Shield or dual wield

[Laird Wingate]

In real life warfare aggressive and fast attacks will lead to a swift end, in Skyrim however it is not so. I can rip apart an entire clan of Vampires with a flurry of attacks before they even have the opportunity to take me to half health. Speed and Strength is the name of the game.

 

[Gore gro-Gijakudob]

I disagree. Intelligence leads to a swift end. Of course, Skyrim is based on medieval combat and let's be honest, whatever you choose as a play style is going to work. Historically however, no army that I can think of won a decisive victory by trying to fight with two weapons at the same time. But it does look good in movies.

 

[Laird Wingate]

When I said that "in real life aggressive and fast attacks will lead to a swift end" my meaning was that if you fight carelessly you will die. The style of play that I utilize in Skyrim would never have worked historically in the real world. So in that sense I am agreeing with you. However, in-game I believe that aggressiveness tends to pay off.
However, aggression does pay off sometimes in the real world. Take for example the Blitzkrieg strategy that Hitler utilized.

 

[Kuurus]

There is really no point in arguing which is better, or whether one or the other is somehow ineffective. The fact is that built and used right, any of the 3 options is overpowering and extremely effective. Choosing the "wrong" one is not going to lead anyone to an imminent demise. The thread is simply about preference.

As I said, I like the sword and shield for my first character as it's a change of pace from my usual MO. I find the active blocking in this game far better than most, especially since many games simply treat a shield as an ornamental stat booster.

As far as damage, I am pretty happy with a 1h sword with almost 300 displayed damage. I am able to load up on fortify 1H enchants because between the 50% of elemental perk and the 30% on the Otar mask, I am at 80% resists to fire, frost and shock by simply raising my shield. No enhancements slots used, other than putting magic resist on the shield.

 

[Gore gro-Gijakudob]

When I said that "in real life aggressive and fast attacks will lead to a swift end" my meaning was that if you fight carelessly you will die. The style of play that I utilize in Skyrim would never have worked historically in the real world. So in that sense I am agreeing with you. However, in-game I believe that aggressiveness tends to pay off.
However, aggression does pay off sometimes in the real world. Take for example the Blitzkrieg strategy that Hitler utilized.

Or take the defensive strategy of the Battle of Britain, which actually did pay off I know what you are saying though. It is a preference of play, I do like duel wielding scimitars (I'm doing it now actually to raise my one handed skill) but for me, I miss that block option and will be back to my hammer ASAP.

 

[samgurl775]

I prefer sword and firebolt, with a minor in archery.

 

[Rshizz11]

Personally, I use a mixture of both. When faced with either dragons, spellcasters, or high level draugr, I use a sword with a magic resistant shield (Plus the +50% magic resistance block perk). I fight dragons with this because a well placed shield bash stops any sort of fire/frost breathing, opening them up for a few good slashes to the face. However, when faced with lower level melee opponents, I tend to go with the dual wielding option mainly so i can drop them an unsuspecting mudcrab. Plus the dual-wielding killing anmations are cooler. In the end, it's whatever works for you.

 

[Straumgald]

Shields need to do more damage. Honestly the mechanics are all messed up, a shield is a second weapon, not just a defensive piece. Also I would think dual wielding would allow blocks. It would just be too difficult for them to animate it perhaps? Block with one, attack with the other, kind of the point of dual wield.
Also the charging double critical attack with a two handed weapon is the best part of using two handed.

 

[Oskar Gudlaugsson]

This thread inspired me to finally try out a dual-wielder.

What's more, I wanted to try out a light armor dual-wielder. Even more aggressive and high-risk. The benefits of going light armor would be the Unhindered (weightless armor) and Wind Walker (+50% stamina regen) perks. Heavy armor has a weightless perk too (Conditioning), but it comes at 70 skill (instead of 50 for Unhindered) and has more prereqs.

I considered an Orc but I'd been wanting to make and roleplay a true Stormcloak for a long while so I went for Nord in the end. Another reason is that Nords start with a higher light armor skill and Nord warriors commonly wear leather, while Orcs are clearly associated with heavy armor.

I'm surprised by how good it actually is. A single d/w power attack kills most low-level foes and even if it doesn't, they'll be staggered enough for me to follow up with another attack. Most of my opponents simply die too fast to really hurt me - and I'm playing on Expert. Another great thing is that my skill with one-hand improves very fast so I've been able to spend almost all my perks in the one-hand tree (up to lvl 9 now).

I'd already played a sword-and-board paladin type up to lvl 42. I was quite bored with that play style after a while and have found that even though you can block a lot of damage, I ended up taking a lot too simply because I couldn't kill fast enough.

I bet 2h is quite good too and possibly the most versatile and convenient option.

 

[Straumgald]

I'd already played a sword-and-board paladin type up to lvl 42. I was quite bored with that play style after a while and have found that even though you can block a lot of damage, I ended up taking a lot too simply because I couldn't kill fast enough.

I bet 2h is quite good too and possibly the most versatile and convenient option.

On my paladin I did notice the damage output was laughable. I'll repeat for the third time, I REALLY hope they add more damage to shields. At least I don't feel bad improving my mace up to some stupid level of damage, so its slightly on par with the other damage options.

 

[Kuurus]

More damage from the shield would not be a bad thing, but I've never felt underpowered with the sword and shield style. I think you simply need to commit to it rather than trying to be great at several things.

As I said above, my displayed damage on my sword was almost 300 (297) when I took out Alduin. After that, I finally got around to finishing my last 15 to 20 points of alchemy and enchanting and made my "final" set of gear. Using no exploit of any kind, just straight game mechanics as intended, the displayed damage on my sword is now 518.

 

[rvk5150]

This is an interesting thread; I am using both but mainly 1h/shield or 1h/magic....love the second option. I keep a nice 2h available and switch often to level it up as well; agree that for aggression it is the preferred option.

 

[Niflheimr]

I fluffing love dual wielding swords. I'm a massive fan of swords (all kinds of them) and to be able to wield two at the same time is almost orgasmic.
Tho, I can see having a shield being better, especially when facing someone using two handed weapon.

 

[Oskar Gudlaugsson]

I should note that I probably don't quite do the sword-and-board style justice. My paladin that I mentioned (a Breton) was my first serious character and there were still a lot of things about the game I hadn't learnt.

My main mistakes with him was improving magicka way too much (because I wanted endless survivability with healing spells) at the cost of stamina. Too little stamina meant I couldn't properly kick butts with either shield bashes or my weapon. My perks were also spread way too thin so I had a lot of unnecessary stuff (crafts, conjuration) taking away from my 1h and block trees.

The problem with power bashing is that it costs a lot of stamina and therefore competes with your weapon damage instead of complimenting it. A basic shield bash is a great tactical move for breaking your opponents' spell casts and big weapon swings. Then follow the bash up with a 1h power attack. The power bash really isn't helpful as you're better of just relying on your weapon for damage.

I think if I were to do shields again, I'd only go up the left side of the block tree, up to Shield Charge, while skipping the right side entirely. I'd also make sure to improve my stamina a lot to be able to keep up decent damage - having a shield for defense should be a reason to spend less on health, rather than more!

 

[Kuurus]

That's what I did on blocking. The main purpose of my shield is interrupting casting, and giving me the elemental resistances against mages. (I have it enchanted with +72 health and +23 mag resist as well.)

As you were thinking about doing, I kept my skills and perks focused - heavy armor, block and 1H. I only spent 2 perks in smithing so I could improve enchanted gear, and I didn't touch the enchanting or alchemy trees until after lvl 40 when all my combat stuff was where I wanted it.

I started out like you thinking I would level resto for my healing, but I didn't spend a lot of perks on it. I think I just have 4 in that tree, to halve the magicka used up to adept spells and to heal 50% more. After a little while I found those were even probably a waste for my build. I never use healing in combat, pretty much just use it to top off after the fight and reduce downtime.

 

[Azriel]

duel wield....at level 97 1h aludin took me 45 seconds

 

[Straumgald]

I know its kind of off-topic, but you got 518 on a 1h weapon with just enchanting/alchemy and Blacksmithing? I can't even get my 2h that high. I do have some 1h with 250dmg though.

 

[Kuurus]

I know its kind of off-topic, but you got 518 on a 1h weapon with just enchanting/alchemy and Blacksmithing? I can't even get my 2h that high. I do have some 1h with 250dmg though.

Dragonbane with a 14 base dmg. Fortunately, it uses the steel smithing perk to determine 2x smithing. I had (4) +29% smithing pieces of gear (total +116%) and a potion of +129% smithing made with 100 alchemy and likewise, +116 total alchemy gear.

In addition, my final set of enchanted gear has +47% to 1H damage on 4 different pieces (neck, ring, gauntlets and boots) for a total of +188%. The final number is 518 with that setup. I can get it temporarily higher if I feel like drinking a Fortify 1H potion.

 

[XbSuper]

Ah I get it, I was wondering how you got it so high. So without the 1H enchants its probably only 250-300 or something like that.

 

[Kuurus]

Probably somewhere around there. I can afford to put the 1H on all those pieces though now that I have the 2 enchants per piece, plus for resists I wear the Otar mask (+30 fire/frost/shock) and have the elemental block for +50 to each. I did the following on my final set of armor:

Armor - +72 health / +72 stamina
Gauntlets - +47 1H / +47 Archery
Boots - +47 1H / Muffle
Shield - +72 health / +23 mag res
Neck - +47 1H/ +23 mag res
Ring - +47 1H/ +23 mag res