Don't be sorry, I certainly wasn't blaming you. Take some time off guilt-free, you've earned it.

I read through that artificer thread a while ago, but I guess he's recently discovered that you can make any destruction magic DoT by mixing enchants (need the double enchantment perk and 100 in enchanting), which is quite interesting. I don't think any of us caught that before. One arrow can paralyze and burn with DoT? Might be good to add to the Guide.

-Loth

PS Hope everyone is having a happy holiday season so far! I'm really enjoying my time off from work.

I just replied to that enchanting thread. I think this thread has missed the pretty huge damage potential of enchants with perked destruction and alchemy. He is getting 400+ damage to weapons, and you can easily boost that by 300-400% with poisons (different magnitude/effect poisons on dual wield weapons).

I haven't tried minmaxing it, but I suspect you could easily tweak out a few thousand elemental damage with a bit of effort.

The real reason I add this to the mix is that you can get ridiculous damage without any weapon skill at all. You are already maxing alchemy and enchanting, so just add in a few (3-5) destruction perks. More build variation and still godly damage, without any need to boost a weapon skill or perks. Can also drop smithing that way (all 1 perk of it!). How possible is the armour cap using only unperked smithing and +armour potions? Should be fine considering you can find ebony and glass armour.

Soulman: You're right in that we haven't gone crazy with the alchemy boosting in that regard, and yes you can skip weapon skills and still do crazy damage... the trick with poison stacking has been discussed in past threads. As for hitting the armor cap with just alchemy... that's a good question. In truth, there are still holes in the armor charts -- we haven't even added plain leather armor to the Guide yet... it's still just question marks.

-Loth

PS Feel free to add to the collective knowledge of us all by helping out and contributing, if you wish.

There is no leather shield, so a value with a shield isn't available.

Ha, she's back! Having fun in Star Wars MMO-land? They changed the forum while you were gone...
-Loth

Ahh, I'm away from Skyrim for the next week or so. Thanks for running those trials. I was going to suggest some tips, but it looks like you knew them all already. If we could get the # of trials and the exact averages and standard deviations of the times, we could also test for statistical significance. But that seems a bit unnecessary at this point.

So an 80-lb increase in weight only slows you down by about 10%? No wonder it's not very noticeable...

There might still be some point to get weightless light armor perk if you want the +50% stamina regeneration perk (essentially worth ~ 1 enchantment slot) for Marathon distance sprinting. Even nicer would be the deft movements feat which should in theory raise effective physical resistance to 92%?

Could be - I suppose it's a matter of taste. I think it's actually 82%, assuming max armor and opponents have no armor piercing; although, is it an actual "dodge," or do you get hit and it reduces damage to 0? If it's the former, it could help avoid staggers/poisons/enchantments, so effectively it could be worth more.

It seems like Conditioning may not be worth it, though, unless you want to sneak - it's such a huge investment in perks. Personally, I hate wearing helmets, so I never invest in the "wearing a full set" skills, but Deft Movements seems pretty attractive...

I never found myself short on perks because master difficulty is a breeze with just legendary items and no damage enhancing perks. Then again, I am now level 72.

When mods come out that vastly increase the game's difficulty we will see much more careful perk choices and character builds. One perk I think will be absolutely awesome is atronach. certainly, my player character will be a breton instead of altmer.

I've been watching the thread, don't worry

Star Wars is a blast, totally loving it.

Excellent. I had day 1 early access, so my time has been split 3 ways. I ended up as a Rattataki IA, and it's been amazing so far. A little trolling, a little questing, a little dragonslaying... it's a good time to be alive.

I just enchanted restoration as a second school to cast free, then got the stamina regeneration perk and got the grand healing spell. That and steed stone.. virtually unlimited stamina. That and the most powerful ward spell makes me take almost no magic damage. More fun then just enchanting elemental resistances instead.

I considered that build as well but opted for fortify one handed instead. I might switch now seeing as how overpowering physical weapon damage is and I do always find myself short on magicka for healing.

Both the alteration and conjuration schools are underwhelming and the magicka cost requires a ridiculous investment in magicka and or perks.

Alteration / Conjuration are the primary schools of my mage. Mage Armor + Conjured Weapons = good times... but YMMV.

Alternatively alternation and conjuration can be used to kill someone's wife, reanimate the body, paralyze him and let his loved one beat him to death. This is as evil as it gets ... but YMMV.

ok, I just did a basic test, again this is not what I expect to be 'max' damage

I have double enchanted iron daggers (frost and fire), reading 54 damage each element.
I have 163% fortify destruction potion

I have 2 unenchanted iron daggers, so physical damage is minimised during poisoning
I have a 97% weakness to fire, 65% weakness to poison on one
and 97% weakness to frost on other. Poisons last for two hits so the weakness to fire and frost are definitely getting boosted by poison.
(I also tested 65% weakness to magic on the off hand, because it can be combined with slow)

Basic idea is spawn ancient dragon, (~3000HP), poision with both daggers, but do minimal damage (1 handed is unperked 17)
then switch to enchanted daggers, quaff fortify destruction potion, and go to town

Result: 3 hits. Just over 3 if using weakness to magic instead of frost.
Interestingly the last hit seemed to do over half the damage, not sure why. May run the test a few more times to see.

So I guess +1000 damage is about right, although I am a little unsure about the varied damage output.

Obviously this could be boosted ad infinitum with posion stacking or resto loop, but who really wants to stack poisons? Only be worth it with pickpocket so you can cram in 10 at once. Pity you cant reverse pickpocket with telekinesis, that would be the best.

Will test out the alteration/destro enchanting at some point, if I can be bothered.

If you use archery, x4 Fortify Marksmen is required to maximize one-shot-one-kill. To that end, you can use zero-cost restoration at the cost of a Fortify One-handed slot. This build covers you for most fights, be it close quarters or ranged.

X4 Fortify One-handed is the top pick and any two schools (except destruction) can be made to cost extremely low, not zero, but low enough to be practical for a warrior with just a 100 points investment in magicka. The 100 points will be well spent considering that adding 100 to 600/700/800 health is just a very small increase while 100 more magicka is a 100% increase. It will open up a whole bunch of spells, especially if you have the cost reducing perks and Atronach standing stone.

Interesting. In terms of perk points used:

1 Novice destruction
2 Augmented Flames
2 Augmented Frost
1 Fire Enchanter
1 Frost Enchanter
1 Poisoner
1 Concentrated poison
Total = 9

Vs

5 Armsman
1 Fighting Stance
1 Savage Strike
2 Dual Flurry
1 Dual Savagery
Total = 10
(Rest of the one-handed perks do not directly contribute to damage and is very much optional)

I see it as a boss fighting tool for an assassin style character which uses daggers and massive backstabbing damage rather than for the x4 one-handed enchantments dual wield warrior. It would be overkill and unnecessary given that the warrior has access to the use of +130 Fortify one-handed potions.

Of note is that, fiery soul trap is boosted by Augmented Flames but not Fire Enchanter. Fire and Frost Enchanter reinforces each other when you have both fire and frost enchantments. But fiery soul trap cannot take the place of fire enchantment for this part.

You forgot all the smithing perks right? To get to daedric you need 5, without that you aint gonna get too much output, even with alchemy. So 9 to 15.

I will totally accept that poisoning weapons, especially dual wielding, is a hassle.

Not really, iron weapons are perfectly useable with just the tiniest reduction in damage (although I personally went Daedric for looks) and still very much superior in damage output.

So that is one smith perk. I would imagine the poison stacking assassin to need atleast this much to achieve max physical damage reduction as well.

The issue for me is how weak the master level spells- you are essentially getting the same atronach ( its stats are the same as the non master version) but it just lasts longer. Arniel's shade makes the vast majority of summoned creatures useless.

I was never a fan of heavy potion tactics because i hate lugging around dozens of them. Theres also the above mentioned issue of micromanagement. I would much rather just duke it out with the ancient dragon for 3 minutes rather than fiddle with the inventory interface before killing him in 3 seconds. Its also not as viable vs vanilla mobs which fill the vast majority of encounters in skyirim.

He meant "steel", not iron... but yeah.
-Loth

I didn't bother with master conjuration spells. I got my skill high enough to summon a dremora for tough spots, but most of the time it's bound bow, armor, paralyze bound sword, ad infinitum. Stagger perk on archery, and impact perk on destruction allows me to control most fights.

Has anyone heard that apparently blades-man critical only multiple base damage of the weapon, making it rather pointless.

Just wondering if anyone has seen or heard of this.


Yes, elemental damage stack in weird ways when you enchant. Although the biggest problem I see with this is the lose of absorb stamina/absorb health.

Now, personally, I'm not be using this, since this is obviously abusing a bug, and not the "maybe description is wrong" like Ancient knowledge.