You misunderstand sir. The bleeds stack with each other.

Example incoming, made up numbers; assuming one attack per second;

I hit an enemy, it takes 30 damage over 6 seconds from the bleed + weapon damage
I hit an enemy twice, it takes 5 damage for one second, 10 for 5 seconds and 5 for one second, totalling 60 damage over 7 seconds + weapon damage for both hits
I hit an enemy 3 times, it takes 5 damage for one second, 10 for one second, 15 for 4 seconds, 10 for one second, 5 for one second, totalling 90 over 8 seconds + weapon damage for each hit

That is correct, I just tested to confirm.

Alright. So Axes win against anything that bleeds, and the difficulty slider is really just an exercise in maschism. Good to know. Thanks.

Spawned Volsung randomly, 26 DR, 10 MR, 1490 HP. Looks like for the most part bosses are just normal mobs with more hp. Only one I can think of off the top of my head with unique mechanics are Gauldur's sons.

Edit; Out of curiosity, assuming I'm fighting an enemy that bleeds, how high would it's armor need to be for a Mace to be better?

A little over 400.

I'm a bit concerned that there are NO enemies with reasonable Armor Ratings. I'm hoping this is just to leave room for challenging DLC, and not a bug or oversight.

Is there a list of unbleeding enemies? I don't want to assume that all of them are obvious in a Bethesda title.

What I came to ask: Is there a clear point of diminishing returns for damage?

Wow. I did not expect to wake up to this. We went from Maces are best, to Swords are best, and now to Axes are best against anything but Undead? Great work, regardless.

What % of enemies in game would you say are Undead? From Cheshyr's chart, even against Undead, Swords look to be only 6-7% better than Axes against Undead, whereas Axes look to be 10-12% better than Swords against everything else.

Axes for me.

Another question would be if we are always power attacking does the bleed stack with dual savagery for dual wielders?

Ok, just wanted to stop by and say thanks, these threads have been extremely helpful. I did have a question about unarmed min-maxing though.

The Fists of Steel perk adds your gauntlet armor rating to your unarmed damage.
Therefore to maximize this we would need to max out our armor rating.

So,
1.) have all the perks from the heavy armor tree that inc. rating, i.e. 5/5 (100%), all heavy armor (25%) and matched set (25%) = +150%? (not sure how the math works out on these bonuses)
2.) make daedric armor, improve it with our smithing gear and potions on
3.) Enchant the gear to have 4x Heavy Armor enchants and 2x Fortify Unarmed

My character is unable to do this currently, but it seems like it would be a LOT of damage.

Could anyone test this or just run the numbers if you have a better understanding of them than I do?

Also, how would it compare in damage to one-handers?

Thanks again!

I don't see many enemies with over 450 damage, and most are in the 200's or less, so... yes and no? Your 180 damage weapon is probably fine if you don't mind swinging 2 or 3 times per enemy. Dual Wielding 200 damage axes should be sufficient, even without the One Handed enchants. But, if you want the overkill, you'll want the One handed enchants as well.

Yes, Axes make the most sense. I may have prefered maces, but I will never bias my results. The numbers say Axes 90+% of the time. It just goes to show that preferences and initial impressions don't have any bearing on an outcome. Math or go home. :-p

I doubt the extra damage applies to the bleed, but it's certainly something we can check.

Glad to be of service.

Fists of Steel uses the Base Armor Rating only... it doesn't matter how high you crank the displayed armor rating. Essentially, once you have Daedric Gauntlets of any quality, and add the Fists of Steel perk, you have maxed out your Unarmed Damage. You can also get the Fortify Unarmed enchant, and drop that on a Ring and the Gaunlets for an additional boost... after the crafting synergy, it's +14 each. Very decent.

In the end, you cap at +61 damage if you're a Khajitt, +46 otherwise. I would frequently go toe-to-toe with Dragons with no issue. Enjoy the brawling!

well that is disappointing. I was getting kind of excited, if fists of steel was calculated on improved armor rating the damage would be quite ridiculous. Thanks anyways though!!

Yeah, I went there too. Don't get me wrong though; it's very viable. +61 doesn't sound like much, but at level 40, even dungeon bosses only took 4-5 swings, and there's nothing quite as satisfying as the Unarmed finishing moves. They are the best finishing moves in the game. You should keep at it.

edit: Also, I plan to mod in better Unarmed support in the future, so having a character built for it wont hurt. :-p

This is very interesting and important work. For me though, undead are the main problem after dragons; high level draugr and dragon priests are all I fear and none of them bleed so I think swords still sound better. On the other hand, the crit damage does seem a bit underpowered for 3 perks. I guess this may require some more thought.

Various attacks against a bandit with a True Armor rating of 205 using a Deadric axe with 45 Attack

Health (damage) = Type of attack (Bleed damage if applicable)

398
364.07 (33.93) = Axe
346.07 (51.93) = Axe with bleed (+18)
330.14 (67.86) = Power attack
312.14 (85.86) = Power attack with bleed (+18)
313.17 (84.83) = Power attack with Savage Strike
295.17 (102.83) = Power attack with Savage Strike and bleed (+18)

330.14 (67.86) = Dual Axe
294.14 (103.86) = Dual axe with bleed (36)

347.11 (50.89) = One hit Power attack
329.11 (68.89) = One hit Power attack with bleed (18)

296.21 (101.79) = Two hit Power attack
260.21 (137.79) = Two hit Power attack with bleed (36)

245.32 (152.68) = Three hit Power Attack
191.32 (206.68) = With bleed (54)
168.97 (229.03) = With Dual Savagery
114.97 (283.03) = With Dual Savagery and bleed (54)
111.72 (286.28) = with Dual Savagery and Savage Strike
57.72 (340.28) = with Dual Savagery and Savage Strike and bleed (54)

Edit; Normal attack with a Iron Waraxe, damage shown is 24

398
379.90 (18.1) = normal attack
374.90 (23.1) (5) = with bleed

Edit 2; same attacks on a mammoth for 0 DR

931

Daedric
886 = 45
868 = 63 (18)

Iron
907 = 24
902 = 29 (5)

And how do swords compare with charge critical against Savage Strike? (I assume standing and sprinting are mutually exclusive.)

I heard that the charge perks are bugged, though.

Attacks on a mamoth with a Daedric Sword (42)

Health = (Damage) Attack type (Damage boost) (Percentage increase from base damage of 42)

931
847 = (84) Charge/standing power attack
836.50 = (94.5) Standing critical with Bladesman (10.5) (25% of base 42)
833 = (98) Charging critical (14) (33% of base 42)
826.00 = (105) Charging crit with Bladesman (21) (50% of base 42)

Charge crit is Guaranteed 100% if you're holding the run button and forward.

That's regular run, not sprint, correct?

It's sprint, Alt key on keyboard

Ah, OK...thanks. One other question; the description of critical charge is double critical damage but it doesn't require bladesman so double what? Is there a chance of critical strike without any perk?

Honestly, I have no idea. I've never seen a non perked crit myself and it gives a 33% damage boost, so it's not even double of anything AFAIK

Did some testing with war axes--it appears the bleed damage depends only on weapon material, and not on item quality, one-handed skill, or other one-handed perks.

Nice to see you joining us Zerggin, I've read some of your imformative posts over on USEP

After testing it seems swords work the same way. Extra crit damage is based on a standard attack with the base weapon. Smithing upgrades don't improve the crit damage.

Edit: I noticed that Zerg mentioned perks so I went back to double check, they don't effect sword either.

Base Daedric sword, no other perks. 21 base damage.

(21) Attack
(+7) Bladesman 1/3 33.333%
(+8.75) Bladesman 2/3 41.6666%
(+10.5) Bladesman 3/3 50%
(+14) Critical Charge 66.666%
(+21) Critical Charge + Bladesman 100%

The weapon perks look kinda crappy now. If I have a 550 Daedric sword do I really want to waste 3 perks on +10? I think Maces win on account of having the highest damage and the perks svcking

Maces are the best! No, now Swords are the best! No, now Axes are the best! No, now Maces are the best! No, now...

Love this thread.

Also, this expanded info on the perks being driven by base damage values also ties into the perk saving you might do. If you're only going for Steel Smithing and using Skyforged/Nord/Wolf, your base values will be lower so these weapon spec perks will also be lower.

Haha, if the perks scaled properly, it would be Axes > Swords > Maces, with sword winning against undead and maces winning against anything with really high armor, although nothing in the game has high enough armor to make them useful anyway. Since the perks don't scale, I think maces win just for pure base damage.

Domilasa: By the Nine it's worse than I thought! So basically we're looking at three perks for +2.1 average damage per hit (considering the proc rate of only 20%). Considering the bonus damages from perks are fixed for both swords and axes, swords will probably still win eventually due to their faster attack rate (my tests showed a ~10% difference in attack rate--does anybody have better values?) if both are smithed/enchanted/fortify one-handed to the max. Frankly at this point I would say forget the specific weapon perks.

offshore33: I guess it's our fault for assuming the perks worked in a sane fashion, haha.

All of this really depends on your definition of Best again. realize that the chart I created is already normalized across weapon attack speeds, and uses real numbers, not theorycraft. The chart is the actual relative damage, and axes straight up win if you're looking for max damage on average while using max improved weaponry.

Now, if our definition of best is the most efficient use of perks... things get hairy. At what point do we say we're doing 'enough damage'? Once we know that, we can do what we did with armor: find the least number of perks to achieve that damage level, and thereby define 'best weapon type' for us.