Picking Weapons

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I took a look at weapon speeds to see what my best option was for melee weapons. This can be considered a corollary for what Rechet posted on armor. Dual wielding left everything in the dust - even before you factor in the perks you can spend on speeding up your dual wielding attacks.

It works like this. Base weapons speeds:

Sword 1, Axe 0.9, Mace 0.8, Great Sword 0.7, Battle Axe 0.6, War Hammer 0.5. This is not exactly swings per second, but it is ratio-appropriate. So a sword swings twice as many per unit time as does a battle hammer. (Note - some unique weapons, specifically daedric artifacts have higher swing speeds than do their normal counterparts. As an example, Volendrung, the daedric battle hammer from The Cursed Tribe quest, has a swing speed of 0.7 - equivalent to that of a great sword.

So let's look at some weapons. We'll take glass and daedric weapons as the top-end choice on the light/heavy crafting options. This isn't dps because of the way attack speed is displayed, but it's damage per generic unit of time. But it's the same generic unit of time for all instances, so whatever is the most in this calculation will be the most in dps as well, but it's not dps in the strictest sense of the word.

Glass: Numbers are listed as base damage - speed modifier - effective damage. The first number is the most important number for the initial hit and the right hand weapon for all hits while dual wielding, while the second number is the most important number for all hits from the second one onward, and on the left handed weapon only while dual wielding.

Sword - 12 - 1 - 12
Axe - 13 - 0.9 - 11.7
Mace - 14 - 0.8 - 11.2
Great Sword - 24 - 0.7 - 16.8
Battle Axe - 25 - 0.6 - 15
War Hammer - 27 - 0.5 - 13.5

Daedric:

Sword - 14 - 1 - 14
Axe - 15 - 0.9 - 13.5
Mace - 16 - 0.8 - 12.8
Great Sword - 24 - 0.7 - 16.8
Battle Axe - 25 - 0.6 - 15
War Hammer - 31 - 0.5 - 16.5

The only reason to pick anything other than a regular sword for your weapon is if the extra damage from the very first hit with a different weapon would be enough to one-shot your opponent. As soon as you factor in the possibility of a second swing, the swords win. (I am assuming that your RL fast twitch muscles in your fingers are adequate enough that you can time your first attack to land the moment you reach melee range, so the moment of your first hit is time zero. That's why the speed factor doesn't really kick in until the second attack.) It should be pointed out that when dual wielding, it's your left-handed weapon that determines your swing speed, so the sword is the optimal choice in your left hand, because an axe or mace in your right hand won't slow you down.

Now, I know what you're saying, "Aldeth, you're being more foppish than usual. Clearly, even once you factor in swing speeds, you're doing much more damage per unit time with a two handed weapon." Well, that's true - assuming you're comparing it using a single one handed weapon. But once you factor in the use of TWO one handed weapons, you can effectively double the damage output of all the single handed types listed above. In which case, the two-handed options get left in the dust.

Again, unless you're one-shot killing everything with a two handed, but not with a sword. It should be pointed out that these are all base weapon damages. Once you add in perks and weapon enchantments, that damage differential for that first hit with a two handed weapon gets bigger and bigger, so the possibility increases as you progress through the game that you may be capable of one-shot killing more and more stuff with that two handed weapon. Volendrung bears special mention here because of it's enhanced swing speed. It's effective damage past the first swing is 21.7, and it already has the biggest damage output on that initial swing, making it the most damaging two-handed weapon in the game, bar none.

Now we're not using seconds here, but it's still possible to calculate with reasonable accuracy the effects of dual flurry, assuming we're defining effective damage as damage per generic unit of time. We know that dual flurry gives a 20% reduction in attack time with one perk (which is all you'll have for quite a while) and a 35% reduction once you eventually get the second perk. So all we have to do to figure out our enhanced damage is divide the effective damage by 0.8 or 0.65 to determine our new damage output. So glass swords go from 12 to 15 with the first perk in dual flurry, and from 12 to 18.5 with the second point. With daedric swords it goes from 14 to 17.5 and 21.5, respectively. And keep in mind that we're using TWO of these weapons, so you can double those numbers.

Now we're almost done - but there's one thing we haven't yet considered - the effects of the perk points you can place in weapon-specific perks on the one handed and two handed trees. The sword ones give increased chances of critical hits 10%/15%/20% per point spent, the axe ones give 10%/20%/30% extra bleeding damage per unit time per point spent, and the mace ones ignore 25%/50%/75% of armor rating per point spent.

It would initially appear that this would make maces and war hammers the clear winner, but it doesn't. The problem is that it does exactly what the description says - it ignores armor but NOT total defense. Every enemy in the game has a defense rating, but you only get the bonus from maces if the enemy is wearing physical armor - i.e., when you kill it, it drops one or more pieces of armor. The only enemies in the game that wear armor of any type are humanoids. You're not getting any bonus out of maces when you're fighting anything animal-like. So nothing against things like dragons, bears, frostbite spiders, trolls, etc. And nothing against mages who typically wear robes with no armor rating at all.

With swords and axes it's a different story. Increasing your chance of a critical hit essentially translates into a effective damage increase of the stated percentage with swords, and the same with axes, assuming you don't kill whatever you're fighting with the first hit. For two handers, this brings the effective damage of great swords and battle axes closer together. Now with perks, the effect damage differential for both glass and daedric is only 20.2 versus 19.5, with battle axes offering slightly higher damage on that first hit, meaning it's just about a wash with these two choices.

But it does change things with the dual wield options. Assuming you have a sword in your left hand to grant the 1 speed modifier to your offhand weapon, axes now pull in front once fully perked. With glass it's 14.4 for swords versus 16.9 for axes, while it's 16.8 and 19.5 respectively for daedric. But the difference is only that large when you dual wield. If you go straight one handed with an axe, you get the 0.9 speed modifier, so you get 15.2 for glass and 17.5 for daedric - still a bit better than a sword, but not by much.

So what can we conclude? For two handed weapons, the winner is Volendrung upgraded with an ebony ingot and the daedric smithing perk, and if you don't want that because you'd rather place your own enchantments on weapons, your best bet is self-crafted great sword. (Although once fully perked a self-crafted battle axe would be just a whisker behind. Close enough that if you prefer battle axes for aesthetic reasons, you could live with it.)

For one handed options, an axe is probably your best self-crafted option once fully perked, with swords just a whisker behind. If we want specific names, it depends on what kind of smithing you have available to you. If you have glass smithing, the best sword damage available in the game is from Chillrend, but you need the glass smithing perk, and you need to acquire the highest version, which you need to be level 46+ to get. The second option for swords would be Dragonbane. Dragonbane is a curious case, because it requires a Quicksilver Ingot to improve, but it benefits from the Steel Smithing perk, which everyone should have. Again, it tops out assuming you have the version that you acquire at level 46+. Both of these options will slightly exceed the damage of a self-crafted daedric axe when full perked. But again, only if you acquire them at level 46+.

For the dual wielders of the world, we want either Chillrend or Dragonbane in the left hand if you have the highest version, otherwise a self-crafted sword. In the right hand, it depends on your perks. If you HAVE daedric smithing, a self-crafted daedric axe beats all options for the main hand, including uniques. If you don't have deadric smithing but have glass smithing, you'd top out dual wielding Chillrend and Dragonbane, and it won't matter which hand you place the weapons. If we take uniques out of the picture, a self-crafted sword offhand and a self-crafted axe main hand from whatever the highest level of smithing you have available is your best bet, assuming fully perked.

 

For starters, you don't do double damage with dual-wielding, since dualwielding attacks are 50% slower. With both perks in Dual Flurry, you get close, though.

Also, since Skyrim doesn't do autoattacks for you like, say, World of Warcraft does, you need to add your very personal reaction time to weapon swings so that it accounts for your less than perfect timing in performing the attacks. A theorycrafter's general rule of thumb is that anything below 0.1 sec of consistent average timing inaccuracy is considered pro gamer level, while us standard humans need to get by with wasting at least 0.2 sec at every turn and corner, compared to what you COULD do theoretically. Oh well, at least we don't have to calculate for server lag issues for Skyrim.

However, once you get your Smithing improvements going, any possible difference in weapon's base damage is easily trumped by its swing speed. "Damage is king, but speed kills." This plays a double whammy for two-handed weapons, as they don't even get a multiplier to how much they benefit from the improvements so all they do is miss chances to swing that extra damage around compared to the much faster one-handers.

 

I actually found a contender for "best two-handed weapon". It's a unique Orcish Warhammer, called The Longhammer. It is a warhammer, but it has a swing speed of a standard sword, which is obviously, awesome.

But here's the kicker, even though it's a unique weapon, it CAN be enchanted. And as an orcish warhammer, it can be upgraded at a grindstone, and gets the benefit doubled if one has the orcish smithing perk. Hmmm... A possible contender for my character if I actually decide to try and max out two handed weapons...

 

Now that's what I call a sleeper unique. Totally worthless at first sight - sheesh, it's not even enchanted - but has some kicker ability just awaiting to be discovered.

Here's another from good old Diablo. Hat's off to the ones that spot that game's arguably best weapon to tackle Hell/Hell levels from its stats alone.

Spoiler

Civerb's Cudgel. Its +200% damage to demons is applied AFTER the huge damage bonus from character levels is added, and most everything down there is a demon.

 

Absolutely. As regards the Longhammer, since a sword has a base swing speed of 1.0, and a warhammer has a base swing speed of 0.5, it effectively doubles its rate of attack. So, for the purposes of calculating dps, for any other war hammer in the game (except Volendrung) to equal it, it would need to do double the damage per swing. Although once you start factoring in improvements, I'd say it's quite impossible for any warhammer to get twice the damage.

Orcish Warhammer base damage is 21. Daedric warhammers put out 27 damage, dragonbone warhammers do 28. It's not even close to doubling it. Although for my character in particular, it may not be my best option because I do NOT have orcish smithing. Given the additional improvements I could make to a dragonbone warhammer, it may be enough to get double the damage out of it. OTOH, I do have a few extra perks to spare with this character, so in theory I could spend two perks to pick up dwarven and orcish smithing.