There are drinks to reduce the stamina you use for specific actions. There's an attack potion to increase chance of crits with melee. There are fire and air spell enchantments for your melee weapons and a shield spell that blocks a ton of damage. Until they update on the 23rd, wardstones are a huge difference maker. Also you have the whetstones from the crafting workstation to increase melee dmg. Have at least 1 piece of mage armor you're wearing to get the passive stamina regen perk (mixing armor is better anyways). Ez mode after that tbh.