2-hander is the only build I havent tried, and I wanna do it on masters. The finnishing moves (Impale, decapitate) are awesome and I wanna give it a shot.

I'd appreciate if someone could give some advice or share their experience building one for masters. I do not plan to use smithing/enchanting abuse as this ruined my last characters due to becomming immortal and killing the sense of danger and excitement,

Yes, IMO it is. I use 2 handed almost exclusively, and can manage on master against any enemy I've found (though expert is markedly easier). Of course, I'm only level 40 and have already maxed out armor - at higher levels, things may get tough, since my armor won't be getting any better. That's when I'll start really leaning on fortify health / regenerate potions, I figure. Or just run on expert / adept.

In my case, the key was simply keeping my armor and damage high with the smithing / alchemy / enchanting power trio, in addition to a narrow focus on two handed and heavy armor perks. I did end up perking stealth a bit, and now when facing a real challenge I tend to scout, use freeze time, and eliminate as many enemies as I can before having to give them a "fair fight".

I tried doing this with light armor. My tactic pretty much required a strict combination of weapon bashes and quick feet to keep from the inevitable 1-2 that most enemies can deal on Master at low level.

I focused on smithing and alchemy and have your potion finger ready at all times...

Low levels will be fairly rough, but once you have capped armor and a good weapon you should be fine. One thing I highly recommend is heavy use of the Disarm shout, as it will largely negate the 2-shot issue by removing the weapons they'd be doing it with. High magic resistance (preferably capped) is a must as well, or boss mages will make your life hell.

Yeah it is. I play on master with mods that make it even harder by Improving AI, giving monsters more armor and even more damage on master. PISE v81, Deadly Dragons hardcoe with the harder creatures pack and WiS.

Here's a video of the fight at the end of "The Wolf Queen Awakened" quest with my two-handed Breton child: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9nX7QRjm7c

Thanks for the tips.

Magic wont be that much of an issue as I'm playing a breton "Mageslayer".

Like most master players I really fear the starting levels. Any other advice is appreciated.

If you're going to be a mageslayer, I'd suggest leveling alteration enough for the passive magic resists. Coupled with Breton, you will be a good mageslayer.

I've only played with heavy armor, but after doing that for awhile, I kind of think light armor would be a lot more fun. It'd be harder in the early stages, but the gameplay seems like it'd be better. The most fun part of being two hand is just running around with reckless abandon knocking the crap out of everything. Sooner or later, the armor cap is equal on both armor types (stupid btw), but light gets better perks. The stam regen alone would be a nice addition.

Makes sense. I used the steed stone and invested a lot of leveling into stamina (plus having Kynereths blessing active most times) to acheive the same effect, but my original plan had been for light armor. However, the first set of steel plate I got was so nice once I improved it.... I caved. I kinda wish there was more benefit to light armor at low levels, but when you can totally negate the difference in movement speed... yeah, sorry, just to tempting.

Another way to look at it is to take the top perks into account rather than things like equalizing the movement speed. The Light Armor one gives a 10% chance to completely avoid a melee attack, while the Heavy Armor one deals 10% of the damage you take back at the attacker, and on Master the ability to completely dodge 10% of all attacks is very valuable. Granted you need 100 skill, so how much of your character's career will actually see that benefit is another matter.

Of course, in trade you get to spend much of your early career significantly under-armored compared to a Heavy Armor user, and when you're in melee on Master that's pretty damn painful. Whether or not it's worth the extra abuse is difficult to assess; a sufficiently aggressive play-style will negate a goodly part of the disadvantage by keeping the opponent(s) off balance via stagger-lock, which greatly reduces the amount of incoming damage, but if you mistime an attack you may be screwed.

It depends on if you are using the smithing tree if you want to pick heavy or loght armor. if you use smithing light is better because the perks a WAY better, andyou can hit the armor cap easily. but if you aren't using the smithing tree than heavy is nice because you will have a good amour rating throughout your play through.

lol.. i got to thinking about this too much. /reroll

Heavy armor is cool, but I can't resist.I just know Light's going to turn out better.

At levels higher then 40 you won't find it getting much harder. Most enemies cap around 42 or below, the only things you may struggle with are Ancient Dragons and Alduin who will level with you forever.

Two-Handed combat is extremely powerful in master difficulty ... if you know how to support that playstyle with perks and tactics. Using enchanting (fortify two-handed damage on rings, necklaces, gloves and boots) and smithing (magic & skyforge steel at the very least, orcish for 90% of the time and daedric for uber-damage) you can reach legit damage as high as 700 per hit!
[img]http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/524903977689925746/D0388B00E6F8BF266A0D66C5BB020BFB51F8862D/[/img]
And this is without exploiting the alchemy/enchanting loophole.

However you also have to fight tactically sound and rely heavily on either followers or summons in fights against larger forces. You also have to be fast on your feet to kill the squishy dangerous enemies first (mages and archers) before you slug it out with the tanks. That means you need a good amount of stamina.

Getting the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Sanguine_Rose for summons should be a high priority.
A highly recommended main weapon for most of the game would be the http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1340172-best-2h-weapon-the-longhammer/page__fromsearch__1 with a http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Fiery_Soul_Trap enchantment. Also get the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:The_Black_Star to manage your soul gem needs.


In level progression you should focus on damage first and defense second, since your combat strategy will rely on killing quickly. You will get hurt anyway and you need to keep your health up either with Restoration magic or Alchemy potions. And even with high restoration you will occasionally need potions for a quick heal, so pick what you like best.

Destruction mages will be the greatest threat for a big part of the game. Counter them either with summons or a backup set of enchanted resistance rings/necklaces. Once you get the enchantment 100 perk (which takes a bloody long time) you can put fortify-two-handed and resist-magic both on your items, eliminating the last threat to you.

In regards to smithing I really recommend going the whole way up to dragon smithing even though daedric stuff is significantly better. But dragonbones & scales are plenty and you can safely enchant them without worrying about slapping a soon-to-be-outdated enchantment.

Play it right and master will be easy ...

In the early levels the things to fear are sabrecats and bears, because they will [censored] you and you can't outrun them, but you can at least avoid them if you keep an eye open.

The only other difficult fights are mages, archers and if you miss a block versus melee fighters