***Let me start this with a disclaimer - this is not a discussion about whether or not Dual Wielding should allow blocking. That conversation is for another thread. This is merely a thread to discuss game mechanics as they are. Discussion of a strategic sort.***

I've only ever played dual wielding characters, just because, well, I like it, and I haven't created that many different characters anyways. I did for a very short amount of time use some two handed weapons, but that didn't last.

The point - when it comes to melee, my characters have been strictly offensive.

I have been adding Heavy Armor to my builds because I am currently in a phase where I like playing tank style characters. I've been playing on Master difficulty because my first run through on Adept was, well, way too easy.

But I've noticed that even with a bunch of good for my level Heavy Armor, as well as improved via Smithing to even Exquisite levels, as well as an Alteration shield spell on top of that, there is not much in the way of tanking for my characters. I get one, two, or 3 hit killed by pretty much any mob I go against (unless they are the pansy level bandit, forsworn, etc... i.e. the low level spawns).

Now, I do know that I am not as good at defense as I could be. My Heavy Armor perks go into Juggernaut only, and I am using dual wield, meaning I don't have a shield or even a two handed sword to block and absorb damage with. And as a result, my Heavy Armor skill doesn't raise fast, because instead of being the one to take the hits and raise my skill, I sit back casting spells until my follower and zombies pull aggro, then I swoop in and finish off the mobs with my dual wield damage.

My questions is - am I failing at being able to tank because I'm playing on Master difficulty, and the damage output of mobs is simply too much to ever be able to tank? Or am I failing at being able to tank because having a shield makes that much of an impact in absorbing damage?

No its not handicap at all really. On master most things are dead in a few swings once you have decent gear, and you can easily chug potions to recover health. If your having trouble in a particular area its possible that your gear and character isnt up to the challenge just yet. Rember as a tank its all about damage absorbtion not dishing it out, so the higher the AC you have the better and magic resistance is a must. You should be able to wade in and take a boatload of damage and cruise though as a proper tank, regardless of weapon choice.

I found shields can defenitly turn the tie at a battle, especialy early on.

Once you get some proper gear, the shield becomes almost to completely useless.
I'd advice using a shield in tougher battles, or atleast give it a shot.

The shield can block almost any damage all the perks into the tree and is defenitly something worth looking into if your having trouble with tanking.
The best thing is that there is no real loss in picking one up, just give it a go, see if you like it and if not, hey, nothing is lost.

You're right that most things are dead in a few swings, but I'm dead in a few less swings, and unless I am going against very low level bandits, it is impossible for me to win a fight if the mob in question aggros on me instead of my followers or zombies.

My question is how much of a difference does a shield make in regards to that survivability, because I don't "exploit" Smithing, Alchemy, and Enchanting to get uber gear. And while my Heavy Armor skill is low, admittedly, compared to my other skills, it's only because I can't afford to take the hits to level it, because I die so fast.

You dont need to exploit any of the crafting skills. Even a relatively minor run over at the smith can yield great results in survivability. If your armor skill is to low you could try the old "mudcrab boost". Just let a lone mudcrab attack you and chug potions to stay healthy while bulding up your armor skill.

That's because this game did it a bit better than how Oblivion leveled things. That is, people expect they should be able to pass any location at any level, which is definitely wrong. Some quests are not meant to be solved early on, at least not on master. Go hunt some critters in the wilderness, increase your heavy armor on mud crabs, bears, wolves and stuff like that- aditional armor rating is precious. I also seem to find potions that increase Heavy Armor quite nice at reducing the damage. I only ever played on master, so I don't know how it works on lower settings, but I used block on maybe 2 characters, and I assure you that blocking with a shield is definitely not mandatory. It's just that some builds go along a bit easier with master difficulty than others, that's all.

Also don't be afraid to use scrolls and potions as Lexandro said, the game offers plenty of those anyway.

At low level, if you block with shield, you take half the damage. At high level, the damage reduction caps at 85% and you take 15% damage if you block.

At low level, your armor rating is not that good either, 300 AR gives you about 50% protection. Blocking makes a big difference.

At master level, you need to learn to disengage from the fight sometimes to heal yourself, because you are getting damaged twice as fast and dealing damage half as much.

But as you buff up your armor and weapons enough, everything becomes easy eventually.

From a purely technical standpoint, no, you don't need block with DW - as others have said, you can do enormous damage once it's perked up a bit.

But...

From a purely aesthetic point of view I'd like to have it, even if it meant nerfing damage output.

I'm playing a dual-wield character right now and I can't say that I miss being able to block. Frankly, I didn't bother to block when I played a 2-Hand character either. I just don't see a lot of need for blocking in Elder Scvrolls games. I guess, like you, my style of play is offensive.

Personally, I don't like to block because I feel like I'm not making any progress in my fight. All I'm doing is slowing down the rate at which my hit points go down. Sooner or later I'm going to have to lower my guard and start hitting back. And I guess my attitude is: I might as well start hitting back sooner rather than later.

So I don't miss dual-wield blocking and probably wouldn't use it if it were implemented.

Block with all the useful perks basically makes you a God, offensively and defensively. it makes a huge difference.

Right, but there's a huge difference between ignoring the small hits and doing big damage, and ignoring a charged hit, being staggered and ending up dead rolling down the hill, if that one charged attack could have been blocked. (just sayin, I don't block much either lol )

I'm not talking about higher level stuff, I understand that.

I'm talking about getting killed in fights that I should be able to take, but I'm not.

For example: Walking along a path to a town, just a normal path, not in a dungeon. I get ambushed by a lone Imperial. At level 21, my armor is Steel Plate Armor (Superior), Steel Plate Gauntlets (Superior), Steel Plate Boots (Superior), and I did add an Ebony Shield. Altogether, this is an armor rating of 152. I cast Stoneflesh, which adds another 60 to that, so 212. My Health, via leveling up as well as other health bonuses is at 195. The lone Imperial totally owns me because he aggros on me, instead of my follower.

The "mudcrab" method is near impossible, seeing as how even mudcrabs of all things dish out large amounts of damage on me.

I know my stats aren't the best stats in the world, and by no means do I feel like I should be the ultimate tank, but I feel like it's utterly worthless for me to put on Heavy Armor as opposed to unarmored. I feel like I am dying so fast that it makes zero difference.

What weapon do you use and what's the damge output?

Well take your armor off and see how many hits will you take then. Speaking of, how did you raise your stats? Adding a little bit to your stamina, then a little bit to mana, a bit on health and circling this way will end up in ultimatively crappy stats that will make you horribly weak on master. Tank character should probably invest his points in nothing but health, like, ever. If you didn't add so much in hp that might be the culprit of your fast deaths. I didn't seem to catch what level are you anyway.

In this example, I was dual wielding Mace of Molag Bal (33 damage, 25 Stamina damage, 25 Magicka damage) and an exquisite Dwarven Sword (30 damage), with the Elemental Fury shout to back it up.


My focus has been Magicka, since I am also a heavy mage character, a very tiny bit of Stamina, but mostly Magicka and Health. A nearly 50/50 split between the two, like I said, just an occasional point put into Stamina (so far, I have 3 points total put into Stamina)

Ok, I will speak for myself. Dual Wield is POWERFULL, you will become a ultimate killing machine. Why do I need bash a Dragon with a shield, if I can kill it before it start shout ?

I'm playing on master, have 2 Akaviri Katanas... I mean "Blades Swords" with legendary status (over 140 dmg each) and some enchants, Ancient Dragons die very, very quickly, Dragon Priests are dead after 1-2 power attacks - So yeah, totally worth it, if you wanna be uber killer.

This guy plays on master, and you most definitely can't kill a dragon "before it starts a shout" unless you're a very very high level. In fact getting anywhere near a dragon on a lower level will end up with a dragon 1 hit KO you even if you put all your points into health.


Well if you're magic based + heavy armor you don't really need anything into stamina. If you're into charged attacks then it can be a bit of a problem, but charged attacks are not meant to be spammed either. Unfortunately balanced 50/50 approach is a lot more harder on master. You'd either go more towards magicka, so you can cast more and more powerfukl magics before enemies can get near, or more into health and little into magic so that you can take em down slower and take a lot more damage in (with latter obviously being way harder on master). For balanced approach not much I can say other than mentioned grinding on low leveled critters. If you care about Restoration taking down some mudcrabs is the best possible way for getting higher heavy armour, restoration and whatever offensive mean you have chosen (along with a whole bunch of mudcrab chitin ). And don't be fooled- mudcrabs indeed dish out some high damage, at least the ones with bigger shells. And I'm not even joking, I had many characters killed that were lower than level 5 that were attacked by 3 or more mudcrabs at a time on master.

Actually my character is on 72 level...

Then of course it's not a problem, you're 22 levels above enemie's level cap.

Mudcrab deals a lot of damage even thought they are easy to kill.

I say Armor Rating of 200 at level 20 (10x level) is good and comfortable at Adept level. But it's too weak for Master difficulty. Health of 200 is also way too low at master level.

Armor Rating of 200 gives you only 36% damage reduction. It's not that high.

Because the enemies deal twice as much damage to you, wearing a 212 armor at master level is same as wearying 56 armor at adept. You are not far off when you say it does not seem to make difference whether you are naked or not. It fact, you can take more hits not wearing armor on adept level than wearing 212 armor in Master level.

A big mudcrab gives you 25 damage per hit:

At Master level
One hit equals 50 damage
Armor Rating = 212
312 * .12 = 37.44% damage reduction
31.28 damage gets through per hit
You can survive 6 hits
Without Armor survive 4 hits

At Adept level
One hit equals 25 damage
37.44% damage reduction
15.64 damage gets through per hit.
Survive 12 hits
Without Armor Survive 8 hits

A lot of people who play on master level are sneak archers, and they never get hit. A lot of people who play on master level start out at adept, and only increase difficulty when they reach max armor and have high damage output. A lot of people who play at master level grind a lot and play a really boring style of game.

So if you want to keep playing on expert level, you have to be more careful, and boost up your armor, and get stronger weapon. Or not get hit as much.

In answer to the OP's question, as a person that has played almost every build strictly on master, I would have to say that blocking makes that much of a difference.
I found with every combat oriented character ive made while playing master, Block is an essential skill, even with a two handed weapon user. The slow down time during power attacks saves your ass in mobs time and time again. The shield bashing also is a very big help, just to keep mobs from attacking you and if you get one of the last perks that makes it so you run full speed while blocking is also very effective.

Ive found playing a dual wielding tank on master is pretty much impossible if you go strictly combat (no magic or stealth).
While i dont think its because that blocking itself stopping damage that is what helps so much, i think its because blocking makes people stagger sometimes, buying extra time, as well as shield bashing. (plus i think the AI doesnt attack as constantly when you have your blocking up)

I personally got a mod for the PC that gives you a block (actually a parry) while dual wielding that is much less effective then using a shield or 1 weapon, but it helps out immensly. It doesnt even stop much more damage then just getting hit, but its the stagger and the ability to shield bash that makes the mod so much more worth it.
I myself dont consider it a cheat or unbalancing mod, as dual wielding itself is unbalancing (UNLESS you dual wield daggers as a stealth archetype - that itself is a while other story) for a strictly combat build. I dont get mods that i consider cheap, and most mods i get are ones that make the game harder, just as a side note...

Might be because you are playing on master. I have a dual wielding character but I only play on Normal. He survives just fine though. The key is to dodge what ever attacks you can I think and stay heavy with the attacks.

Just don't stop swinging!

Thanks for the replies.

So it seems like I just need to be real strategic with my combat. Which actually I have been - unfortunately the playstyle eventually leads itself to more of a sneak / assassin role than a heavy combat tank. I use my Illusion magic to either Fury enemies into fighting each other, raising zombies as corpses become available and letting my follower essentially "tank", and pull aggro where then I swoop in and DPS the crap out of everything, OR I use my Illusion magic to cast Calm on NPC's, and take them out one by one by getting the drop on them. They are essentially dead before they can even react, especially if I Elemental Fury. I just feel the armor is more for aesthetics and roleplay than it is for any kind of gameplay purpose.

Yeah its pretty much as i said, the dual wielding in vanilla skyrim is not viable for a strictly combat build on Master difficulty. You gotta either throw some stealth or magic into the mix as well to make it useful, but for a tank in heavy armor, dual wielding is useless (on master with vanilla skyrim)
Also look at it this way, every enemy i fight with melee combat that uses dual wielding are the easiest to kill.