All good tips, and don't forget to keep yourself stacked with health potions and resistence potions. the latter is key. grab yourself 50% frost resist and laugh at a frost dragon while you cut its fucking face off. don't forget to enchant like a motherfucker too. elemental resist + a potion = sabercats are way harder than dragons.
I will agree though, there are times in the game where your armor and items arent nearly as powerful as your enemies. these are the times you take the opportunity to craft or gather the gold to buy better shit. this is the game telling you "cool you're not ready, now use any one of the dozen or so options at your disposal to empowere yourself"
And these are all good tips, to you sir.
Another good tip I think is get yourself a bow with a nice damage boost. I always carry a bow with +26 fire damage on it, and I'm working on getting the double enchanting perk so I can stack another +26 frost damage on top of that. My Legendary Daedra Bow = 61 damage + 26 fire + 26 frost = 113 damage, plus 20 for Ebony arrows = 133 damage!!!
I read somewhere somebody was getting 141 damage out of their bow&arrows.
I think you can boost enchanting+alchemy together. You can enchant an item to give you a percentage boost to Alchemy potions, then make a potion to give you a percentage boost to enchantments, then go back give yourself a higher alchemy percentage while wearing the enchanted item...then go back and give yourself a higher percentage boost with a new potion...so on an so forth until you get a super high enchantment boost, and also you can make gear to give you a higher smithing boost as well!!!
Work on Smithing/Enchanting/Alchemy and you'll be able to make the best gear ever!
I know, it's a lot to take in, but it all works well together.
The short answer is boost something, get better, get more...that's all there is to it. If you want to dish out more damage, just get better and more. better and more. perks perks perks, gear gear gear, it will all fall into place.