Is Dual-Wielding Daggers Viable? : V - Skyrim

» Mon May 14, 2012 3:51 am

From the perk trees, it looks like each combat tree Destruction/two hand/one hand is meant to be your character's way of dealing damage. One of those 3. Daggers only have a perk at the end of stealth that is only activated under certain conditions. It just isn't meant to be the source of all your damage.

That just seems to go against the notion of freedom that is behind these games. It's sad that there are more boosts to hand-to-hand, which is no longer even a skill, than there are to daggers. I suppose there is still a chance that armsman actually will boost dagger damage, and that the information floating around has been wrong, but I don't know about that. It'll be easy enough to test when the game comes out, to save and get a dagger and then invest a point to see if damage increases, but that's still days from now.

» Mon May 14, 2012 6:34 am

The fact the numbers ended up the same, WAS my point. It will also end up that daggers, though not as good as sworda, are better in the unavoidable combat situation.

Also, I was referring to the perk you need just to get x15 sneak attack. It's at the end of the tree. Actually you gata pickup the bow perk, wasting it if you don't use bows to begin with.

What I meant by "doing it right" was that with out the x15 perk, daggers are far far far inferior. Swords will ambush harder.

Right now, daggers are just a mid-late game 1 time use only item, that you would wana drop if you lost your cover or didn't 1 shot the enemy.

Daggers do X10 before the perk, actually. Plus its only halfway up the tree, 4 perks in.

» Mon May 14, 2012 6:14 am

That would require a thief character to spend even more perks. They have a hard enough time, as they'll definitely need lockpicking, pickpocket and sneak. Speech may also be necessary, as it lets you fence easier and I want it for the persuasion and intimidate bonuses anyway. If you want to be able to make poisons, you have to get alchemy, and light armor is highly recommended - although I will never wear a helmet, so I don't even know if half of those perks will help me. If you add one-handed on top of that, beyond just getting the dual wield perks, you're looking at a very perk heavy build. I don't think it's feasible. I'm very unhappy right now.

I'll probably just keep the difficulty at the minimum and roleplay. In Oblivion, I could just punch high level daedra to death on the lowest difficulty, so I'm pretty sure two daggers - even without perks - will be viable when difficulty is tossed aside.

The thing is, you generally don't need perks to do things in the game. You can make poisons and potions without alchemy perks. The perks will just make them stronger. You can pickpocket without the pickpocketing perks, they just make it easier. You can lockpick without the lockpicking perks. When I make a thief character, I'll probably max out sneak (definitely a must and definitely expensive in terms of perks needed), but I really doubt I'll try to max out pickpocketing AND lockpicking perks--I may go with one or the other, or potentially neither.

» Mon May 14, 2012 2:46 am

He's stabbing a ballistic dummy, not someone wearing armor and versed in the art of melee warfare. Even today (or should I say particulary today) knifes are last resort weapons or used for surprise attacks against unaware opponents.

it was a joke.... also we use knifes as a last resort cause we have these ---> :flamethrower:

» Mon May 14, 2012 3:10 am

You could use shouts to support your style, like using elemental fury. Two daggers + elemental fury + dual flurry is likely going to be the fastest melee style possible. Poisons also last more than one hit now, so you could use two poisons to stack drain health and enchantments to deal extra damage (since you'll be hitting much quicker they will trigger more).

There's also the stealth teleport shout which teleports you directly behind your target. Mix this with the stealth perk which let's you vanish from sight in battle by sneaking, you could open with a stealth attack then if that didn't kill you could use the vanish ability, follow it up with the shout and pull off another stealth attack straight after.

I'm pretty sure you could make dual daggers work, you just might have to put a bit more planning and thought into extra things like enchantments, poisons and tactics to make sure you don't get destroyed.

» Mon May 14, 2012 1:05 am

I've thought about it and I'm going to give the two daggers build a shot. These are the perks that I'll get - I know this wastes about eight perks, since I'll only be using daggers and I refuse to wear a helmet, but I have a very strange mindset when it comes to games and I don't like to leave any perk tree incomplete. I can make an exception for One-Handed simply because I'll be getting every branch except for the ones for axes, maces and swords. The tree will still be "complete", or at least "complete" enough not to bother me. I'll be able to swing my daggers very fast, and those power attack perks in the one-handed tree should be applicable to two daggers. When I level, my ratio is going to be 2-1-1 for stamina, health and magicka, so I should have plenty of stamina by the end to do a lot of quick strikes.

Light Armor: All (10)
One-Handed: Armsman, Fighting Stance, Critical Charge, Savage Strike, Paralyzing Strike, Dual Flurry, Dual Savagery (12)
Sneak: All (13)
Speech: All (13)

As people were kind enough to inform me, you don't need perks to do anything. Perks just make you better at it. So I'll still be able to enchant my daggers, and add poisons to them. They just won't be my specialization. I just hope that I can still lockpick and pickpocket. Conventional wisdom indicates that it should be easy enough without perks, especially if you don't mind saving and reloading, but I doubt they would put those perks in there if they weren't helpful.