 3 times, if you cant get out of the way. Making it one of deadliest spells, in a cramped area. D:

[hawklaser]

If the draughts, and the standing stone buffs are your only source of resistances, thats actually quite low for a melee character. As thats either 30% cold, and 45% magic or 30% cold, 20%magic, and 50% absorb. The resists each cap out at 85%, and stack with each other. Absorb can get to 100, but that takes a bit of work.

Does any of your gear have resistance enchantments on them? Have you done the Book of Love quest that starts in riften? Have you considered getting the spellbreaker shield?

[mikk011]

If you're not going to use a bow, one tactic I've used is Whirlwind Sprint to get close enough to hit him with a paralysis poison (repeat if necessary). His shade form doesn't have much staying power.

[The Great Cornholio]

frost atronach
companion to distract
dremora summoning staff from the guy in whiterun
heal potions

[Befuddled Honey Badger]

Originally posted by Varanus:

It doesnt just hit you once like other magics. Its once per second.

Except, I wasn't lasting a second. I'd run in, hide on the other side of one of the pillars, opposite to where the spell was cast and died and was being killed before I could even hit Q to use a potion. Literal insta-death.

Originally posted by hawklaser:

Does any of your gear have resistance enchantments on them? Have you done the Book of Love quest that starts in riften? Have you considered getting the spellbreaker shield?

I have the Elemental Protection node in Block.

Originally posted by The Great Cornholio:

frost atronach
companion to distract
dremora summoning staff from the guy in whiterun
heal potions

Sword and Board Orc. I don't have any Conjuration spells. Followers would get downed immediately (only tried Lydia) and I had zero time to even use potions. I wouldn't lose a bit of health, I would lose all 300 instantly.

[Skumboni]

Go to a crowded inn, crouch down and autowalk into a corner. Go do something irl for an hour . When you come back you should be able to sneak up on him and get the sneak bonus with what ever poison you want.

[The Great Cornholio]

dunno, maybe make some paralysis poisons and put it on a crossbow, slow time, get him paralyzed

he usually kills me once cause i forget how hard he hits but then he goes down, never had this much trouble

maybe just come back much later not like Dawnbreaker is important

[Befuddled Honey Badger]

I got lucky. After the gazillionth reload, he switched to his Staff of Fireball and was only hitting me with Ice Spike, which barely did anything.

I upped the difficulty back to Master from Novice and went and did Azura's Star quest and killed the Master and Ascendant Necromancers in Ilinalta's Deep with barely any issues. The Ascendant Necromancer was also using Ice Storm but even on Master it wasn't doing a huge amount of damage. Malkoran is broken af.

[Melkolf]

Just solo'd Meridia's quest at L38 so all those Corrupted Shades would provide me with Grand Souls. Playing an Arcane Archer (ie Bound Bow Mage, heavy Elemental Conjuration and Archery Enchantments) at Master level with no mods whatsoever.

Sent a Stormie into the room to distract Malkie while I stood at the door to Bound Bow the CS's. Fight lasted about a minute with M hardy firing anything due to the shock hits from my Stormie. When I went in to scavenge the place found Dawnstar on the floor, the Stormie having knocked it from its pedestal. Of course, when I activated the pedestal to get out I acquired a second Dawnstar. Breezehome now has 2 Dawnstars proudly on view.

It ain't just Malkie what's broke, the whole quest is.

And I'm not using any mods, not even the Unofficial Patch, just to recall how bugged and broken a lot of this game is, purely for the nostalgia I should add (I'm no masochist). And wow, so much of the vanilla game and DLC remain broke and bugged to hell. Is it any wonder players mod this game so much?

[Rez Elwin]

Last time I did that quest as a warrior, I blitzed him as a werewolf. Running power attack knocks him on his ass before he can even fire a spell then just tear him apart as he takes two centuries to stand back up.

[Yellowbeard]

Barbas/Serana...for when my magic resist/absorb is crap/unavailable.
Both if using a follower mod. Either way...I relish enlisting the help of the undead for that quest...lol.

[hawklaser]

So, just to illustrate how deadly Ice Storm is, a normal cast of it does 40, 50, or 60 damage per second dependent on which tier of augmented frost one has. Now, if dual cast that, it becomes 88, 110, or 132. Dual casting it also expands its area of effect.

I've used the adept difficulty while doing the damage math below, so no difficulty damage modifiers are applied. But you mentioned novice, which has you taking half damage, and master which has you taking double for reference sake. Also the wiki doesn't really mention if the difficulty modifier is applied before or after resistances are applied.

Based on your description of being one shot, and the animation wasn't hitting you, I'm going to assume Malkoran has Augmented Ice 2 and was Dual Casting it at you, and you were not actively blocking. So you were dealing with a base of 132 damage per second before any mitigation. You mentioned using a draught of magic resist (20%), draught of ice resist (30%), the lord stone (25% magic resist), and the Elemental Protection perk (50%fire/ice/shock reduction when blocking).

So, if we just stack the resistances gained from using both potions together, you would have been taking ~74dmg per second. With the Lord stone active as well, it lowers down to 60 per second. You say have 300 max health, so you could only survive 4 or 5 seconds of being in a dual casted ice storm without blocking. The wiki didn't really state if the the elemental protection perk was added to, or was applied separately from normal resistances. Worst case in your situation, it's separate and would have you taking 36 or 30 per second, best case its added and down to 21 or 17 per second. So if you were blocking the spell, looking at 8 to 17 seconds of survival. 8-17 seconds seems like it should have been manageable to access the menu and use healing potions.

Now for comparison's sake, lets add in the alteration perk Magic Resitance 3 (30% magic resist) and Agent of Mara (15% magic resist, from the book of love quest). This gets you up to 65% magic resist with the potion, and 70% with the lord stone, and 90% with both. Both exceeds the 85% cap. it then becomes 9, 8. or 5 damage per second when blocking. 32, 27, or 18 if you are not blocking.

This just shows how valuable resistances are. I didn't account for the Attronach stone's effect because its a 50% all or nothing that gets applied before resistances, and due to rng, its quite possible that you might not have it trigger during any particular casting of Ice Storm, or trigger enough to fully ignore a casting too.