So far I've played through two characters on Skryim with over 200 hours total on each of them. One on Adept, and the other on Expert. Recently I decided to create a Nord "Sword and Board" Warrior to play through Master with. So far I've done fairly well, only having to switch the difficulty for ridiculously overleveled enemies (Level 15 boss enemeis when I'm only 8 is stupid, IMO) twice. However, this isn't the issue.. I just noticed that playing through on Master can potentially unbalance the game for pretty much any character type besides perhaps mages.

The problem with Master and Expert difficulty is the fact that you take such large amounts of damage from enemies that you cannot afford to get hit. This means that you won't level any of the skills that require you to be hit (Or they will lag far behind). At this moment my One-Handed is 56 and my Archery is 45 while my Block and Heavy Armor are only 34 and 38. I can only see the problem beginning to grow as I start to near level 20, and I'm considering just dropping down to Expert. There is no way I'm paying all that Gold to train these skills or forcing myself to grinding. Its just plain stupid when I shouldn't have to.

I'm just curious what other people think of this issue. Is it even worth playing on Master? Its quite a bit of aggravation.

Playing a Warrior, I don't invest in anything but Health, at each level up. I don't even invest any perks in armor, at all. That goes for any of my characters. I may drop one or two in Juggernaut if I am having issuers. Other than that, I don't worry about it.

Sword and Shield, along with Archery, can spread out the skills too much for me. This will cause a faster leveling of the character.

I only play on Master difficulty as of right now.

What I tend to do is find myself a sturdy follower depending on what I plan on my character being. If i'm a straight up heavy armor melee character I take a ranged follower or if I'm a ranged character a melee follower. This way I can level my combat skills first and foremost because they are truly the most important.

You also want to explore a lot. It really gets tough when you fast travel or rush through quests and run into high level enemies you just can't beat. Sometimes you have to back off till later. That's the point of playing on this difficulty really is so you are challenged, not so you can drop the difficulty when the challenge is to high, or you walk into a beast you just can't beat =p.

I train though. Find trainers as I travel and train in my armor skills or as I said, exploring lets me run into plenty of weaker opponents to let get hits in on me so I can level that armor skill.

Just some things to keep in mind.

My problem is the defensive skills keeping up with the offensive ones. And if I don't invest in some Stamina (220 Health, 150 Stamina, 100 Magicka) then I won't be able to Power Bash or anything. And if I don't invest points in Heavy Armor to get the perk that keeps it from affecting Stamina use then its pointless for me to use Heavy Armor.

Anyway, the enemies that I had to drop the difficulty down for we're impossible to back out of. I was trapped in the room with fighting them being the only way out. But I have been focusing on my combat skills alot, as well as gathering good equipment and weapons. At level 13 I obtained Spellbreaker, and that helped alot. I'm working on Crossbows and Dawnbreaker as well.

Lidiya is my follower right now, but honestly, its kinda insulting that I need to rely on her just to play on this difficulty. If I'm going to have a follower its for tagging along with. Not to mention followers in Skyrim are a pain in the butt..

I'm pretty much going to drop the difficulty. I'm going to play a pure mage on Master. Or I might just forget about it and only play it on my Dark Elf. The issue is playing it from level 1.

After spending over 2000 hrs on 22 characters, 5 of which were pure Warriors (3 on Master), I have yet to spend a single level on Stamina. You only need one point of Stamina to execute a Power Attack or Bash. That's once every 4 seconds. If you use soups and stews, one can PA and Bash continuously for 12 minutes at a time.

Unless you hinder to a single offensive skill, they will always increase at 3 times ( even more) the rate of Armor skills.

I always thought this was the problem with Light Armor, whether you play on adept, expert or master it always
seems way to level up. Even with the thief-stone activated.