Sunday, 5th May 2019, 05:48 by svendre
The solution to your problem was to unwield you weapon when you encountered Mara and wait for the illusion to be created. You had ample fire resist so Mara wasn't the main threat. It was your own illusion which killed you. Had your illusion been created in this manner, it would have been unable to deal nearly as much damage as it did (and thus not kill you like it did). Since Mara blinks, you could keep resetting the fight with a set of stairs until you got the weak illusion created while still at or near full health, and then wielded your weapon and won the fight.
The skilling and spells didn't matter as much as tactical experience. 20/20 hindsight to have the perfect set of spells doesn't account for when the skills and spells you had may have saved your life in a different fight. You had 15 unused points to memorize spells, and it could be argued you should have had them spent, but seriously, your spell casting abilities and int weren't really that great anyways. What's even more amusing is that if you had more powerful spells well trained, your illusion would have used them on you. Part of your trouble was even just the spells you had, because your own illusion used slow on you. You were by far much more of a marksman, which was fine enough, and that's how you could have killed Mara.