What is the most effective weapon type? Let us have a discussion about if you max out each skill to 100, and have the best variant of each melee weapon, which will be the most effective. I've always used swords mostly but I've been looking into 2 handed weapons and am wondering if they're as effective once your 2H skill is high enough

Daggers: I don't like them. They're not fast enough to make up for their badness.

Sword: My go to weapon because of the trick where you make 2 quick swipes, and right as the second one ends you use a power attack very quickly. 3 very quick strikes that deal decent damage.

War ax: I don't see any reason to be a bit slower for a bit of extra damage, but then again you could say why not sacrifice a bit of speed for slightly higher damage...

Battle ax/Greatsword: Kind of seems like if you're going to use a 2H weapon you may as well use a Warhammer...

Warhammer: I've been experimenting with this lately, can't figure out whether it's worth investing time in training my 2H skill

Are we talking which does the most damage? If so, its dual wielding. It's all preference, I like swords, so I use swords.

Most effective is dagger. Speed and agility of both weapon and player allows for critical strikes and movement. Dual wielding is a lame mechanic. It may look good in movies and games, but it's absolutely appalling as a combat technique.

As for damage output, that's rather a dubious question to answer because of the base damage each weapon has. Component to address is speed. If a dagger can hit for 200 in 5 seconds vs. 100 in 5 seconds with any other weapon, dagger wins.

Most fights rarely end in one hit. Time, endurance (stamina), and skill are all factors to calculate damage output.

Unless you have dual enchanting capability. Then you can have very high DPS with no exploits (assuming you don't consider dual enchanting itself an exploit).

With moderate Destruction perks, you can have 138 magic damage (156 with a store bought potion) plus however much physical damage you want to go for all at 30% faster than a sword.

sword because fast and stuff.

I voted for war axe because mace isn't on there...

You forgot Bow and Arrow.

Bows, which aren't even on there.

All weapons are the same.

I find that having a war axe in one hand and a sword in the other is the coolest thing ever.

WROOOOoOoooooOooOoOng!

Sorry about that. all weapons are not the same.