Two Handed Mele Class Viable...?

I been playing a Pure mage to 15 so far, and I like it but being an Alt-a-Holic in all my games I want to try my 2nd toon...

What about a 2h , Resto build with Heavy Armor like a Pali ? Also what Race is best? I was thinking Orc? How gimped would I be figting Dragons? Any help would rock, thanks...

Despite usually playing a lightly armoured sword and board warrior my most played character is a Battle-Axe, Heavy Armour Orc Warrior. I can safely say after leveling smithing to 100 and smithing myself Daedric armour I have absolutely no problems cutting everything down on Adept difficulty. I haven't touched Enchanting and Alchemy to abuse it further, but it's really not needed.

While fighting Dragons and mages you will have to use your head a little bit, but that's to be expected. Do your best to use terrain and obstacles to evade their attacks, and dump plenty of levels into Stamina to use many power attacks.

I can't say how viable this build would be with the addition of Restoration if you plan on perking into it and adding levels to Magicka, but I suppose used sparingly it could negate the need for potions which can't hurt.

Either way, good luck with your build. =)

I think it should be said that any build is viable, truly. Well, I suppose except maining Lockpicking, Pickpocketing, Speech, Alchemy. I mean, you probably COULD survive, but with no offensive or defensive abilities you'd kinda be SOL... Haha. That being said, any "normal" build with at least one offensive focus is pretty much viable in this game, so do whatever you want to do and enjoy it.

Sounds like a fun build. I can tell you that once you get up there in levels you will be smacking everything to oblivion and back with those 2h weapons. They have the ability to do obscene amounts of damage at the higher levels. The drawback....you're going to have difficulty pulling off any of those resto spells mid-fight while using 2h weapons. This was honestly one of my more prominent reasons for going sword and board with my tank. You can freely switch that shield out for a resto spell but keep on swinging, a tactic I often implement while *!!DESTROYING!!* dragons. If you're going to go with 2h weapons you don't get that choice and to do any resto healing you're going to have to deal with a long sheath/unsheath animation every time.

I enjoyed the Nord when I did a pally build. His battle cry gives you enough time on Master to heal yourself up and get back into a defensive stance. I believe the Orc is more for dual wielders.

2handers are definitely fun. I use a warhammer, with the 3 levels of the warhammer specific perk, it will ignore 75% of the enemy's armor. This basically turns foes in heavy army into light armored opponents, foes clad in light armor into guys wearing robes, and mages wearing robes into mincemeat.

That said, there are still some areas of the game, particularly where there are a lot of enemies in a small room, where it can be difficult given how slowly you swing (at least for me, I didn't power level smithing to 100 like some people to get the best gear *cough* *cough*). I utilize a bow and arrow and sneak for such instances, but am completely confident in the warhammer otherwise.

Going with a 2handed build, I personally completely ignored putting points into magic, though it sounds like you may want to do things differently if you want to make use of restoration. Instead of putting points into magic, I did pretty much an even split between health and stamina. Health is obvious, and stamina is important so you can do multiple power attacks, which will be your bread and butter with two handed weapons.

And if you didn't know:
Greatswords do the least amount of damage of the 2handers but swing the fastest
Battleaxes are the middle ground
Warhammers do the most damage of the 2handers but swing the slowest

I am playing two-handed weapon too. I didn't started over, i just started to raise 2 handed skill.
I think it is pretty hard to fight off enemy cause my armor rate is too low. my health evaporate very fast.

I'm at level 22 on my first character which is a 2H Orc specced in a little 2H and Heavy Armor and then the rest are going towards Enchanting, Conjuror and Resto.

The hardest part is getting use to the time to switch between spell casting and 2Hing but most fights are still pretty easy once I got use to using shouts. I also wear an amulet I found that reduces shout reload time. It would be easier to do Alchemy so you wouldn't have to switch weapons mid-combat but I don't enjoy alchemy personally.

I'm playing on whatever the game's default difficulty is as I didn't even know until reading these forums that there were other difficulties.

Oh but I will say speccing that requires health, magic and stamina in a 2H/Heavy Armor was painful until I got a house. Constantly ran out of carry capacity.

I am playing dual handed in heavy armor. Level 30, Daedric armor and swords, perks maximized at about 75 for heavy and one-handed weapons. The only opponents that require a little planning are boss-level mages who start firing before I am able to close the distance. Other than that, I seldom use magic of any sort and most opponents, dragons included, go down quickly. I'm not sure how the dual compares with the 2h; I just still haven't gotten tired of the slomo kill cams of the dual swords! Am definitely having a lot of fun with this build.

I'm playing a Greatsword wielding Stormcloak in Light Armour. Alot of people use Heavy Armour with 2-Handed but not me, I'm more of a Barbarian and love the 50% faster Stamina regeneration you get with Light Armour. It means I can get alot more power attacks into the flesh of my enemies, so they'll be in pieces before they get to hit me anyway

I 2h weapons. I haven't tried 2x 1h weapons to compare much, but when I did try them in the very early game I found them slow and clumsy (hated having to press both trigger buttons at the same time to dual swing). From what I here dual wielding really shines once you have the perks, so it probably isn't fair for me to judge. But yes, 2h works very well. My only complaint is how low the skill cap is with it....you basically take your Absorb Stamina enchanted weapon and spam standing power attacks with it for huge ridiculous damage. Maxing Smithing for Legendary Daedric weapons is a must.

I'd also like to point out that going 2h doesn't mean you can't touch the Block tree. It is fairly easy to power level Block (I let a giant whale on me for 20 min or so to get it to 100). If you have perks to spare you can then buy up the left side of the Block tree and carry around a shield. This allows you to charge in Captain America style with a shield up vs. casters/archers and knock them on their rear, THEN switch to your 2h weapon and power attack them as they get back up. It's fun, and really effective. The left hand side of the Block tree is amazing, as is the final perk.

I don't understand stuff like this and I see it quite a bit on this forum. Apparently, your only complaint is that it's too easy because you maxed smithing. You realize you don't have to max smithing, right? If you don't do the leveling exploit, maxing smithing will take a good amount of time. So basically, your "only complaint" is completely brought on by yourself.
People break the balance of their game then blame the game for being unbalanced.
herp derp

Just....wow. Hostile much?

No, I'm not complaining about the power of smithing. These games have always been able to be "broken" by min-maxing, and I've always been fine with that. I'm complaining that when using 2h weapons there is little reason (regardless of what weapon I'm using, smithing level, etc.) to do anything other than spam power attacks (or regular attacks, if you don't have the means to restore stamina at will). Sword/board involves responding to incoming attacks/power attacks with blocks/bashes, and feels more "involved". Understand now? Maybe read it a couple of more times to be sure.

And yes, I realize you can block/bash with a 2h weapon....there isn't a good reason to do so compared to just pumping out the most damage per second that you can.....where as sword/board seems to reward playing that way more.

my heavy tank guy is an argonian devil looking lizard dude. but race really doesnt matter in this game like it does in older games. anybody can be anything from a traveling merchant to a long rage sneaking heavy armored tank. thats one reason i love this game so much i can be the races ive never played with to my style of play. just have fun with it

I'm not arguing about the merits of using 2handed weapons versus other possibilities, I was just pointing out that claiming the game is too easy then recommending to exploit smithing is daft. Exploits make the game easier, that's just what they do - it's why people utilize them, so complaining about the game being easy after using an exploit just doesn't make sense.
It's like if I drink a fifth of whiskey and then say "my only complaint with jack daniels is i got sloppy drunk." Well, duh...action->consequence

edit: I want to point out that while I don't use exploits, I know there are a lot of people that do. And hey, it's a single player game - feel free to do what you want and play it your way. It just bugs me when people use an exploit - which can break the balance of the game - and complain when it does. Just understand that by using an exploit, there are inherited risks, especially on the default difficulty. In other words, people that max smithing right away don't really have a right to complain about the game being too easy because I don't think Bethesda balanced the game for people with 100 smithing within the first few levels in mind.

lol awesome if they think its to easy try it on master.