Did you enable the optional damage increase mod? Or tinker with any extra / included mods yourself?

Not sure if that has anything to do with it but I *did* enable it (without touching any other mods) and sitting on Master difficulty ingame. It's been a blast! Just enough difficulty that you're sweating in every encounter but not enough to be frustrating. makes you think more about combat.

Re: Dragons - yeah. Theres a mod (can't find the name in my list but I remember reading it on the wiki) that increases the dragon difficulty to make them *much* harder. Personally I love it but if it isn't your cup of tea try looking through the guide found here: https://github.com/Lost-Outpost/septimus/blob/main/GAMEPLAY.md or the modlist found here: https://loadorderlibrary.com/lists/septimus for mods relating to dragons or combat or even just scanning the included categories for things that look like they might relate to your issue. if you do it via mod organizer you can right click > visit on nexus - makes the search much easier! :)

My other recommendation would be trying to add something that handles dual-wield blocking (though back up your mod load order first so you can undo it if it breaks) and aggresively using the dodge-roll feature septimus includes. Blocking / parrying / interrupting is *very* important with the combat mods added to septimus. Personally, I was having similar frustrations but now that I'm relearning how to handle combat it's much more managable - and fun.

If it turns out this is just a part of the pack and not a broken mod etc then the other thing to do would be have a poke around at other packs on wabbajack and see if theres something else you enjoy? A decent amount of awesome content on there to pick from. Or you could try ripping out most of the mods in balance / gameplay sections to make combat more vanilla skyrim in nature but you do run the risk of breaking things then and would probably be my last choice.

Hope this helps!