Without the Exp mod it's normal,everything's fine,struggling as always.
With the 4x skill points I 1-shot them instantly. I have also the level 500 mod and I thought the monsters will be more powerful.
You say struggling?
I have a 4 mage party on one computer, and I've gone past most of act 1 and act 2 (stopped only due to lack of interest as of late 2013) regular while being bored to death because I can kill anything before they touch me: 4 summons + all the buffs (aquatic or spirit embrace, wrath of magic) and I either frost beam/static bolt/grave beam them down, or go AoE with Cold Snap, and Firespray, rapidly repositioning as needed. ( which is easy, as the mages can be controlled as one control group since they have the same casting time and everything.)
Add to that the usual power trick (using energy orb/gravity stone to "recharge" my powers), and the only problematic cases are when the enemy can automatically hit me and my summons are dead. (had one wipe to the dark wizard in the ice caves, and another one in windstone fortress against the miniboss plagued mage). Pretty much everything else is me steamrolling through hordes or a few stronger creatures focused down, using curses time to time (drown or dehydrate, sometimes steal magic on the vai'kesh mages).
You say struggling?
I have a 4 mage party on one computer, and I've gone past most of act 1 and act 2 (stopped only due to lack of interest as of late 2013) regular while being bored to death because I can kill anything before they touch me: 4 summons + all the buffs (aquatic or spirit embrace, wrath of magic) and I either frost beam/static bolt/grave beam them down, or go AoE with Cold Snap, and Firespray, rapidly repositioning as needed. ( which is easy, as the mages can be controlled as one control group since they have the same casting time and everything.)
Add to that the usual power trick (using energy orb/gravity stone to "recharge" my powers), and the only problematic cases are when the enemy can automatically hit me and my summons are dead. (had one wipe to the dark wizard in the ice caves, and another one in windstone fortress against the miniboss plagued mage). Pretty much everything else is me steamrolling through hordes or a few stronger creatures focused down, using curses time to time (drown or dehydrate, sometimes steal magic on the vai'kesh mages).