How do you draw that line between a very good and effective weapon/armor and something that is just stupidly effective. Is a sword that does 50 damage per hit with fire damage OP? Is using 4 enchanted clothes to let you cast destruction spells for 0 magicka so you can spam 112 damage fire spells infinitely OP? Is 300 armor without any armor on because of ebonyskin and perks OP? Or if it's possible with the game is it all fair game?

If there are things that are considered exploit, how do we decide that line? How much should you be able to decrease magicka cost or how high should your sword's damage go and so on.

Personally at first I invested in the most effective methods of improving and enchanting, but now at level 60 I go around 2-5 hit killing everything except the hardest foes, for which I may have to do a couple grand healing spells. I don't think fiddling with the default difficulty is the answer because if you do that as you level, what even is the point of leveling? If your fights will be the same anyways, why increase your levels ?

Once you have weapons over 400, I say that's powerful.

Weapons over 1000, that's an exploit.

Weapons that do over 150 damage.

The only weapons that should be doing 100 - 150 are two-handers. One hander are balanced at 80 - 90. Bows 90 - 150. With that: Adept will be easy, Expert will be balanced, and Master will be do-able. Legendary will be a challenge.

The minute you go even slightly above normal legendary smithing, you're OP.