You HAVE to be in an open area to melee kill. If they have no space to land (based on game limitations) they will hover and fire/ice blast your face off.
Freaking AWESOME! Thank you for this tip!
I have a spell-blade (ish) character that I have no problem killing dragons. Well, alright let's face it, on Master without any guards helping, it might take me a good fifteen to twenty minuets to kill said dragon, but still. Anyway, I noticed that my melee does a LOT of damage compared to say a bow or my pet. But, I ran into a problem.
I wanted to make a character that had NO MAGIC! I wanted that SAME character to not use bows. I intentionally wanted a "melee only" character. But, this dragon issue was starting to pose a problem. Granted my new character is only level 9 and does NOT have the grounding shout (I don't even have that on my main, because I tend to try to not do the main story).
I have no problem killing a dragon with a group of guards, but it seemed when I was by myself the dragon wanted to do what you described and just hover there roasting me and Lydia. If I hid and waited for Lydia to ground him, he'd kill her. If I tried to draw his fire and hide, he'd go back to flying around. So irritating.
Once you mentioned the "space" issue, I now see the problem. The location I kept returning to is the one from the "messenger" you get when you show off your voice around Whiterun. The "overlook" or something. That area SUCKS for killing dragons as a melee. As a caster it's awesome, plenty of stuff to hide around, but as melee, because of what you described, it's horrible.
Thanks again bro, big help!