So, after playing 2-Handed characters with perks in Warhammer & Greatswords and being very happy about them, I decided to created a Battleaxe wielder warrior.

When I finally reached 30 in the 2-Handed skill tree and gaining a perk to put in Limbsplitter, I eagerly went fighting draugrs only to see... how disappointing the DoT damage from that perk was, it's barely noticeable, I know it's a DoT but still, I needed to concetrate on the draugr life bar to see a microscopic glimpse of a health drop... I know I have only one perk into Limbsplitter but I've got the feeling that even fully perked the DoT won't deal any real damage, wouldn't poison even deal more damage than a 3/3 perked Limbsplitter?

Should I reload a previous save and focus into another class of weapons other than Battleaxes or am I wrong and there is still hope fro a viable 2-Handed Axe user?

DoT is extremely sub-par compared to instant damage sources in Skyrim, due almost entirely to the fact that enemies die quickly. In order for DoTs to be worthwhile, fights need to take a considerable amount of time. For this reason also, weapon speed is nearly negligent due to the fact that Top End damage is King. You are better going with whatever hits hardest as one shotting an enemy is far more helpful than attacking quickly or DoT.

What dissappointed me about bleeding damage was that you don`t see any one bleed.

My orc is a 2H axe wielder. I put a perk in the bleeding too, but honestly everything pretty much dies to quickly to tell if it helps. I imagine it doesn't make much difference. I swing an axe almost as quickly as a sword and that extra base damage on every hit probably more than equals the extra damage you might get on a critical with a sword.

I am currently level 41 and have all the perks into one-handed. I can't say that I noticed much of an increase in damage after adding the axe perks. That being said, I use dual axes as I find them more damaging than swords with the combo hit. I can kill pretty much everything in a few combo hits - and that kind of defeats the use of the slow loss of health that the limbsplitter perk gives. The baddies die too quickly to succumb to the slow loss of blood

Bleed doesn't work on creatures that don't have blood... undead, atronachs, spirits, etc., are unaffected by the Limbsplitter perk. Anyway, ALL of the weapon spec perks are underwhelming... you'd be better served to spend your perk points elsewhere, as neither the sword nor axe perks scale with level/skill (they are low flat numbers), and mace/warhammer perks only work against enemies with armor, and none of the creatures (dragons, trolls, etc.) you fight in the game have armor ratings above zero. Even the humanoid opponents that do wear armor have very low armor skill, and have low total AR as a result.

-Loth

Draugrs are undead, I don't think they bleed at all.

Oops, beat me.

Well, good to know, I hope Bethesda is aware of those lame mechanics and rework these perks effects to make them a little more viable...
I also want to clarify that I was also fighting Silver Hand dudes at the same time, like I said, bleeding effect? get the Hubble Space Telescope to see something of a Damage Over Time :-/

fail bro

draugr do not bleed

i find axes 10 times better than maces to be honest. swords are sadly by far the best weapons

Don't hold your breath for Bethesda... count on modders to "fix" this. IMO creatures such as dragons should have high armor ratings due to their scales, and giving high-level enemies much better armor skill would be a very good step in the right direction. Expect to see mods in the future that make the weapon spec perks scale with skill level, and difficulty mods that ensure powerful player chars won't trivialize combat at high levels.

-Loth

Gotta love the CK and the modders.

Oh well, I guess I am royaly screwed since I play it on my 360, where is Sawyer when I need my weapon balancing :-/

I use the Battle axe but I only perk the "center", I wasn't empressed, with my 1st character, when I picked some from the "outer" part of the tree.

My favorite is were she hits them in the center of the head then cuts if off... I know their IS blood from the center hit cause it hits the "camera"

I used a 2h sword with my 1st char and really I think the axe is only stightly slower. IMO

That does make sense though. I can live with that.

After taking the second perk I swung at a high HP enemy and watched their life bar without swinging again....

it was respectable drain. It's like free poison effect on every hit.

Against the std fair enemy... it won't make a lick of difference... unless say 2 swings would be 10-20 hp shy of killing them... then it would save you a third swing.

It's best against HIGH hp enemies... Giants, Mammoths, and Dragons namely. The Mace perk is really the only really amazing weapon specific perk as it turns heavy armor into practically cloth.

The Axe and Sword specific perks add less damage then any other damage enhancing perk.... but if you're going to try and max your damage...... they are there for that.

What I'm curious about that I haven't been able to tell yet is how axe bleed stacks. Theres 2 questions to this.

a) If I hit an enemy before the bleed duration expires... does it add an additional bleed effect of it's own duration, or just renew the duration of the existing bleed effect?
If it just renews the duration.... and dual-wielding axes... do they also share only a single bleed effect or do they at least track seperately.

If the answer to both is there is only 1 bleed effect that gets renewed per hit.... then for dual-wielding axe's would be sub-par compared to swords or maces which the benefits aren't reduced in effectiveness by attack rate.

imagine, maybe skyrim online will work someday and all those deadric legendary armors will get useless against mace wielders in pvp...

Past testing in other threads has revealed that bleed effects fully stack with each other. Against bleed-able enemies, dual axes are more effective than dual swords when weapon spec perks are taken for both. Thing is, that's not saying much, as the bladesman perks only add the percentile to the base unmodified weapon damage and do not scale with skill, smithing, or any other perks.

In short, weapon spec perks are teh svck. Seriously, put perks into Lockpicking instead.
-Loth

I don't bother with the weapon specialty perks since they only have a noticeable difference on the strongest of enemies. imo, those perks could be better spent somewhere else.

This. It's been more or less mechanically proven all three weapon specific perks are irrelevant.

But isn't that kinda ridiculous...where's the fun if all the weapon are all but the same? I want weapon gameplay variety ffs.

I agree, however due to inability to test or balance mechanics from the devs, all three are currently worthless due to a variety of reasons.

Of course... we all do. It's just that Skyrim without mods doesn't have it.
-Loth

PS Get Skyrim for the PC, for cryin' out loud! IT'S WORTH IT!

just reading this annoys me. hope this never happens. leave that to WoW

I have 2points in limbsplitter but don't know how much damage it does as I don't play much with the UI visible (mod so only compass is shown) but I have had a more than a few enemies drop between swings while we are circling each other etc and I presumed that this was due to the bleeding dot.

By the way, do we even know the numbers of the damage dealt by the bleeding effect?