Is sword and board, with their improved defence and superior blocking ability, or a two hander, with their tremendous offence, ability to easily stagger opponents, but limited defence the most survivable choice for a master level playthrough?

Instead of starting making multiple threads so you can pick a build, try making them and seeing witch one you like the most.

Since the nature of my questions are quite dissimilar from each other, asking them all in one thread would be convoluted and inefficient, with some of the questions being buried and going unnoticed. Are you a forum moderator? I don't think you are, but you are no doubt the kind of kid who wanted to be a hall monitor. Go away.

The statement wasn't meant to be taken in an offensive tone, man. I don't hold any ill will for you, so let's calm down and discuss the topic.

If you use smithing and put in a few perks on the armor of you're choice (I prefer Light, myself) you won't really need the shield, but a two-hander can get bland after a while.

Thank you for your input.

I would probably go sword and board on Master Difficulty. It has pretty decent survivability.
However, I don't know why so many warriors out there prefer light armour? Is there a particular reason?

Less perks required, move faster (you can actually dodge fireballs this way), less stamina used, and because there is an actual DR cap (which is 567 Armor Rating), you can reach it by the time you have Glass Armor (with high Smithing skill). And when you reach Dragon, Dragonbone weapons is superior to Daedric.

In the long run, Light is better than heavy in every way.


Anyway, back to topic. The most survivable warrior type on master, IMO is light dual wield archer. You can quickly bring down enemies at close range with two weapons (Orc's Beserk + Dual Wield = WIN). Archery is to weaken strong enemies or straight up finish weak ones from afar, and also for those pesky mages and archers.

But sword and board is fun to play and make you feel like a total BAMF... Kick in the doors and bash them in the face before lobbing their heads off... Also, Shield Charge is [censored] AWESOME!