Looking at the perk trees, I'm realizing that Dual-weilding one-handed weapons has huge potential advantages over 1H+? and 2H. All three styles have access to +100% weapon damage and the sword/axe/mace perks, but 1H+1H has access to the following on top of those:

"Dual Fury 3": Dual wielding attacks are 60% faster
"Dual Savagery": Dual wielding attacks do 50% bonus damage

I'm guessing that Dual Fury doesn't speed up the charging time of Power Attacks, or this would be even more over the top. So this is probably a build that usually ignores Power Attacks. High damage, but kinda boring!

So the question then becomes, what can I add to the playstyle that would make it interesting enough for a playthrough? This part of the one-handed tree requires 12 perks, leaving 38 for ~3 more perk trees to focus on.

My best thought so far is Conjuration, so that I have something else in play to keep groups of enemies from mobbing me. (Conjuration doesn't dedicate the hand that cast it in order to keep the ally going, right?)

Any other suggestions? I know I'll need to invest in some damage-survival skills to stay standing, I'm just looking for what's going to make this combat style more interesting.

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Edit: just because I'm playing with the math, here's how crazy the numbers look to me on DW vs. 1H+?.
Edit2: revised math based on http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1233807-is-dual-swords-a-viable-option/. DW apparently does not give a higher attack rate than 1H+empty hand.

Assumptions:
-You have all relevant 1H perks.
-Your 1H swords do 100 damage each.
-Crit rate is 0% without the sword perk.
-Crits do double damage.

1H+?
100 base damage per swing
200 after the +100% damage perk.
280 after the +20% crit perk.

DW
100 base damage per swing (no attack rate advantage over 1H)
200 after the +100% damage perk.
280 after the +20% crit perk.
448 after +60% attack speed (I assume this means 60% more swings per minute).
672 after +50% damage perk.

Remember that 1H has that +? that is doing something else. It has to be worth giving up 672-280=392 damage per swing. (Staying alive would count, of course...)

The benefits of poison, enchantment, and smithing improvements aren't *as* magnified if we assume DW doesn't get double the swings, but 60% faster attack speed certainly still has synergy with those upgrades, and maybe the +50% damage too.

Being an Orc. Berserker rage + melee = AMAZING!

Conjuration bad u would have to switch a hand to magic and back again.

Alchemy to poison your weapons and to heal yourself/boost your stamina

Enchanting to add more power to the weapons.

Heavy Armor or Light Armor- Makes more use of smithing and enchanting. Also, for obvious reasons of you wearing armor.
Smithing- Improve your equipment to increase damage and be able to resist damage.
Enchanting- The last perk allows you to have two enchantments on each weapon and you can enchant your armor to increase stamina or health.

I think these are the best when duel wielding melée weapons.

Alchemy for poisons, smithing would probably be a good plus, enchanting too as the last perk lets you put two enchants on a weapon meaning dual wielders get 4 out at a time

Light armour and healthy supply of swiftspeed potions might also be good, run circles round enemies slashing away.

Conjuration to distract would also be helpful (just favourite it to switch back and forth easily).

And last but not least, elemental fury. Elemental fury + dual flurry is probably going to be insane...

For one you'll hit insanely fast and strong.

Combine all the dual wielding perks with that shout that increases your attack speed , I shudder to think what would happen!

This style sounds very appealing to me.
1. Because it is all out intense. And
2. because it gives you the freedom to switch to 1h + ? Whenever it suits you, and have perks that still help.

As was said earlier, an orc would be good for the racial power.

I think I'd like to go with light armor for the stamina regen perk. You'll probably need it to spirit and attack like a mad man.

The main drawback then is still defense. Perhaps the race with magic resist would be good. You could get those few shield perks that let you bumrush archers, bash, then switch to 1h x2.

I'm imagining I'll be able to summon something before combat, when my weapons have nothing to do yet, and so the above wouldn't be a problem. Am I wrong in how I'm thinking about Conjuration here?

What tree is Elemental Fury?

Edit: nevermind, it's a Dragon Shout. No telling when I'll come across that!

It's one of the dragonshouts. Increases weapon attack speed by a massive amount for a short time.

Meh, Elemental fury will be ok with dual-wield sure, but I will probably favor force-balance-push over it.

Enemies on the ground and knocked against walls can't hit my dual-wielder back, and I already swing alot.

what is elemental fury?

depending on what you play, the sprinting power attack in the 1h tree can also be interesting in combination with the silent roll from sneak...

besides, i think youll profit from alteration (shields) and illusion (confurse enemey, make you harder to see/detect)

Edited top post to include math.

TLDR: DW = 5x 1H.

Edited math in top post again to include the assumption that the base attack rate of DW is the same as that of 1H.

TLDR: DW = 2.4x 1H (if fully perked).

At first glance, you would think that 1H+empty hand would look like this: swing, wait, swing, wait -- while DW in the same timeframe would be swing1, swing2, swing1, swing2.

I assume however the devs realized that that would just be uncontrollably overpowered considering it would douple-dip the effect of poisons, enchantments, smithing upgrades, and 1H perks.

I did see mention that DW gets a moderate attack speed increase over 1H+something else, but nowhere near 2x as many swings per minute. Unconfirmed, to my knowledge.

Conclusion: DW not worthwhile until hitting 70 skill in One-Handed, opening up the +50% DW damage perk. Until then, go with 1H + a spell rather than a shield, since the magic skills could still be useful after switching over to DW.

Edit: okay, there's a compelling argument to spend 4-5 perks in Block so you can close with ranged enemies without getting cut to pieces / staggered / frozen / etc. So 1H+Shield until DW would be worth it to get the needed skill level.

I think that it goes:
Dual wielding attacks are 20% faster (40% for second rank) ->only 2 ranks, not 3
Dual wielding power attacks do 50% bonus damage

As you can see here http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MS6g7i1W6u0/Triwd73A52I/AAAAAAAADsI/CKri2SkoAOM/s1600/skyrim_st_onehanded.jpg

It was taken by a player who played the game, your math is WAYYYYYYY off

edit: and dual wield power attack kills just about any mage when you get the dagger perk in stealth tree.

The way you play a dual wielder is by using hit and run tactics, or using stamina potions and power attacking your target untill it dies. It is not made for toe-to-toe combat. I will post my build is a sec

Skirmisher

Heavy Armor 12/Light Armor
Dual Wield 14 (1H tree, no Critical Charge cause it's 1 hand attack only)
Smiting 6
Sneak 13
Archery 5 (Overdraw)

50 Perks in total.
To play this character you are not allowed to use any magic at all.
Since you will be using Heavy armor to survive while dual wielding you might wanna use light armor on first few levels untill you get your sneak skill to 30, then you will be able to sneak up to your opponents and open with a bow. When your stealth skill is higher and you get conditioning perk you will be able to open on your opponents with melee weapons and 1 shot them with no problem.

You may use light armor, but since you will be dual wielding you won't be able to block attacks you will get staggered a lot, since archers and wizards can stagger you non stop too. It will be very annoying when you're againt 2-3 enemies and not being able to attack at all.
Heavy armor reduces all stagger by 50% and allows you to take on stronger opponents without being ripped to shreds, and melee stealth attacks will take 25% of their HP which helps a lot.

As the game progresses you will become an unstopabble killing machine and be able to counter warrior's greatest weakness which is getting swarmed by enemies and having no escape tool. Also 1 shooting wizards who would otherwise kite you for 3 minutes (yes there are some really annoying wizards in game, trust me. I think they are dragon priests and can jump at the speed of lighting from one place to another)

Updating the build

Thanks for the build thoughts! I'd forgotten about stagger, that's a problem....

I see that your source for two ranks of Dual Fury didn't know what bonus would be conferred by the 2nd rank, so is it possible he did not discover the existence of a 3rd rank after it?

Please link where did you find the 3rd rank, wherever I look on the net I didn't find the 3rd rank (or PM me) so we can fix the chart if it's wrong

Yes it seems that my source is wrong, and that reddit is never wrong

Here is the source I found btw:
http://www.anuconsulting.com/skyrim/skyrimperkpicker.html

Yep that's my source too.

You can read all the perk text at once in his source file: http://www.anuconsulting.com/skyrim/SkyrimDatabase.js

so im not sure if im following: when you duel weild, say maces for example, do you get the perks from the one hand perk tree for maces?

Yes.

Enchantment is probably the biggest boost.
4 points in block (up to block runner) are going to make a huge difference. You'll be able to move around without taking really heavy arrow and spell damage. You'll have to switch your shield in and out, but who cares?
Smithing is awesome, especially since you're so gear dependent
Alchemy is huge
Alteration doesn't need perks assigned, but it should be very, very useful.
Zoom feature on bows is pretty darn cool
Magicka regen from restoration perks is great
Speech if you want to be wealthy and be able to sell stolen stuff wherever.

that it annoying. cant see why you would WANT to block with that kind of DPS potential.