So far in Skyrim I've played as an Orc warrior and right now I'm a Dark Elf spellsword.

My question is how effective is dual-wielding? I know it does twice the damage. I'm thinking of creating a dual-wielding Nord that specializes in heavy armor and smithing.

Be prepared to own everything. I decided to try an Orc dual swords. It's absolute carnage with the 3 craft skills, even just enchanting and smithing. Just make sure to make/bring healing pots for the early part of the game at least, especially if you don't plan to use restoration much. I found though once you get dwarven or orc weapons and improve/enchant them your defense doesn't seem to matter much, you can kill groups of anything in seconds.

It probably has the highest DPS output of everything. It is arguably the best combat type you can play.

Best isn't the right choice of words, the most offensive is dual wielding.

It is immensely effective mainly due to the triple spin power attack and the swipe with both weapons, which is why you should always have a dagger in your left hand. The speed of the power spin and the double swipe is dependent on the left hand weapon.

Well it is fun. Expect to do high damage output but take alot of damage yourself particularly at the begining. Strategically I place it as the lowest damage type since all you do is blitz to do as much damage as quickly as possible, next would be two hander as you can still use block so the quick relflex perk is there and it is best to time the opponents swing then attack, the most tactical would be one hand with shield.

Dual wielding is pretty sweet - I use war axes for both hands. The attack speed is very fast, but your stamina drains pretty quickly when doing power moves as you are doing them twice, so you will have to build it up.

If it helps describe how it is I can kill frost dragons in one power attack with my level 30 orc.

I had a dual-wielding Argonian. The first dragon I encountered outside of the storyline was a Frost Dragon, and I was level 23. Just histkin and then power attack and they go down quick as hell.

I like to use sword and shield but will try dw eventually again. I tried it briefly but for some reason I can`t get the hang of the right+left clicking. Haha after 15 years or so of left clicking to attack , having to use both buttons is really weird.

It's all about the power attacks, the aforementioned dual-wield "spin" is devastating. I actually find "normal" swinging (right hand swing, left hand swing, etc. alternating) to be a little awkward and slower than just swinging with one hand. I'm not criticizing at all; I'm a loyal dual-wielder on several characters. My most recent started dual-wielding, but I started to get bored and picked up a shield. I find myself defaulting to the shield, and switching to dual-wielding only if I want a lot of damage output from the power attack against a difficult enemy. Not that I use the shield bash all the time, but I realized I was almost never swinging with my left hand.

It is the most damaging melee possible.
It has the highest DPS
It also has the highest base DAM on a power attack:
- once you get dual savagery it increases power attack DAM by 50%,
boosting the damage above that of a two hander when power attacking; way OP.

If you want to survive against things bigger and hairier than you are, go light:
step in and attack (quick, single strike; no power attack)
then step back out again.

BTW don't bother swinging both swords at the same time,
it just slows you down, and forces you to stand still;
quite the opposite of what you want.

I love dual wielding. Like someone above mentioned, it's all about the power attacks. You'll need lots of stamina to dish out lots of power attacks.

^ That more or less. I guess its a case of getting the rhythym or not, but I can't get dual wields to actually dual wield (where both weapons are going at once) at all, its just like attacking with an alternate animation. Minute I swing one hand, the other one refuses to activate until that ones done, at which point I could just swing again with the same hand. The power attack works, of course, but I still find the traditional styles way more useful, with the two-handed still one-hitting or wiping out even super-enemies in 3 swings or less.

Even without power attacks, I can easily dispatch dragons in seconds with 2 glass swords.

Wow, i never knew that, things are looking up.


Most of the damage comes from the perks and i found myself rarely ever using the off-hand sword for anything other than triple-power attacks.
In terms of fps, at minimum its a 35% increase, closer to 40 or 50% but definately not 100% increase unless youre spamming the triple-power attacks.
In terms of viablity its very hard to play it on master difficulty + enchaned difficulty mods if not impossible because monsters kill you in a few strikes and you have no way of staggering them outside of power attacks which are generally inferior to shiled bash for staggering purposes.

It's the most powerful tool at your disposal, & even more deadly yet when combined with elemental fury. I dual wielded daedric axes & used elemental fury against an ancient dragon, took him down in a matter of seconds.

Even just attacking with one hand, once you have the dual flurry perks, dual wielding will out-damage two handed and sword and shield pretty well (http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii167/bl3count/meleesynergy-1.jpg) I mostly use regular swings with my right hand weapons, plus double power attacks when I need something to die quickly.

When I dual wield and swing only with my right hand the attack seems faster than when I single wield and attack with the same hand.

My Khajiit duel wields scimitars and he's a god of slicing fury. I definitely recommend giving it a try.

Combine dual wield with the Elemental Fury shout and you just dice through enemies I tell you.

Though if you're a PC user here's a bit of a warning. There's this bug where if you hot key dual wielded weapons and then switch to magic, it will unbind the hot key. Every single time. And there's another bug where once you've upgraded your weapons, you cannot hot key them any longer as they list seperately in the favorites list. The only way around this is to manually assign the left and rights hands, and this can get pretty annoying during combat situations.

To be fair, it takes a while to perk it up to the point where it is effective, and I find it best combined with stealth if you plan on Light Armour rather than Heavy. In the early stages the lack of Block will be important.