War Hammers.

Hell yeah.

Maces -> Heavily armored enemies.

Swords -> Unarmored enemies

Axes -> Evasive enemies or enemies with healing effects.

Daggers -> First Strike Ambush.

This is assuming you max all the perks in each weapon. Personally, I see axes as being the best "All Round" weapons, the Deep wound effect can inflict damage on heavily armored targets, and anything lighter in defense will probably just get hacked to death in a few moments.

Frankly though, that's all theory, the fact is, nobody will know until we parse DPS on each weapon type.

Swords everyday of the week, i feel more comfortable with one.

As said before, depending on how the bleeding effect works, axes can be incredibly powerful or pretty normal or even underpowered compared to the other weapon types.

I remember there was a mod in New Vegas that allowed for bleeding effects. In this mod, the bleeding effect completely ignores armour rating, so if the bleeding effect in Skyrim works like that, it could be incredibly powerful, though I doubt they would make it that good.

My primary is a duelist/thief. so swords all the way. Next will be a Nord barbarian - axes and light armor there. After that I think that I want an Imperial knight type - heavy armor and maces.

In real life swords had huge advantages because you could cut and thrust. The latter gave the skilled swordsman the ability to skewer his opponent before the other could get close enough to cause harm. Swords lost some of their value against plate armor (which really did not come about until the late 13th century), as they could defeat it with neither thrust nor slash (attacking joints and openings aside). That is when maces and axes regained popularity. With all of the weight in the head they could deliver much more force at the point of impact.

Beth has captured some of that with with maces being better against heavy armor. In past games weapons had a strike range and strike speed, which allowed the advantage of swords to be expressed - because of thrust they could be given a greater strike range than maces or axes. Not sure if Skyrim implements this. If so then maces should have the most advantages against heavy armor, axes should have the highest unmodified damage rating, and swords should be the fastest and have the greatest strike range.

Indeed they are. Unfortunately, in real life, they'd be a bit heavier than I'd like to deal with. In video games, however, I love to use the blunt weapons over blades in most cases.


Exactly my thoughts on axes. I'm hoping they didn't screw it up and make it completely useless vs swords/maces. I think it'd be a nice balance between them if they made it scale with the axe's damage and not have a base value based solely on the perk and it's upgrades.