Just a question really for those that have played a lot on master difficulty. Can anyone recommend a specific weapon type to specialise in for a one handed/destruction build on the highest difficulty. as I understand it, the enemies have larger health pools but I'm unsure what their armor rating is like .. does it stay the same or is it also increased ?

So basically either, maces (ignore % armor), swords (crit chance) and axes (bleed damage). Are they all close (I don't expect them to be equal) in damage dealing ability ?

All of them :nod:

They all kind of svck actually

mace's to smash heads
swords to make u look good while slacing
ignore axe

armor ignore is godly. crit is decent and bleed is horrible

Yeah, axes seem to be less the least useful perk to invest in. Ignoring armor and more/stronger crits are all instant damage, bleeds take time to take their full effect.

well depends on different factors, if i dualwield i'd definatly go maces cause it helps getting enemies down fast and the dw perks comopensates the slower maces
swords look nice but are a bit of a black box cause you dont know when the crit triggers, so i only see the use in long fights - therefore swords mostly because they are fast (would probably use a 2h sword), for a shield user i'd definitly go for axes (or maybe maces) cause you can hide behind your shield while your enemies bleed to death...

i rather take a 100% bonus then a bonus who might never actually trigger (and to play not with swords for ONE time is also nice...)...the problem is that nobody seems to know how much crit damage actually is...lets say bleed damage is 20% and crit damage is +50% damage but triggers only in 25% of all hits...go figure...

Picking your weapon of choice is important, but not as important as modding your destruction

i would love to get spears, polearms, halberds, sabres, falchions, scimitars (yea there is one but it looks horrible), morningstars, flails, rapiers etc. etc...

just look at mout & blade for an idea...MORE weapons!

I reckon axes should probably have much higher base damage to offset the lower usefulness of bleed damage compared to crits and armour ignoring. Saying that, axes are my favourite weapons and I still use them instead of swords or maces/hammers on my main. You don't have to pick one or the other to be a powerful character.

By the way when did people suddenly become so obsessed with having the "best" build? That's just completely not what TES is about. I swear every day I see more people asking what skills/perks/race to pick to be the best character possible. I can't help but feel they're completely missing the point... Oh well, I guess they'll be the people who trade the game in after beating the main quest in 20 hours, whereas I'll still be finding new content after 1000 hours' gameplay in 5 years

I don't suppose it'll really make that much of a difference, just play with whatever weapon you like! I mean its not like halfway you're gonna be "DAMN i chose to upgrade my mace perk instead of sword, now IM SCREWED FOR LIFE"

Although i suppose that the ignore armor isnt going to be that much of a use, because bandits don't wear daedric armor now Im a level 46 mage and the bandit chiefs are all wearing steel armor. And most of the time bandits and undead are what you're going to face. And i don't think undead have anything close to daedric armor as well.
So, hinthint. Swords. Cause they're cool

Modding destruction makes it imbalanced.
This should only be done for those that plays pure destruction and dont touch ANYTHING else.

Destruction in skyrim is balanced around your other mage schools, or it would be beyond overpowered.

Asking a sword blade, that is using a strong melee system to also mod his destruction spells, is the same as saying "hey, use this cheat and run through the game on Master fast, its really fun to one shoot things".

You should never recomend the destruction mod to anyone not around 50+ and pure destruction users, at that level it starts to feel but even then hardly required.
Destruction users keep comparing themself to Enchanted+Smithed melee warriors. They should not. Destruction in the original form is very well banaced in Skyrim.

That destruction mages are crying cause they cant 1 shoot dragons on Master does not mean its bad as it is.

Play Adept with Destruction and tell me its bad? If its bad then, then you have a right to argue. But on Master, its supposed to be very hard, not easy road.

Try playing melee or archer with NO secondary professions and see how powerful that is compared to destruction..............

Destro is super powerful at low mid level and good at higher levels. Final.

Every single one of these is a horrible strawman. It's simple, mathematical fact that Destruction's damage output pales in comparison to Archery and melee, and it's perfectly fair to compare those skills because they are the four direct damage skills in the game. Not one person has said that you should be able to 1-shot Alduin with just a Destruction spell (although all the Destruction-defenders seem to think that's the crux of the argument).

Just think about it for a second. Destruction is "viable" if you cover its deficiencies with other skills, like Alteration, Conjuration, Illusion or any other skill. However Alteration, Conjuration, Illusion and all those other skills are still perfectly useable if your main damage source is a bow, or a melee weapon - both of which do far better DPS than Destruction magic. The argument isn't that MAGES are underpowered. Conjuration, for one, is a very good skill indeed, one of the best in the game at high level. The argument is that Destruction is rather pitiful as a direct damage skill - and if you take away the direct damage function of Destruction, then what the hell is left? Dealing damage is literally the one single reason for Destruction to exist in the first place, yet it's outclassed by the other direct damage skills (Archery and melee) and even INDIRECT damage skills (like Conjuration).

To make it even clearer what we're talking about:

- Character A uses Archery, Conjuration, Heavy Armour. He has great defence thanks to his armour, he has a great companion in his Conjured Daedra, and he can HIMSELF cause great damage from range.

- Character B uses Destruction, Conjuration, Heavy Armour. He has great defence thanks to his armour, he has a great companion in his Conjured Daedra, but he cannot HIMSELF deal any great damage because Destruction is so much weaker than Archery.

Of course you can cover your weaknesses with other skills, you'd be a fool not to. The point is that Destruction does not do what it is supposed to do - namely, DESTROY - and so there is no compelling GAMEPLAY reason (note: not role-play reason) to pick Destruction over a direct damage skill that actually does the sort of competitive damage it is supposed to do. You can't possibly be ignoring all the people who have told how they've raised their fully-perked Destruction to 100 and use Expert spells... but somehow they still take enemies down more easily with their un-perked Archery skill of 40.

PLEASE stop raising these strawman defences, it's quite frustrating to have to repeatedly explain this. Destruction is a damage-only skill that doesn't do any respectable damage beyond level 35 or so. It is therefore a useless and underpowered skill.

2H axes basically are polearms, but I get your point...

Bethesda cut down (even more) on weapon variety, and clothing variety, among other things, to make room for more voice acting on one DVD's worth of content.

DVD don't cut it no more. M$, you lost. Blu-Ray up your butt. Accept it, and move the industry forwards.

This is riduculous. All the perks basically have equal effectiveness. Criticals allow you to hit high every couple of strikes. Bleed damage does damage all throughout the fight. And ignore armour happens every couple of strikes and is only effective against ARMOURED OPPONENTS. In my opinion all the one handed weapons are balanced and you should just select your preference.

So ridiculous that you more or less repeated what I said at the end of my post.

Armor ignore is great, if you don't use Marked for death shout..

Bleed is good if you hit and run (and let the bleed do full dmg)

Sword is just bad (the hp doesn't move at all when you crit due to the fact its calculated from base dmg)