It's been a long time since I've played, but I remember that the bleed perks on axes were considered somewhat underpowered. Is this still the same, or have one of these patches buffed it at all?

They are all pretty useless. If anything, the mace perks are somewhat better.

To my knowledge, nothing has been done to change then in the vanilla game. They are all better avoided as none are actually worth the 3 point investment. The Axes is the lesser of two, or three evils, I guess. However, it is still not really worth it. Those points are better spent elsewhere.

Yes. What's disappointing is, I was really looking forward to the bleed perk for axes. What a letdown.

Doesn't the bleed damage reset after every hit?

I think so.

I'd have to look it up again, but IIRC the bleed damage equated to an additional 15 points. Don't quote me on that, I may be waaay off.

Come to think of it... That does sound rather high. It was probably more like 7 damage. IDK...

No, it stacks, and each material type does a different amount of damage. IIRC a daedric axe with a rank 3 perk does 18 damage total over 6 seconds from bleeding.

Fun fact, as a result of how it was done there are like 18 different spells used for Hack and Slash and Limbsplitter. Why they didn't do what I did for my mod and have uniform bleeding regardless of material I'll never know. It's certainly a lot easier to set up, test, and maintain the perks when you're juggling 1/6 the spells, to say nothing of the perk conditions.

Bleed Perk is good on harder difficulties, especially against enemies that regenerate, but otherwise is fairly negligible. It is saved by the fact it will proc on every hit to an enemy with blood though.

The mace perk is actually slightly less useful than the Axe perk. Few enemies have an armor rating above 150, which is only about a 20% Increase in durability. Most enemies are entirely unarmored.

The absolute worst is the Sword perk. The damage-per-hit at max level comes out to only an extra 2 damage with a Daedric sword. Still, the critical sound is pretty satisfying, so I always take it on my sword using characters.

So sad, a great idea undone by poor implementation.

So many enemies should have been better armoured.

Dwermer Automations should be practically all armour with massive resistances to magic as well.

Dragons should have armour (Dragonhide - Duh!).

Maces would come in handy then.

The only thing they got "right" was the particular enemies that don't bleed.

Also - I think the "first" perk effect for each weapon should always be active. Currently the only difference between sword/axe/mace is weight/swingspeed/damage. They could be more unique by having their criticals/bleeds/armour piercing on at least some minimal level to begin with, without perks. The perks could then make this more effective.

Personally I don't use these perks anymore. It saddens me. I ignore them - with a bit of smithing they all become obsolete. They would only come in handy early game, but the 3rd tier perks are only available at level 90 skill. Pointless.

If you don't want to smith then use them by all means.

Axes are my favourite. They do the most DPS and are consistent. The only problem is that bleed doesn't work on Undead or Automations.

Swords second. The 3 perks over 1000 hits equates to about 10% more damage... meh.

Maces should have been the best. Ignore 75% of the enemy's armour? OK! However. No enemies with sufficient armour perks to justify it. Bugger.

-HK

Little sidenote for the sword perk.

crit hit. = stagger hit

20% chance for a 1-2 seconds "stun". (3/3 points)

The damage is .... lets not talk about the damage....