I’ve saved up three perks to put into one of these soon for one handed weapons, but I wasn’t really sure how they stacked up. Axes seem ok, but if you kill an enemy fast enough the bleed won’t have time to take effect. I really like getting critical hits when I use a charge attack so swords awesome. If your good at doing charge attacks though it kind of negates their usefulness. Maces sound really nice for those times when you face heavily armored foes and dragons, but I’ve never taken the points so I don’t know how much of an impact that would have. On aesthetic grounds I tend to like swords best, then axes and then maces, but I’m not sure I’d like to be locked in one specific weapon type for the whole game. Especially if I get an awesome upgrade that’s different.

I'm in the same boat, but with the two-handers. Not sure which one to start putting points into. I'm trying to decide between swords and maces. I like how both of them look, I like the heavy hitting maces, but I also enjoy the slight speed advantage of the swords. One of these days I'll take the plunge and just pick one over the other and then I'll be able to see if I truly like it or not.

You may want to look at the artifact weapons and see if you plan on aiming for one of those. Sword perks will be really wasted if you end up deciding you really like the mace of Molag Bal.

Yeah, I too have been avoiding them because I don't want to pigeon hole myself into one weapon. I'm just ignoring them for now and grabbing whatever weapon seems best at the moment (I'm not crafting my own, so it's whatever I come across).

From a practical standpoint, it seems like swords are the "safest" bet because their bonus is useful in virtually any scenario, where as the axe and mace bonuses are more situational.

I'll probably avoid them entirely unless I decide at some point that I want to stick with a certain weapon for purely role-playing purposes.

I got the mace one because maces are the strongest of the 3 so why not do more damage to armor, some opponents have a ridiculous amount of armor. The sword crit perk sounded nice but I'll skip it for now. As for the axe, I don't plan on fighting anything that long

On mechanics, the Mace/Hammer perk is the best -- your toughest opponents are ones with a significant amount of armor.

However, mace/hammers are inherently slow and slightly awkward to use, so /shrug. Also slightly poorer options for magical damage enchantments (slower attacks = fewer magic hits).

Also for a random itemization limitation, there are no Skyforge Steel Hammers.

Also, Ysgramor used a Battleaxe, if that matters. And, Swords are sixy.

I wonder, does the bleed effect from axes effect every enemy? Or would some be immune like mechanicals or summons?