You are correct. I'm just going to say to everyone that if your looking for the most efficient dual-wielding combo do one-handed dagger and sword/axe/mace. If you dual-wield two swords/axes/maces then you will be killing alot more stamina. Using a dagger, I can build up damage really fast and do atleast 4 power attacks with alot more damage at 260 stam. I can only do 2 power attacks with one-handed weapons. Your also draining away your stamina potions using that combo. It may not seem so at first, but the overrall damage for dagger/one-handed is alot higher and quicker to achieve than 2 one-handed weapons. Also I dont know if everyone is aware of this but if you use a dagger and use it for power attacks by itself you actually hit your enemy with 2 power attacks instead of just one. I do not advise using 2 daggers because dual power attack is way too slow unless you have some killer enchantments to back yourself up.

Also, there are more effective ways of surviving better than just dodging. If you have paralysis poisons or a paralysis enchantment that is far more effective. Even fear or calm can work wonders. Remember, illusion can fully change the battle in your favor if used properly. If you run into a group of enemies of course stealth can be used to dwindle their numbers...but aoe frenzy and forcing them to attack eachother is actually alot more effective and its quicker. If you don't have the silent cast perk then you can atleast run and hide while they tear eachother to pieces.

I hope that helps with everyone's concern's.

A. that's the 1st time you mention you use that skill, I'm not telepathic. But it doesn't matter anyway because -> B. The sad thing is that you have no idea what I'm talking about, but you're playing smart and trolly. I clearly stated I'm not takling about perked out build, I'm talking about dual wielding in general on low level characters. You simply can't fight mobs and spam power attacks on low levels. It's easiest to say "I play like this and this, using these perks and this equipment and spells", without giving any actual advice on how to get there.

First-party material...that was finalized BEFORE the game itself even was...
Player-created content...that does in fact line up with exactly what happens when I pull the numbers directly off of the screen in front of me.

I have Skyrim on my TV right now: Pacify costs 90 and I have it equipped to both hands. I have 672 magica, pull the right trigger once, I have 581, a difference of 91, actually. I pull and hold right trigger, then pull and hold left trigger, I have 491, a difference of 181, double the cost of a single spell. I dual cast the spell and I have 418 magica, a difference of 254 which is 2.8 times the cost of the single spell. Have you not noticed this ever? Do you not play this game?

Are those best for a sneak-thief? I replaced mine with nightingale gloves (20% more dmg on one-handed attacks) but perhaps I shouldn't have.

If you really plan on being supersneak and never getting caught, then you're always going to be doing back stab damage, potentially,and 100% is better than 20%, so yes.

Hm, true. I'm an idiot I guess. The DB gloves saying backstab does "double damage" just seemed non-specific to me... didn't ever clue in it was a 100% increase. I hope I haven't sold them yet.

Kind of took my quote a little out of context.
I said unless you use dual strikes, either power or not, dual wielding is kind of pointless.

I know how powerful it can be since I have a couple characters that are dual wielders(one of which use the cross weapon type method), and they are pretty formidable combatants.
Just not with singular normal swings.

Bethesda seems to have done that quite a bit in this game, saying things more with words than with number stats, if it can be helped. I enjoy it, but it can take a little deciphering sometimes. The trade off with the two gloves is that the 20% increase counts for every single attack no matter what, while the 100% increase only counts for sneak attacks.

Not so much running around as recognising the reach an enemy has in relation to yours; if you can stay at the edge of your reach then it's no big deal to take a step or two back to avoid an enemy swing. Power attacks are always telegraphed so they are easy to dodge too - I used running rings as a figure of speech.

The only time I've found this to not work so great is against enemies with greater reach, or ones which flit about like ice wraiths. Ice wraiths are irritating but thankfully fairly weak - two handers are generally slow and you'll have no problems tagging them with a dual flurry.

And yeah I know you don't NEED perks to have fun or make it viable, I mentioned it as a rebuttal to those with the misconception that DW is the same as using a single weapon damage wise, when it patently isn't.

This explains it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJEdi2WzkLc

They cheated with the dual flurry. It doesn't affect anything but the speed of the attacks. Instead of 1 per second for example, it's one every 0.8 seconds. To you. it may not seem any faster but it actually is and it only takes effect if you dual wield. To be honest, the perk is near useless because the speed increase is so small that it doesn't make any real difference. If you dual wield, the effective speed increase should be 2x instead of 1.2x.

And you can still power attack if you have enough sneak skill, Ive slain several deathlords, by the amount of attacks I can count 60x1,5 or even 60x2... imagine this on a berserker orc... WOot

I like dual flurry a lot. I think it's a great deal and in line with other perks. One level of armsman gives you 20% damage increase. One level of dual flurry gives you 20% faster damage. Your damage output is increased by 20% in each case. You can also get 20% damage increase by gaining 40 levels in one-handed skill. If you think about it, 20% increase is pretty big deal.

If your weapon has any enchantments, then dual flurry has a lot bigger impact. Let's say your blade has 20 damage and 20 fire damage enchant. 40 damage total. If you get armsman perk, your damage goes to 24 + 20 to 44. If you get dual flurry, you effective damage is 40 * 1.2 = 48. Say if you are an enchantment heavy destruction mage who carries an enchanted iron dagger. I play this sometimes. You can get dual damage enchants 79 fire + 79 shock on an iron dagger. you get 5 damage from the dagger and 158 damage from your enchantments. You get almost no benefit from getting another level of armsman, 1 point of damage increase. You get 32 points of extra damage if you get dual flurry.

Here is another advantage of dual flurry over armsman: faster experience gain. Most fights are easy, there are few fights that are hard. You can fight with one hand tied behind your back most of the time without noticing. So for those situations, put away your shield and go dual wield and do lots of regular attacks. You get same amount of experience whether you do a power attack or regular attack. To maximize experience gain from these easy fights, put away your heavily smithed weapon and use an unsmithed ebony sword or ebony dagger, daedric if you can get your hands on it. Experience gain depends only on the base damage or type of the weapon.

I dual Chillrend and Daedric longsword atm and the power attacks does a load of damage even against tougher enemies.

A) its the first you brought it up, and if you are talking about low-level characters not perked up builds why are you bringing up taking on an entire forsworn camp? Aside from that you've been pushing axes and maces for their ignore damage and bleed perks as if you were talking about a perked up build this whole time.
Let's be real, what can you do at low levels with almost no perks? Not a whole lot aside from cast basic destruction spells and use maybe 2 power attacks before running out of stamina. In other words, there's not much you can do effectively at low levels, so why bother talking about?
Also, I play like this with these perks...how to get there is PLAY THE GAME.
No seriously if I told you what build I'm using all you have to do is grab the perks when they become available. I'm assuming everyone knows how to level up and use the perk system, amirite?

If we're talking about a level<20 character then, sure, you are absolutely correct, the best way to use dual-wielding effectively is to don heavy armor and go all tanky, but the thing is that's how to TANK effectively (max health and armor so you don't die while doing...whatever). What we're talking about here on this thread is how to use dual-wielding effectively and the best way to do that is...well just watch the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJEdi2WzkLc
Aside from all the stuff the guy is saying there about how to increase damage and attack speed to its absolute maximum (the way people run around using fully upgraded deadric weapons and armor because that's the only way to actually EXCEED the caps for all the good that does--it gets capped anyway), the best way to "fight" using dual-wielding is to chain dual power attacks, like I said.
Granted, that doesn't explain how to use it effectively, because you need to know what build to use. Well, it doesn't really matter. Set yourself up with the one-handed damage perks and get enough plenty of stamina or just carry around lots of stamina potions and you're golden.

Pretty sure this is incorrect. I.E. dual wield does not affect the backstab damage potential at all. The power attack does- but dual wield does not.

Its probably works like channeling. The initial cost is high (2.8x the base cost), but while channeling (read: dual-casting) the cost is actually lowered significantly (i.e. 1.8)
Did you ever test that? Don't run a single test and then try to present your findings as scientific fact...alternatively show me more data.

Use DB gloves for sneak attacks, then when in combat immediately switch to something better.
After all, if you're a sneaky-thief type then you should always sneak up on people FIRST and only go into combat if you're forced to...meaning get your 30x sneak attack FIRST then when combat actually starts switch to something better, because you aren't going to get any more sneak attacks once you're detected anyway.

30x = 3000%

How do I use dual wielding?

With blocking of course... http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=9247

A) its the first you brought it up. Your comment only suggests that you were trying to find a scenario I couldn't handle.
nd if you are talking about low-level characters not perked up builds why are you bringing up taking on an entire forsworn camp? Aside from that you've been pushing axes and maces for their ignore damage and bleed perks as if you were talking about a perked up build this whole time.
Let's be real, what can you do at low levels with almost no perks? Not a whole lot aside from cast basic destruction spells and use maybe 2 power attacks before running out of stamina. In other words, there's not much you can do effectively at low levels, so why bother talking about?
Also, I play like this with these perks...how to get there is PLAY THE GAME.
No seriously if I told you what build I'm using all you have to do is grab the perks when they become available. I'm assuming everyone knows how to level up and use the perk system, amirite?

If we're talking about a level<20 character then, sure, you are absolutely correct, the best way to use dual-wielding effectively is to don heavy armor and go all tanky, but the thing is that's how to TANK effectively (max health and armor so you don't die while doing...whatever). What we're talking about here on this thread is how to use dual-wielding effectively and the best way to do that is...well just watch the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJEdi2WzkLc
Aside from all the stuff the guy is saying there about how to increase damage and attack speed to its absolute maximum (the way people run around using fully upgraded deadric weapons and armor because that's the only way to actually EXCEED the caps for all the good that does--it gets capped anyway), the best way to "fight" using dual-wielding is to chain dual power attacks, like I said.
Granted, that doesn't explain how to use it effectively, because you need to know what build to use. Well, it doesn't really matter. Set yourself up with the one-handed damage perks and get enough plenty of stamina or just carry around lots of stamina potions and you're golden.

Have an unenchanted dagger in your left hand and a enchanted sword/axe/mace in your right, this way the elemental fury shout will still work for the dual power attack.

Then you get as much stamina as you can, as high regen rate as you can (light armor is brilliant for this, a perk adds stamina regeneration) and use the dual power attack when you have stamina or the dual normal attack when you don't.

Take all the dual related perks, the perk for 25% less stamina when power attacking and the perk for extra power attack damage when standing still. You will then wreck everything, even on master with sub par weapons.

If you want to take advantage of some fortify one handed enchantments, use an unenchanted sword in the left hand as daggers don't benefit from that particular enchantment. I usually limit my two one handed weapons to around 50-70 damage on master, the power attacks do huge amounts of damage.

I use either ebony war axe and eb mace, works damn well with all the dual skills purchased

If you aren't heavily into stamina you should be as dual weilding is basicly garbage unless you're using power attacks, but that being said the power attacks are super strong. With all my Enchanments and berserker rage I do a 6000dmg attack allowing me to 1 combo Elder dragons.

I suppose my gripe with DW is that you cannot efficiently switch between offhand weaponry and spells- BIG GRIPE.

I do not wish to pause the game and pull an offhand weapon out every time i attack.

Another thing i have issue with is the dual power attack does not move forward and roots you in place, meaning retreating enemies can run out of it- which i gather is why i see earlier post mentioning they back enemies into corners and then PA.

As said earlier dagger in offhand is best for fastest swings- but if you have a number of OH damage enchants you will probably want sword in offhand to benefit from those while swinging second fastest.

Only way to easily use spells and DW without pausing the game every 5 seconds is to favorite bound sword, and just summon that repeatedly- but this is far from ideal.