So, my first playthrough was an Assassin character, no magic. He was so stupidly overpowered that I ended up having fun playing with "heroes nightmare" where I only save on sleeping, and play with no HUD etc.

Got a bit bored with him so I started a heavy armor shield tank, with a minor in illusion..I was thinking for fury/calm crowd control purposes.

My perk points are spread much thinner on this character, and i'm beginning to find it frustrating playing the 'warrior' part with this ruleset, i'm having a hard time even on Expert.

So i'm wondering, could this be alleviated by just training up my combat skills, or should I just keep doing what i'm doing now, which is basically playing my heavy armor shield tank like he was an assassin..being slow, methodical, using sneak alot etc.

I'd appreciate any advice from warriors, he's just level 15 or so right now.

Expert makes the game harder.

With your other builds, you could stand off and take out enemies. Now you have to get up close and smell their breath. Use better tactics, dodge and move around between attacks. Watch the enemy, they always telegraph their attacks and you can dodge.

Well, it doesn't make the game harder than master right..which is what I was on before.

I'm putting alot into block so far..I noticed on my last one that that one running strike in 1h seemed worthless, should I avoid taking that again?

That's good advice -- also, be aware of your surroundings, and draw enemies into traps or chokepoints where the fact that you are outnumbered doesn't matter so much, since they can only come at you one at a time. Also, skill levels matter so much, and getting perks that raise your combat skills (weapons, block, and armor) will help tremendously.

-Loth

PS BTW, being a shield user automatically gimps you in the damage department. Use more and better timed power attacks (double damage) to make up for the fact that you don't have potent ranged and stealth-attack ability.

Edit: The Sprint power attack doesn't add very much damage, but it is most useful to close distances very rapidly and draw first blood. If you practice with it outside of combat, you'll get a sense of its range and timing, and then taking out weaker "kiting mobs" like enemy archers and spellcasters will go much smoother and faster than before. You close the distance quickly, stagger them with that sprint power attack, and then wail on them with another power attack or a flurry of single strikes until they go down.

Edit2: There is an animation bug with 1H swords where if you do a normal attack and then immediately hold down the button during that first attack, the "recovery" animation from the first strike is skipped, so you get an "instant power attack follow-up" to a normal strike. This one strange game mechanic makes 1H swords shine above all others when going 1H + Shield.

I'm currently playing on master difficulty and using 1h+shield, only tried the game short on adept, but damn it got boring real quick.

Instead of using Illusion for crowd control, I would recommend going Alteration for passive MR and +AR spells for the lower lvl's. That's more a choice I made, because I don't use the enchanting tree.

Get the Lord stone ASAP. The +50 AR and 25% MR, is a great bonus.

Cooking is actually pretty good on the lower lvl's. The +1 stamina pr second is good for being able to shield bash constantly.

Backpedal more, than blocking with the shield. Wait for them to trigger power attacks/normal attacks and follow up with shield bash + power attack/flurry of single strikes. With that combo, you should be able to do a power attack or two normal strikes, before backpedal or blocking. Although two handers tend to power attack right after your shield bash, so it is kind of better to backpedal and losing no hp, than blocking and maybe be staggered.

At a high level a number of things will come together and make things exponentially easier. Your armor rating and blocking skill will become high enough that you'll take very little damage, while at the same time your health will be much higher. Also, once you have enough stamina to be able to shield bash at will, you'll be able to stun enemies to prevent them from hitting you in the first place. Weapon damage boosts from skill, perks, gear, smithing, and enchanting will also far outstrip your enemy's level dependent health increases, so you'll be killing things a lot faster. Starting out though, it helps if you bring along a companion to tank for you (even though that's supposed to be your job.) That'll allow you to run away and heal. I'm at level 44 with my 0 stealth sword and board tank, and it's relatively easy even with smithing and enchanting gimped via a mod.

Great advice here, thanks all!