I'm playing a 1h/shield warrior and tossing up between the 3 weapon perks. I've done a lot of forum searching and still unsure of what would be best for this style of play. I'd imagine with a 2h warrior Swords would be pretty good because you want to kill things quick and a crit could make a big difference in a fight. But what I'm finding on my 1h warrior (playing on hardest difficulty) is that the harder mobs take a fair while to take down. With the long fights I was thinking that maybe Axe bleeds might edge out the other 2 weapons. I'm not too fussed about the easy mobs, they are going to go down quick regardless of weapon perk, I'd imagine Swords would be best in situations like this but I don't think I should be basing my weapon choice on this kind of mob. The argument for Swords in longer fights could be that you land a few more hits and with a weapon enchant the extra damage could add up to more than the other 2.

So how do the weapons stack up in the harder, longer fights? Would axe bleeds start to add up after a fair few hits?

swords are always the best..... everything works, but sword the best. if i remember right you can easily do 2-3 hits after a bash. so you can basically bash, hit twice, block, bash, hit twice, block. never get hit. axe barely gets 2 hits down here and there and hammers only 1.


axebleeddmg is not that high.

Honestly I only ever invested in those perks when I used my orc berserker, since I liked battleaxes for her and didn't use anything else. I'd focus less on the perks and more on the actual weapon you're using first. I usually prefer battleaxes/war axes (obv) because I think maces are too slow and swords are too weak, so yay compromise.

As for cold hard facts about them perks, the bleeding effect of Hack and Slash (axes) stacks but the most it does with all three points in that perk and a Daedric weapon is around 18 HP a second. Bleeding effects stack but unless you're playing on Master and really need the damage, the target's probably already going to be dead.
Bladesman (sword) crit perk is based off a weapon's base damage, so it's not as overpowered as you might think.
As for the armor ignoring qualities of Bone Breaker, 90% of enemies are lightly armored, a large number of bandits and such wear Fur Armor, which is the weakest Light Armor, so it wouldn't come in useful very often.

Honestly I'd just put the points somewhere else. It also allows for more versatility if you just pick whatever better weapon you come across.

Thanks for the replies.

I play on Master so the tougher mobs are alive for quite a while, that's why I was considering axe bleeds. If I do take a weapon perk it would be late game anyway, when I have everything else I want so it's not that big of an issue. Was just wanting to plan for the future and trying to work out what would be best for 1h/shield on Master.

Ahhh, I see. Then honestly, I'd go with the Hack and Slash since the bleed effect is good on virtually any opponent and stacks. Bladesman just isn't that good on any difficulty setting, and Bone Breaker will only be noticeably helpful against like Bandit Chiefs and such.

Those perks are basically worthless.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=GJEdi2WzkLc#t=459s

haha that was a great vid. I ended up watching the rest of it. makes me wonder why they even put them in there

Swords are far too easy, I can't even begin to imagine how other more damage weapons, coupled with perks, will break the game for you.