I'm having a great deal of difficulty achieving finishing moves while dual wielding. I've made this thread to try to get some input from those of you who successfully use finishers on dual wielding characters, so I can try to determine from your gear and play style just what I'm doing wrong.

Let's get this out of the way - after seeing that I was pretty much never seeing finishing moves(except EVERY time an NPC or dragon kills me), I used the console command "set killmoverandom to 100" , which should theoretically cause a finishing move to happen every time the necessary conditions are met. It still hasn't happened for me while dual wielding, so obviously these conditions haven't been met.

For those of you out there who are dual wielding and successfully getting finishing moves, I have a few questions:

What type of weapons are you using?

Are your weapons enchanted? if so, with what affects?

Is your final attack which would bring the enemy to 0 health a single weapon power attack, two weapon(both buttons simultaneously) power attack, single weapon regular attack, or two weapon regular attack?

Do you see finishing moves on backstabs?

Do you have the decapitation perk?


I have heard a couple different things, let me know if your reults match up with this:

1. A finisher cannot be performed if you are out of stamina

2. A finisher cannot be performed if your only weapon is in your off hand



I have tested a few things, and also compared my play style with some of the observations. Here's what I know:

FInishers seem to work better for me if I switch to holding a single weapon

They work a lot more often as back stabs, but still, only when using one weapon

I have two glass swords, one enchanted with absorb stamina, one with cold damage.

After reading about the "off hand" issue with finishers, I'm thinking I might usually equip my "off hand" first, by clicking the right button. I will unequip and make certain I equip the main hand first tonight.

I almost always use the dual power attack(hold both attack buttons simultaneously), which does indeed drain my stamina, as well as actually performinf three consecutive attacks. perhaps the three attacks is interrupting the finisher, or perhaps there is some truth to the "no stamina=no finisher" statement above.

I hope someone can provide some insight.