This is what I just started on , but I'm quickly starting to wonder how the hell is this actually going to work out well

To cast any ice spells I have to put away my weapon , thats pretty lame........... and to raise a corpse costs almost all of my mana at this point so I imagine the stronger zombie/demon related summons/revivals will cost so much mana that I won't even be able to without actually investing heavily in magicka as a stat :cryvaultboy:

Course , Death Knights in any other game have NOTHING to do with ice... so maybe I should just skip the ice , but I do need some kind of range to deal with dragons but refuse to use a bow as a "Death Knight"

So has anyone played as a "Death knight" character? Whats yours doing skillwise and all of that?

Death Knights have a lot to do with ice, in Warcraft lore anyway. You could just grab the steed stone and charge everything if that suits you better. Get conjuration enchantments to reduce the amount of magicka you spend on it and then take the level perks. You won't spend nearly as much as it seems.

You want range to deal with dragons, but a bow is your best bet if you don't want to use all your mana trying to lure it down. I would avoid getting destruction magic, but you aren't making very clear if you are going more spell-sword like or heavy armor like.

The idea is to go as much like a WoW DK as possible , so Heavy Armor , 2 handed weapons , ice related magic , and zombie related magic... I'm very much wanting to RP , so yeah I refuse to use a bow on this character because you wouldn't and couldn't as a DK in any game ever made really

you can use the frost breath shout. forget where you get it, though

You probably want the ritual stone then for mass reanimation of corpses, enchant weapons with frost damage, grab turn undead and command daedra along with your reanimation spells. Conjuration, Heavy Armor, Two Handed, and figure out if you want to go destro just for the frost damage.

Im planning to make one as well, named Arthur, but with one hand specialization due to system limitation.

the ice cloak is a cool spell and it doesnt breaks the flow of combat, you might want look into that.

as for magicka problem, having tried. puremage in my first play through, i assure you that it is not a big deal. you can cut down the cost or boost up magicka capacity from gears, and the higher level of conjur/dest you are, the cheaper the spell cost.

I think the real question here is simply : Can you actually balance magic and melee well enough to not actually svck for trying to be 2 things at once?

Southwest of dawnstar, just east of whatever the pass is called right there through the mountains. Theres also an abandoned village and a dwemer ruin just off the road.

Heavy Armor. Enchanting. Destruction using ONLY frost. Conjuration, use ONLY undead. Two Handed or One Handed dual-wield.

It should work fine.

Yeah enchant with ice and pretend its rune of razorice :hubbahubba: , but this sounds pretty much like what I want to do

It's very easy to balance one handed and destruction or magic in general, but you will have a hard time trying to do it with a Two hander imo. So you have to decide whether you want to be hybrid and sacrifice the two handers or just go with shouts, enchantments and cloaks. The most important thing is that you get the playstyle and rp you want to match up. I personally think you would feel fine with a frost shout, the ritual spell, heavy armor, frost enchanted two hander, and a high enough destruction skill to use a frost cloak for a decent mana price. Remember, you can always enchant for reduced conjuration and destruction mana costs if you don't want to sacrifice perks early on.

My character uses a one handed weapon and a spell and it's been working fine for me so far. (Level 20, normal difficulty)

My ideas for this kind of build...

Use a one-handed sword that you've smithed and enchanted to being totally [censored]awesome. Keep your other hand free for blocking (Don't use a shield) and spells. As far as magika goes: Enchant your items to fortify magika or decrease destruction/conjuration spellcasting costs.

Skills you should perk:
One-handed
Destruction
Conjuration
Enchanting

Block, Alchemy, and Smithing are meh, but you do want to level them up even if you don't perk them heavily.

My character fights with two-handers sometimes more than, or at least as often as, a one-hander. Routinely utilises destruction magic before it gets close as well. I've been perking a bit with each of those three (as well as others) and find I can manage well enough with the balance. Sometimes a lot of it is to do with how you fight your battles, how you handle that balance.

EDIT: More on topic, this is a cool idea for an RP build. I don't really think it could work any less than any other character types like a try for a sword-fighting-spell-flinging-arrow-shooting-lock-picking-potion-making blacksmith

As a reward from the thieves guild questline, you can choose a life drain shadow spell-thing. Would suit the theme quite nice!

Use the console to give yourself the vampiric drain spell which normally only vampires get. It drains 5 points of health per second and does not use destruction magic. Then just focus on conjuration for magic. Due to the way magic works in this game its a pain to switch from weapons to spells and back again. Conjur up undead when u get a chance and use Vampiric Drain when u need to heal up in battle.

To this day when somone says Death KNight to me I think of Lord Soth from Dragon lance novels. If I recall correctly he was heavily armored and either sword and board to 2 hander. Hie had his signature kill word. I think to model that wouldn't be hard in this game. Probably breton or nord, heavy armor and either 1hand and shield or 2 handed. Some conjuration for skeletons but mostly your powers should come from "shouts". should come close.

I've been considering making a death knight build as well, although with less emphasis on destruction and more on enchanting for frost weapon damage and providing extra magicka or boosting skills.

Here's a build i've worked out:
http://www.ign.com/builds/the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim?d=00000000000000000000000000000001000111100011100000000000000000000000000000000000005000111110000000000511111000000000005011001

and an overview:

conjuration - up to twin souls, with dual casting and mana cost reduction up to expert (not sure about master level permanent reanimate ability)
heavy armor - up to weightless perk and reduced stagger, the essentials
two handed - 5/5 increased damage, and 3 perks to improve power attacks, particularly the charge ability which will help you close the distance on ranged foes
enchanting - 5/5 increased base quality and up to Extra Effect in as few points as possible. Will be used to put skill increases as well as health/magicka/stamina on armors, and frost + shock on weapon.

finished at level 36.

For enchanting your weapon/s you would want absorb health and frost damage, but the one thing that kinda screws up making a WoW based Deathknight is the fact that alot of enemies in skyrim have 50% frost resist.

My perk suggestions for a Death Knight:

Destruction:
Novice Destruction
Destruction Dual Casting (Just put your weapon and your favorite spells in the favorites menu. Easy to switch in/out)
Apprentice Destruction
Augmented Frost
Rune Master
Adept Destruction
Deep Freeze
Expert Destruction
Master Destruction

Restoration:
Novice Restoration
Recovery x2

Conjuration:
Novice Conjuration
Apprentice Conjuration
Necromancy
Adept Conjuration
Dark Souls
Expert Conjuration
Master Conjuration

Heavy Armor:
Juggernaut x5
Well-Fitted
Tower of Strength
Matching Set
Reflect Blows

One-Handed or Two-Handed:
Either one, but take all the perks, except for the Blunt/Axe/Blade specializations, of which you only need to max one

After this, the only other tree I might suggest is full Enchanting, as Death Knights are adept at Runeforging, Smithing would be a personal flavor choice. If you want, you can extend your allocation of perks in the Conjuration tree to the atronach ones as well to lead into Twin Souls, but I wouldn't do this until after you've pretty much mastered your weapon skill, destruction, and heavy armor.

As you level, I suggest allocating a heavy amount of Magicka increases, as you really will need them. My suggestion totals to 41 or 43 total perks.

Also, you should consider becoming a vampire. Undeath would suit this concept very well (plus vampires aren't ugly anymore like they were in Oblivion),

This is what I'm thinking
http://www.ign.com/builds/the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim/create?d=000000000000000000000000000000010001011000111110011001111000000000000000000000000000000000010000011115000100000000000050110013

The smithing is cause Daedric armor fits the whole idea perfectly and I gotta have it , anyway that goes up to lvl 37 and anything else would be icing on the cake I think

you dont need to go 2h weps. wow dks can dual weild so u can dual weild and hotkey spells so u can quickly change between sword and magic and dual swords. but another thing u can do if u dont want to have ur wepon is in conguraton get some weapon summoning spells. dks in wow get a summon runeblade spell =P and itill allow you to have frost in one hand and conguration in the other. but get ur magicka up with lelving and enchants

Can't have Twin Souls without taking the Atronach perks, otherwise, that looks like an agreeable build. Might want to consider taking the Recovery perk in Restoration for 50% increased magicka regeneration.

The whole raise corpse thing kinda svcks cause you gotta actually have a corpse , when do you get the 1st degree of summon daedra or whatever it is? Characters up to lvl 6 now