Guess I am in the minority.

I re-rolled (yet again) another sword and board light armor character last night. Immediately after departing the starting place, I left my companion. I run into an orc down the road just wandering, the kind that calls you a milk drinker, etc.

Anyway, we engage in 1 on 1 combat. The fight lasts about 3 minutes. Me using sword and board, him using mace and board. I constantly am circling, backing away, etc, trying to dodge his strikes. If I don't think I will make it out of the way in time, I raise my shield and hope for the best. I incorporate a bash here and there.

To me that's a lot of fun. The fight ended with me victorious but almost dead.

Combat can be more fun in some cases than others.

I believe sword/boarders and spellswords have the best combat in this game.
sword/board has to actively defend and strike, and be concerned with timing
spellswords have to adapt the offhand spells to meet the situation

Yes it is lots of fun. I enjoy dual wielding myself.

I had a 10 minute bare-knuckle brawl with an Orc in a Tavern after he called me a milk drinker. Ended in the first hand to hand kill cam I ever saw. Very satisfying.

The combat is just fine for me too. I've had some epic fights.

I do not like it. I use ranged attacks as often as possible and have maxed my weapons' damage to 400+ to avoid combat. I one-shot or one-hit almost everything. I do not take any joy in the entire mechanic. I find the combat mechanics in other games, like for instance The Witcher I/II, more fun.

Might be more fun when you look at it that way, but when I have to face 40 deathlords in a Draughr dungeon then I don't want to spend 3 minutes using tactical combat for each and everyone of them,.

i like it also, especially ranged. Good for tactical approaches this is good when combined with aura whisper.

I keep 1-hitting [censored] and they drop dead, I am not amused.
Playing on "Master" btw.

offhand Paralysis, a room full of runes, a bow, marked for death and elemental fury on a vamp forged katana. done and done.

Why not? Do you not think facing all those Draugr would be a difficult fight, requiring tactics and thinking? To me it is realistic.

Combat is fun in this game. Probably the most fun in the series, in fact. Killcam deaths are particularly satisfying.

I also like the combat system. It's still an improvement over previous ES titles which is fine by me.

Then you've probably smithed and enchanted your weapons out the wazzou. I don't smith or enchant.

Yes. Sadly I used something that was in the game.

Yeah I don't understand the disconnect on the common sense there.
I smithed my weapons to one-shot anything, and combat is not fun. how did this happen?

You new to elder scrolls? The games are very breakable with in-game abilities if that is your inclination. Morrowind had a loop, Oblivion had 100% chameleon, Skyrim has the restoration. And smithing taken too far will of course make you a god.

This silly assertion hasn't been valid for about 10+ years now for any follower of the series. Somehow it keeps getting regurgitated up, along with prayers of "balance."

No and I'm still hoping for a game that is designed properly. Obviously they aimed for people rushing though the main quest and then quit playing.

I as well like the combat, open up with my bow to knock down as many as I can then move in to finish the rest with either sneak and a dagger or my sword and shield.What I don't like is how mobs can one hit you on master but you cannot( I mean a normal kill not the kill-cam instant kill) so to solve this I smithed my gear out so as to have a high enough armor rating that it takes at least 3-4 wacks of the best weapon to drop me, and I smithed my weaponry to the point that it takes 3-4 well placed strikes to drop a drager deathlord, or 2 arrows while in sneak.

edit- mispost

So you wouldn't even consider rolling another character and not abusing the smithing/enchanting issues of being overpowered? It's actually a lot of fun.

There is a sweet spot when it comes to smithing, if you get it right it balances out and feels pretty close to a real fight where both are on equal ground.

Nobody is forcing you to use something in the game. It is not even possible to invest points in every perk, so somewhere you must have made the decision to put points into Smithing an Enchanting. Own decision? I think so.

More on topic, I like combat too, especially as an archer or sword-n-board type player. Archery forces you to think out a tactic in advance, and sword-n-board adds a new layer through the shield (literally). I used to play dual-wielded, but got bored of it, since it's pretty one-sided and all you ever do is act like a mixer.

Absolutely agree. lots of tactical options and very satisfying for me. Take it any day over the "press arcane keyboard combination to make special attack" sort of thing.

The combat is improved but it's far from where it needs to be.