This is new for my third game. The first two games, played as mages, the shouts always worked exactly as expected. Now, with my dual wielding rogue, they seldom work correctly. It seemed to just start happening recently. I press the Z key, nothing happens. Then when combat is over and it wouldn't help me, it works fine.

Maybe one of your opponents did cast Silence? You might want to check the active effects when this happens.

.... i have to ask.... have you gotten any shouts yet?

Several. It's OK to ask the "is it plugged in" questions. Somebody should.

What opponents do this? I don't recall ever seeing this effect from anything.

Did you remap any keys? There are several commands that can be broken by a simple key reassignment. Reset all the keys and see if your shouts work again.

Did you hit the Z key more than once? I have noticed that lately there are times when the game does not respond to the keyboard, but a second keystroke it reacts to.

Also, just for grins, try:

Remapping your Shouts to a different key, perhaps the Z key is tired

or

Change the batteries in the keyboard, if it is wireless

and, if you are running any software for the keyboard, try disabling it and see what the game performance is.

Thanks. However I use wired and I have no reason to believe the z key does not work. Note that it worked just fine on two previous games (different characters).

Did you try it more than once? Like I said, I have noticed the game not responding to key strokes from time to time after 1.4. It happened to me with Dragonrend last night.

And, one more dumb question, was your Shout Timer still glowing when you tried to shout?

The shout timer was not glowing. I mashed the key many times before it fired. It appears to be an intermittent problem.

It is a bug. I already had a lot of times that one. However when it doesn't respond I click "Block" mouse button and then it starts working again in most cases.