» Sun Oct 14, 2012 9:50 pm One-Handed Shield Warrior
Good survivability right from the start and allows you to play 'naturally' for a long stretch of time without letting you feel underpowered. However, at some point (around level 20) you really need to upgrade your gear via smithing, making level 60 for Arcane Smithing mandatory. And while you are at it, you might as well go all the way to 100, which leads you to the usual boring smithing sessions. On the up-side high smithing skills allows you to skimp on the Heavy Armor points and concentrate on getting Block up. Or you go Light Armor, which is completely valid, too.
If you want the absolutely awesome Shield Charge juggernaut skill (and yes, you want it), then you'll be spending an hour abusing a lone giant so he can smash your block skill up to 100 because you'll never reach that level while playing 'honest'.
At Block 50 you get Elemental protection, reducing elemental damage by 50%. Combine that with other protection enchantments and you can ditch the really great Spellbreaker shield for something better.
The Targe of the Blooded in combination with Vegetable Soup is a really effective dragonkiller at all levels, btw.
As main weapon pick whatever you like. Mace of Molag-Bal is great, as is the Nightingale Blade, Chillrend or even the dagger Blade of Woe.
Ignore Mana and build up high health and stamina. Also consider a few levels in Restoration.
Two-Handed Warrior
I initially thought that this would be a road to disaster, because 2H weapons are slow, a missed power attack leaves you open to retaliation, your active/passive defense svcks without shields, archers will eat you for breakfast and mages roast you for barbeque. However, if played right, the 2H-Warrior will clear groups of enemies faster than any other build and you'll have fun doing it. The key ingredient (other than having a big-a$$ weapon) is mobility. Running power-attack your first target and move immediately out of range again. Position yourself in a way that enemies block each other and smash them to pieces if opportunity presents itself. Moving around also protects you against archers, and when they reload you will already charge-attack them. Successful power attacks will nearly always stagger your victims, giving you all the time you need to finish them off.
Lightning mages and Storm Atronarchs will be you greatest problems, though. Can't recall how often the Thalmor executioner one-shot me.
For this to work, getting smithing up fast is an absolute must! Also, as opposed to the 1HS Warrior, you'll also need high enchantment to get elemental resistance and 2H damage up, since you can't rely on chipping away at your enemies. Heavy Armor is recommended, obviously, and the Conditioning perk for mobility is too.
However, this playing style will have you spend much time grinding your smithing and enchanting skills up - even more than the 1HS Warrior, who can live well without enchanting.
Anyway, from the pure gameplay mechanics I'd say that the 2H Warrior is the most fun way to play. Smashing a power attack into someone's face and sending him flying is incredibly satisfying.
Ignore Mana, focus on health and take enough stamina to last you through a battle.
Secret tip for best overall weapon: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1340172-best-2h-weapon-the-longhammer/page__fromsearch__1 with a http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Steel_Battleaxe_of_Fiery_Souls#Steel_Battleaxe_of_Fiery_Souls enchantment.
Dual-Wield Warrior
That is one build I haven't played to the end yet. It seems to me that this build combines the weaknesses of the 1HS and 2H builds instead of their strenghts AND it strips your ability to block: The dual power attack takes a very long time and the one-handed power attacks are as weak as those from the 1HS warrior. You have the bad defense and elemental weakness of the 2H warrior and you lack the reach and damage of the 2H weapons while lacking the defense of the Shield warrior.
On the other hand, you can mostly neglect stamina because you'll do damage with quick successions of normal attacks, which presents us with yet another potential weakness: Soul Gems.
If you enchant your weapons for high damage to make your high attack speed count, when you'll need an awful lot of soul gems to recharge your weapons. And even if this doesn't usually present a pressing resource problem, it is an annoying bit of maintenance.
Or you go with unenchanted blades (which include Mehrune's Razor and Valdr's Lucky Dagger and probably some others) and make frequent use of the Elemental Fury dragonshout.
Anyway, the main reason I don't like this playing style is the fact, that the UI for dual-wielding is atrocious. With 1HS you can hotkey weapons and shield to be used in the correct hand. Same with 2H weapons. Dual Wielders can only get their left/right weapons correctly setup by going to the (quick) inventory, which is kinda annoying.
Archers
Shooting arrows is best done from the distance (duh). And to keep (or create) distance you have several options:
- Sneaking
Kind of a no-brainer. You should always take enough sneak for the critical damage perk at least. - Illusion
The obvious option is Invisibility, of course. But if you are willing to sink lots of points into this, then all kinds of mind-bending spells will add to the fun. If you go that route, though, then you are more of an Illusionist that plays around with bows, though. Not necessarily a bad thing. - Conjuring
Conjuring up meat shields while peppering your enemies from far away is always a great idea. Even better, the conjured bow is REALLY good ... especially against other conjured enemies if you pick the Oblivion Binding perk at 50. And you'll effortlessly fill up your soul gems. And you don't need either smithing or enchanting. Unless you want to. - Alchemy
Potions of Invisibility to boost sneak skills to obscene levels or just outright invisibility. Tip an arrow with fury posion and turn enemies on each other. However, for that to work you need a quite high alchemy skill and heavy investment in the alchemy tree. Also, alchemy is boring and requires you to visit your inventory screen A LOT! On the upside, you'll be getting stinking rich easily.
You should pick Sneaking all the time, though, and then either pick the Illusion or Conjuring path.
In my opinion, Conjuring is the easier path to take because it give you more immediate rewards and it scales well. Also, it is rather resource friendly if you decide to rely on the Bound Bow spell (free spell book in Fort Amol Prison, first room hidden under a bucket).
Illusion takes a while longer to get it running - especially if you focus on Archery first. But once you got the mind-control branch staked out, it is able to run the show even without you shooting any arrows at all. Plus, it's great fun to watch an enemy camp tear itself apart.
However, there are several big drawback to Archery: One is melee and ambushes, obviously. svcks, but you can survive that. The more important drawback though is: It's boring.
While it's fun initially to stalk out enemies and sneak-kill a few of them before the regular fight starts, the actual fights are quite tedious because you usually don't deal very much damage when compared to melee characters. So you stay somehwere in the back and poke your victims waiting for them to die eventually. Feels too much like work. It would be a so much more interesting playstyle if the arrow placement would matter ... but an arrow through the eye has exactly the same effect as an arrow through the knee, which doesn't feel right nor fun.
Sneak Assassins
Hideously effective. Smith up a set of high-damage daggers and insta-kill about everything with a sneak attack. Get your Sneak up to 100 and you'll even be able to sneak-kill inside of combat. If you want a playstyle that makes you feel safe, then assassination is the thing you want. You want Arcane Smithing for the damage (and possibly Dragonbone Smithing). Max the 1H dual-wield tree and the Armsman perk. If you have points to waste, you can take the other perks, too, but they are not essential. After getting the essentials from Sneak, 1H and Smithing, you'll have tons of points to waste on skills of your choice. Illusion complements this playstyle quite well and taking up a few points in Light Armor doesn't hurt either. You can even max Speech just for the heck of it.
Deciding on Illusion early also allows some rather unorthodox "combat" styles in the early game when you are not an unstoppable murder-machine yet: Calm a lone enemy, sneak attack him, then Calm him again. That technique becomes obsolete when your sneak attacks usually insta-kill, but it's awesome at the beginning. And like mentioned earlier, Illusion is awesome just on it's own.
Pickpockets
Heh. If you abuse the Quicksave, then Pickpocket is very easy to level up. Reaching 100 is no problem at all and the skill is actually combat relevant in some small ways: For one, humanoid enemies are not very strong if you stripped them of their weapons and armor beforehand. However, to exploit that outside of safe environments e.g. against bandits, you'd have to get close to them without initiating combat. And the obvious choices for that are Illusion and Sneak.
All in all, Pickpocket is a good way to have fun and it's the second most efficient way to get rich fast. Also, this allows you to easily train EVERY other skill next to maximum level, because nothing stops you from stealing from your trainer, no? Just keep in mind that very high amounts of gold become nearly impossible to steal, even for master thieves.
Anyway, I highly recommend that playing style just for the giggles alone. You should obviously join the thieves guild, of course.
Destruction Mages
Hmm ... well, destruction starts out strong but becomes progressively less effective. The Impact perk lets you stun-lock any single opponent if you can afford the mana (and using enchantment to it's fullest let's you afford that easily). But in the end the Mage plays like an archer with a couple of low-damage area-of-effect missiles and a few nukes that take ages to cast. Playing a destruction mage as a traditional squishy is pure suicide, so don't even think about it. You need high armor and high health, or you'll constantly see the special kill animations performed on you.
In order to armor up, you either wear Heavy Armor and smith it up and invest in the Heavy Armor tree, or you deeply invest in the Alteration tree, so the diverse protection spells become more effective.
You should specialize in at least two elements because eventually you'll encounter something that is immune to one element. Cold is the best element on paper against melee because it drains stamina. But let's face it: Most humanoid enemies will be Nord and they have 50% Cold resistance. I suggest you always take lightning, since it does the most damage and it's specialization disintegrates corpses, which is quite handy against enemy conjurers.
But honestly, in the end the destruction mage is simply an Archer that sparkles and has mana to worry about. And who can't sneak attack. On the upside, the occasional staffs you find will actually benefit from your destruction skills. You can even dual wield staffs, allowing you to fire off rapid succesions of spells that might otherwise be beyond your current skill level.
One particular thing you might want to try is playing a Khajit Armored Caster:
Khajit Armored Caster
For the first dozen or so levels you simply punch everything to death until you get the Fists of Steel perk. Then you punch even more things to death. Blast enemies from afar and when they come close, ready your shield and punch them out. Over time, punching becomes increasingly less effective, but it will serve you well for quite some time. And by that time your destruction skills should be up to the taks of killing things.
To make that build even more fun, eventually rush Blocking to 100 and mow everything down with Shield Charge while having a Lightning Cloak spell running. And when they are on the ground, cast a wall spell on them. Heck, after a good shield charge you even have enough time to cast master spells in their midst.
However, as good as that sounds you have to keep in mind that this requires you to distribute points in Mana, Health AND Stamina, since shield charge gobbles up stamina like mad and you'll be seeing melee a lot in the early game AND you have to be able to cast the big spells. And like all mages you probably want to level enchantment to make spells more affordable to cast. And then there is always the urge to do Arcane Smithing ... (note: Smithing doesn't affect Fists of Steel damage).
All in all, this build is heavy on skills, but it's at least fun, different and reasonably effective. You won't believe how strong your punches are, especially if you immediately grab the Gloves of the Pugilist from Gian the Fist in Riften.
Alchemist
Meh. Boring as hell. Tedious. Not fun. Not very combat effective. Only good for cheating up enchanting to cheat up smithing to make >10k damage weapons. And if you do that, who cares whatever skills you have.
Werewolf
Fun, overpowered, and fun. Easy to level up, unlimited transformations per day with the Ring of Hircine and the best method to travel if you don't mind scaring the civilians.
The only drawbacks are that they don't regenerate health without eating a corpse and that you can't change back at will. And you don't get resting bonuses, slowing down your character advancement considerably.
You want high health on this one.
Vampire Lord
I made the mistake of becoming one as a low-mana character, limiting it's usefulness. Anyway, the damage output seems considerably lower and despite having more skills than a Werewolf, the crowd control abilities are slightly inferior, though fun. But it travels fast over water and even the last stages of vampirism doesn't cause people to run away in fear. Still, the sun penalties are very annoying. Haven't played any radiant quests, though, so I don't know if he becomes more effective later.
You want high mana on this one.
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Well, these are about all playing styles I have extensively played or at least sampled for an extended period. The 2H SMACK warrior was really enjoyable and satisfying once I got over the tedious smithing grind. Assassins were cool, too, but it feels strange if you can sneak nearly right beneath someone's eyes without them noticing. Kinda hammers the fact home that this is just about numbers. Shield Chargers are always fun. But it's rather tedious to level. But hell, it's worth it.
Sadly I have run out of playstyles I can try. And I'm pretty sure that Bethesda will not change that.
