For my first character i am roleplaying an orc who fights with melee weapons only,

no bows, magic, potions or enchantments. I played through the main quest staying

at low level with a lower difficulty setting since I was just starting out.

After the MQ and many hours of playing, maxing out the skills I need, I leveled up to

21 and set the difficulty all the way up to the hardest setting where I want to keep it.

Now I am back in Sundercliff to loot the place again and find myself whacking away

at these enemies and the only thing that happens now is my weapon breaks.

At maximum difficulty, am I wasting my time with this type of character?

What race/class/skillset is more survivable at the hardest setting?

You can play a no magic character at normal difficulty, but if you want to play at max difficulty, you probably need some magic, either a good enchantment on your weapon or some poison on your weapon, or both. Otherwise its going to be a long slugfest and you will need multiple weapons since they may break before you have an opportunity to repair them.

The max difficulty in Oblivion is a lot more extreme than Legendary in Skyrim. In Oblivion the hardest difficulty is 1/6 x damage dealt and 6x damage taken. By contrast, Legendary in Skyrim is only 1/4x and 3x, so max difficulty in Oblivion is almost double that of Skyrim.

Maybe Golden Sinner will stop by and tell you how its done, since I think he plays on max difficulty, but I know he uses magic and potions and sneak. I don't think it is really possible to play Oblivion on max difficulty without some of that.

I thought for sure the issue was gonna be your character looks like a potato. Thats the issue I have with oblivion and it isn't easily fixed, luckily your issue is - turn down the difficulty.

I ended up turning the difficulty down.

In skyrim I played a similar character

with "legendary" difficulty and most enemies

fell down if I sneezed at them.

I want to try hardest difficulty again someday

maybe with an illusion/conjuration character.

An illusion/conjuration character should do well at max difficulty, since the difficulty slider does not affect illusion/conjuration spells. Creatures and NPC's under your control (or ones that are frenzied) will do the same damage to other NPCs and creatures regardless of the position of the slider.

At max difficulty you need to use poison, or conjure something, I like to listen to a Dremora Lord berate my opponent, or stack weakness spells and then zap them.