Dealing with high melee attacks : V

» Tue Dec 06, 2011 4:27 pm

I play a warrior with a 1h and shield. Dealing with normal mobs is trivial for the most part but when it comes to bosses it's another matter entirely.

Almost every "boss mob" carries a 2h and has ~1second swing timer, it's ridiculous, anyone wielding a 2h should have slower but heavy attacks but not in this game, noo. The only way that works is either doing it enough times that it bugs out, having a stack of potions and kiting and waiting for shouts to come off cooldown. There's no way to slow melee attack speed or disarm, only block which does practically nothing against these juggernauts because they are always swinging and you are stuck blocking.

Is 1h + shield even a viable spec?

» Tue Dec 06, 2011 5:37 pm

Against high-damage melee fighters, the "Unrelenting Force" shout is worth its weight in gold. With the full 3 words, you can send even Draugr Deathlords flying into the ceiling, giving you valuable time to hack them up or heal.

As for perks, I highly recommend taking perks in blocking. The powerbash in particular is godsend, since it's an almost guaranteed stagger. Use this to stop them from attacking, and give yourself an opening to deal some damage.

» Tue Dec 06, 2011 3:12 pm

shield bash him to stagger him, just do whatever it takes to keep them off balance. shield bashing and shouts should give you plenty of time to carve them up

» Wed Dec 07, 2011 1:34 am

shield bash him to stagger him, just do whatever it takes to keep them off balance. shield bashing and shouts should give you plenty of time to carve them up

Would this mean that 2h users are effectively disadvantaged?

» Tue Dec 06, 2011 8:18 pm

Location. Location. Location.

On a more serious note. Use Fus Ro Dah to avoid those lethal blows or just dodge them and strafe. With that I mean jumping around and doing ANYTHING to avoid those nasty 2H blows. Also, I rolled a 2H build and he got owned later on in the game.

» Tue Dec 06, 2011 5:47 pm

I play a warrior with a 1h and shield. Dealing with normal mobs is trivial for the most part but when it comes to bosses it's another matter entirely.

Almost every "boss mob" carries a 2h and has ~1second swing timer, it's ridiculous, anyone wielding a 2h should have slower but heavy attacks but not in this game, noo. The only way that works is either doing it enough times that it bugs out, having a stack of potions and kiting and waiting for shouts to come off cooldown. There's no way to slow melee attack speed or disarm, only block which does practically nothing against these juggernauts because they are always swinging and you are stuck blocking.

Is 1h + shield even a viable spec?

Some fights supposed to be hard, you try to find their weak spots, not attack head-on.

1H & Shield is one of most viable specs at the moment.

You can spend 3 extra talent and max Dual Wielding too.

» Tue Dec 06, 2011 11:46 am

I am finding avoiding blows is a whole lot better then blocking. One perk that helps a lot is the quick reflexs Block perk. When time goes slo-mo get the heck out of the way - then power attack when they are done there power attack!

» Tue Dec 06, 2011 7:35 pm

The block-stagger works on all weapons, not just shields. Because of this, I've started carting around a two handed axe for the tough ones...a block, a quick thump to the face, then swing away.

The best advice I can give anyone in this game is to read up on all the perks in the skill trees...not just some of them, but all of them, and plan your game accordingly. I'm becoming stronger in the view that the game caters for all if not most play styles, so long as you understand what is available and what you can do with things.

» Tue Dec 06, 2011 11:09 pm

I've noticed that shielding is a very low-use skill until you level it up a lot. The trouble is that it's a % value, meaning that it's just as effective when you're level 2 as 20...IE, not at all. To clarify, at level 20 with level 15 shielding, you will block the same percentage of damage, but that percentage is never worth the bother of blocking when it's almost always easier to just avoid the damage entirely. Even with alteration magic I've noticed this.

Honestly? If you went to kill your enemies, go for dual wielding. You'll kill them four times faster.

If you really insist on sticking with the shield, then one thing that's helped me an insane amount is veggie soup. You can shield bash every time you have even one stamina, and a veggie soup boosts your stamina regen by 1 per second, essentially letting you shield bash an enemy till they're lying on the ground. For a lot of enemies, i've found that this is the only way i can kill them, because they just do too dang much damage.

I consider it cheating, but for some reason i'd rather do that than lower the difficulty. Dunno why.

» Tue Dec 06, 2011 4:59 pm

I've noticed that shielding is a very low-use skill until you level it up a lot. The trouble is that it's a % value, meaning that it's just as effective when you're level 2 as 20...IE, not at all. To clarify, at level 20 with level 15 shielding, you will block the same percentage of damage, but that percentage is never worth the bother of blocking when it's almost always easier to just avoid the damage entirely. Even with alteration magic I've noticed this.

Honestly? If you went to kill your enemies, go for dual wielding. You'll kill them four times faster.

If you really insist on sticking with the shield, then one thing that's helped me an insane amount is veggie soup. You can shield bash every time you have even one stamina, and a veggie soup boosts your stamina regen by 1 per second, essentially letting you shield bash an enemy till they're lying on the ground. For a lot of enemies, i've found that this is the only way i can kill them, because they just do too dang much damage.

I consider it cheating, but for some reason i'd rather do that than lower the difficulty. Dunno why.

If you want to play defensively: Go for 1H & Shield
If you want to play offensively: Go for Dual Wield
If you want both: Spend 3 more perk points, you'll max it both.
If you're idealist idiot like me: Go for 2 Handed.

Edit: I decided this would be good signature.

» Tue Dec 06, 2011 6:54 pm

This is what i posted earlier about shielding:

Or look at block. At a low level, essentially all it does it cut your damage down to 1/4th what it should be. How? According to the wiki(albeit not guaranteed to be accurate), armor value translates to "(Visible armor value+20)*.12 . This means that a low level shield gives you approximately 4-5% extra resistance to damage, and an extra possibly 20-35% resistance to damage while actively blocking. However, all that really matters at a low level is the ratio of damage enemies do/their lifespan. If you are shielding carefully and hitting from behind it, you will do about half the damage of if you were not shielding at all; if you dual wield, you end up getting double what you do if you don't shield, essentially meaning you have 1/4th the time to take damage. Doesn't this mean that a shield should counteract 75% of incoming damage? Apparently not.

So what does blocking end up doing, total? It reduces incoming damage by about 40%, so you survive for 40% longer. It then makes killing enemies take 4 times longer, coming to a total of BOOSTING the damage you take by something like 100%!

And on top of that, magic goes entirely around your armor value! A dual wielding character with no shield will take the same amount of damage per second, but kill the enemy twice as fast, until you get to level 50 in block and get a good deal of perks in the block tree...perks that could have been spent increasing your damage, and killing enemies faster!

And as if to compound this even further, the perks aren't even balanced; the first one handed perk gives 20%, then 40%, then 60% damage increase; the first block perk gives 20%, but then only 25%, 30%, and so on!