I've been wondering about the effectiveness of light armor warriors vs. dragons, using either sword+shield or dual-wield and NO archery support. I'm thinking that the high-damage, dual-wielding assassin type character would just be too squishy, having to run up to the dragon and survive for the duration of the power attack. However, i'm not sure how the block build would work, or how effective the shield power bash would be vs. a dragon, with only a single melee weapon as a primary source of damage.

essentially, i'm wondering if the lack of defense of the dual-wield player makes dragon battles endlessly frustrating, and also whether or not the defensive potential of the lightly armored shield fighter can withstand heavy dragon pummeling while also dealing significant damage.

Would greatly appreciate any input from pure melee thief or assassin players!

Duel-wielding isn't all that great. I played a duel-wielding character up to level 50 on master. It gets boring because if you don't kill your enemy in five seconds or less, your dead.

Blocking makes combat more fun and it will help prevent those dragons from roasting your ass.

Thanks! This is exactly what I feared, as I have a dual-wield rogue that has yet to start the main quest and dragon encounters. Also, dual wield seems to be designed almost exclusively for stealth builds, particularly focusing on the sneak attack critical multipliers (OP as all hell). However, i haven't experimented with a blocking character, and i can only imagine that a dragon battle would involve lots of shield bashing in order to stagger and prevent retaliation, followed by poking away forever with the single sword. If sword/shield is the way to go, will i want to focus on power bash damage, or the damage output of my actual weapon?

I beg to differ. Dual-wielding can absolutely wreck just about any opponent with one power attack and the right perks.

The bash perks are especially useful for dragons. Time them right and you can stop a breath or power attack. As powerful as dual wiled can get I think I will always stick to a shield and one handed because the best defense is a good defense.

amiright?

Blocking has some great perks. the base perks even makes two-handed weapons better than duel-wielding. I use both one-hand + sword and two-handed weapons, but I prefer one hand + shield for most combat.

The arrows do no damage and +50% defense against fire, frost, and shock is essential if you really want to block good. On higher difficulties those Falmer will kill you with 2 poisoned arrow shots and higher level mages are very dangerous and helps with dragons.

All the perks are great, but pretty much block perks are divided between defense and offense. I don't really need shield-bashing since I can paralyze most targets for example.

Yeah i one of my characters i had Mehrunes dagger and an Daedric dagger. 15x sneek attack dmg! And of course my sneek was all the way maxed.

1. Equip weapon in mainhand/offhand that has hp and/or stamina absorb. (E.g. Blade of Woe and Nightingale Blade is a decent combo).
2. ???
3. Profit.

You pretty much get a good deal of hp back per swing to replenish what you've lost. I can run up to a dragon and kill it insanely fast without taking much damage at all. The only issue with this setup is dealing with multiple ranged enemies, shield blocking really comes into use then. But with adequate stamina for sprinting and using objects to los targets you can get around it.

what blocking perks are useful for two hand?

Yeah, the perks in blocking look too good to pass up. I'm curious to try out the Deadly Bash line of perks, as i've heard that the damage and stun locking can be used to take out powerful enemies without even using the primary weapon. If that's the case, then it seems that the block tree was designed so that the shield can either greatly support your primary attack style (whether sword or spell), or it can BECOME your primary source of damage.

What i'm unsatisfied with so far, on my rogue character, is that the build is overpowered for most encounters (anything that you can sneak up on, particularly bandits) and nearly worthless on anything else, such as a dragon.

Duel-Wielding is very stamina and heavy armor / alteration heavy + stead stone heavy. You gotta run around dodging everything. That's just annoying to me.

Agreed. What i'm going for is a lightly armored skirmisher type warrior, that DOESN'T use archery for roleplaying reasons. As far as I can tell, light armor was designed for use by archers (low defense, intended for taking small amounts of damage infrequently), whereas dual wielding is really only practical if using heavy armor (need massive defense, otherwise glass cannon). But a lightly armored warrior with a shield, would fit right into my character concept while remaining viable, if not overpowered.

Mainly just the first one to keep down the damage. It reads for blocking with shield or weapon. Right now I am doing a two handed character and just have 1 or 2 points in the initial blocking perk tree. Seems to help me a bit.

You can easily gain as much protection from your light armor as you can from your heavy armor. Only takes a bit of smithing and some armor perks (or alchemy/enchanting).

Power attacks, even when dualwielding, can be done with just 1 stamina. So, put an Absorb Stamina enchant on one of your weapons with a magnitude of 1.

I'm not sure how a dual wield and heavy armor setup would be like, but for light armor you could also get the +50% stamina regeneration perk, and also the respite perk from the restoration tree and toss yourself a heal now and then.

On a side note, I really wish you could save and hotkey a mainhand/offhand weapon set, it would make things a lot of smoother with less juggling of weapons/spells.

I'm doing just fine with light Elven guilded armor and Elven shield. No armor perks whatsoever. Master difficulty. Blocking/Alteration/Enchanting > Armor perks.

Duel wield is fine, you would be able to have two weapons with up to two different enchants on them each.

Just make sure one of them has absorb stamina allowing you to use power attacks constantly.

Duel-Wielding in Light Armor on master difficulty is impossible unless you dodge every single attack or attack through stealth.

Dual wielding is not necessary as an assassin because your initial damage should be so huge that if they are not dead from it, they should be close to it.

But I dual wield as an assassin for the convenience. My right weapon is for normal sneak attacks. My left weapon is for trapping souls.

Heavy armor can at most reduce 85% of incoming physical damage.
Light armor can at most reduce 85% of incoming physical damage.

It's easy to reach this cap wearing light armor.

The early game will be killer though. And I think the cap for damage is 80% , not 85%.

Hell you can cast the dragonflesh spell and automatically get the 80% resistance being naked, but it takes a long time to get that far for mastery.

I have two sword and board toons. A Breton and Orc. They both do very well in light armor with one hand and shield. Once you get the elemental blocking dragons become a cake walk. You may have some slight problems with 3 or more mele types but you character is so fast you can kite and separate them. Divide and conquer. Ya but Light armor and shield is a dragon/mage killer. Just a bit tough on level 1-10.

Both have the lord stone, the Orc has some elemental enchants the Breton just has stat enchants. From what I can tell my Orc who wields a one handed axe does more damage than my Breton who has one handed swords. I am deducting that the axe bleed effect is key here because most of your fights just last longer with this type of setup.

Pretty much sums it up. With the exception of ancient dragons on master difficulty......oh boy. Those guys are tough to fight no matter what build you make.

I'm loving the axe+shield with light armor set up on my orc.

Dragons are a breeze so far, power bash really shines in these encounters! I don't even bother using berserk mode against them, I'd rather save that for multiple enemy encounters. It's handy having the extra speed and stamina that comes with this build and once you unlock the quick reflexes & block runner perks, you barely get hit in combat. Giants & mammoths have become my favourite things to hunt, the bigger the group the better!

True, as an assassin/rogue character, my stealth attack damage is absurdly strong - no problems there. But, unless i'm mistaken, it would be nearly impossible to sneak up on a dragon in a normal encounter without using invisibility. I want a light armored, thief-type character that can ALSO go toe-to-toe with a dragon if necessary, and it sounds like dual-wield was not intended for that purpose. It almost seems that dual wield is the combat style most dependent on other skills in order to realize a well-rounded character, such as someone above mentioned, using enchanting/smithing to increase damage and stamina, or using sneak attack exclusively, or improving light armor to reach the damage reduction threshold.

But, just dual-wielding on its own, in a straight-up fight at earlier levels, simply isn't as viable it seems.