How can I kill vampires?

Question

The enemy type that is causing me the most trouble are vampires. I can deal with the lower level ones, but if I meet a high-level vampire I usually die quickly.

I'm playing a Battlemage using Conjuration, a bit of Destruction and a legendary orcish sword. I'm also wearing legendary Dragonplate.

What are the weaknesses of vampires, and how can I prepare myself against vampires? What tactics are effective against vampires?

Answer 1

Vampires are really tough to fight against, especially the master vampire variants as they can take a huge beating. However, all vampires are weak to fire (they take an extra 50% damage). What you want to do ahead of time is to prepare lots and lots of fire: cast flame cloak, put a fire rune on the ground, and summon a flame atronach. I also noticed lots of vampires prefer frost type spells, so having a potion or two of frost resistance may help.

Some alternative tactics:

• Lure them out into the open (assuming its daylight). The sun will weaken them, reducing their health, stamina and magicka by a certain amount (but not kill them)
• Take advantage of dungeon traps, use those to take out vampires.

Answer 2

There are silver weapons that appear when fighting the silver hand those weapons are pretty good against them as well as fire.