Hey, all!

Odd curiosity about the melee perks drove me to do some more controlled damage tests - for one-handed, two-handed, and shield bashes.

1. One-handed:
Using a Dwarf sword (base damage: 10, 30 with skill and Armsman) against an unconscious Heimskr, because to Oblivion with that guy:

One rank of Bladesman: 6.25 damage (5/8 base)
Two ranks: 7.81 damage (25% more than 6.25)
Three ranks: 9.37 damage (9.375 would be 50% more than 6.25)

Bladesman ranks 2 and 3 augment the damage for sword Critical Charge; the above bonuses were doubled during a critical charge.

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Axe was interesting. Using an Orc War Axe with bleed:
1 rank: 4 damage over 6 seconds (40% base)
2 rank: 6 damage over 6 seconds (60%)
3 rank: 16 (!!!) damage over 6 seconds (160%)

This last value confused the unholy keck outta me because I was expecting 100% at most; so I tested a five-hit combo: the total damage was 230 (1770 from forced 2k,) 150+80, confirming 16 bleed damage per hit.

For those who aren't grinding out crafting, this is actually a decent boost in damage.

2. Two-handed:

This is a similar but slightly different story.

This time, I used an Elven Greatsword (20 base, 60 skill and perk) for the sword tests:
1 rank: +10
2 ranks: +12.5
3 ranks: +18.75
Again, these values are doubled when doing a Great Critical Charge.

With the Dwarven Battleaxe, also 20 base:
1 bleed rank: 4.8
2 bleed ranks: 7
3 bleed ranks: 8 (3 bleed ranks with the Daedric battleaxe = 18 damage.)
Oddly, for some reason, Great Critical Charges with battleaxes are doing 5 more damage than expected. This is not true with swords or hammers.

The numbers are what they are, as odd as they seem.

Finally, the shields.

Orc Shield has 30 base armour.
Bash without perks: 3.75 damage (12.5%)
With Deadly Bash: 18.75 (62.5%)
Power Bashing: 56.25
Tested for smithing improvements with 10000 smithing skill: no improvement in damage.

Daedric (36 base) with deadly bash did 22.5 (67.5 power bash.)

Therefore, a normal (unperked) shield bash does 1/8 of the shield's base armour. With Deadly Bash, this improves to 5/8; and a power bash deals 3x the damage. Combined with virtually guaranteed stagger, this actually isn't too bad.

Shield Charge does negligible impact damage and is only useful for its pushing effect.

Had a chance to poke around the Creation Kit for axe bleed information.

1. The amount of damage per second, and the duration, are material-based and seem arbitrary.
2. The Orcish War Axe is an anomaly, doing 2 DPS for 8 seconds (the 16 total damage I observed.)
3. One-handed and two-handed use the exact same bleed damage; the definitions are found in a set of spells called PerkBleedingSword(material)(skill required to get perk level).

Falmer (even honed) is considered Dwarf for this purpose.
Draugr materials (Ancient Nord, Nord Hero, Honed AN) and Skyforge are considered Steel for this purpose.
Bound Battleaxe does NOT inflict bleed damage.

As for critical hits, the anomaly is being caused by Deep Wounds rank 2:
-Deep Wounds rank 2 is also applying to Deep Wounds rank 3, causing the total critical modifier to be 1.875x critical damage.
-Deep Wounds rank 2 is also applying to Bladesman AND Overdraw ranks: thus,
Rank 1: 1.25x critical damage
Rank 2: 1.5625x critical damage
Rank 3: 1.875x critical damage

This was tested by purchasing all three ranks of Deep Wounds and then removing only rank 2: two-handed reverted to its expected 1.5x critical damage, and the three ranks of Bladesman and Overdraw to their expected (1x, 1.25x, 1.5x) values.

So after all this number crunching, what is your preferred weapon and perk setup?

(sorry, I don't speak stat geek, lol)

My preference lies with illusion / stealth archery backed up by sword and shield - and sword only because it has better kill cams.

What would I suggest based on the numbers here? Axe and shield, using the axe bleed and shield bash perks; switch to dual axes, even if not perked, and use Elemental Fury on tough opponents and watch the bleeds pile up.

If you're a fan of two-handed weapons, the axe bleed is more reliable, but the sword can produce massive damage with deep wounds and great critical charge. Whichever you prefer, get the shield bash perks. See below for why.

Archers that want to play around with Critical Shot might consider backing it up with two-handed swords, for an excuse to obtain Deep Wounds - but not otherwise.

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More stat geeking: weapon block-bashing starts from 25% of base weapon damage. Thus, a Daedric greatsword bashes for 6 with no perks, 30 with deadly bash, and 18 or 90(!!) in a power bash.

Sounds good, thanks.

The weapon spec. perks were tested pretty extensively in the big theorycrafting topic, and the conclusion was that Axes ends up doing slightly more damage against enemies that bleed, and that isn't killed in a few hits. Sword spec obviously pulls ahead on draugr, atronachs and such, while the Mace spec could be trumping both axe and sword massively - if any enemies wore more than plated steel armor (which 99,98% doesn't )

Mhmm. I just wanted to do my own research after finding archery to be buffed in 1.5. What follows is specific to two-handed weapons; axe clearly wins in one-handed.
If you want raw numbers, the axe wins even against bleed immunes, because of the +1 base damage relative to swords; even at Daedric level, you need as little as 4.5x for that +1 to offset the damage-per-hit of a daedric greatsword crit (22.5/5 = 4.5.) 3x of that comes from simple skill and perks, which means that a trivial 50% enchant bonus makes up the rest.
When the sword crits, it produces better burst damage. The axe will produce better overall damage.
Maces... yeah. Slow, and most targets take full damage anyway, so no good.