Skyrim talk:Two-handed

Bleed Damage by BattlesaxesEdit

Anybody know how much bleed damage is caused by battleaxes on each rank? And about the swords how much critic multiplier is applied on each rank? Cant decide which two handed specialization would be best, %75 ignore armor is pretty insane but are there notable heavily armored enemies to be concerned of? — Unsigned comment by 95.14.50.16 (talk) at 21:41 on 13 November 2011

Speculation on my part here, but in Oblivion the only opponents with armor were the ones who wore armor. In other words, it was only the bandit/marauder type NPCs and Dremora. Purely from observation it seems to be the same in Skyrim. I used a mace (I did one handed) for a long time and was quite successful with it, eventually switching to an axe because of dragon fights. Many times I'd get a few hits in on the dragon and it would take flight again, and I'd have to suffer through a few strafing attacks with breath weapons before it would land again. It's not such a problem anymore since I got the Dragonrend shout and the enchant perks; if I get to swing at it, it'll be dead before it can take off again. --Quillan^Talk 04:10, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

AdvancementEdit

Can anyone confirm how the skill progress works? Do you gain more skill if you deal more damage, or is it just about the number of swings you make? — Unsigned comment by 46.163.204.248 (talk) at 03:51 on 24 November 2011

In reply to the question above: setting the skill at 0, then swinging with a glass hammer seems to give the same increase as setting the skill at 0, drinking a fortify two-ahdned +40% potion and then swinging the same hammer at the same enemy; the same result was had by setting the skill at 10 (just in case there was a 6-levels cap on skill increases). I would therefore assume that the increase is not related to damage. --Mef 14:35, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

This requires clarification if this is meant to be useful information. Setting the skill to 0 and then drinking a +40% potion will do nothing - 140% of 0 is still zero. You need to do this test with the skill set to a positive value. It's also not clear what you mean by a "6-levels cap" on skill increases unless your test resulted in your skill increasing by six levels with every swing, which is not indicative of real game experience. Try your tests with a real skill level (e.g. 20) and then your results will be more useful.Kastagir 16:52, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Another reply, I've noticed no problems with greatswords, which sometimes kill in one hit(!), increasing 2 hand skill. I think Bethesda factored in the slowness and fastness of some weapons. Some games, like I think Everquest, a dagger hits more and rasies skill more. I've found that 2 handed is a really good choice. (btw the daedric lord player pet, a higher level conjuration, uses an enchanted 2 hand sword. He is quite powerful and fun to watch. — Unsigned comment by 67.164.33.239 (talk) at 00:52 on 4 December 2011

Information on the One-Handed skill page seems to indicate that while One-Handed does increase based on the number of hits, Two-Handed, because it is slower, increases at a rate based on the amount of damage done. Having played both types of characters for 20 or so levels I can say that this is consistent with my experience.Kastagir 16:52, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I would like to disagree with the above stated. This may be the case for Kastagir (For some odd reason), but in my play I've found that dealing more or less damage does not have an understood gain or loss in experience. In other words, using my Silver Greatsword or my Daedric Legendary Greatsword seems to yield me the same experience- based upon per hit and not per damage. The way I've confirmed this is by having a save and counting the amount of strikes it takes for my Silver Greatsword to increase my skill by one full level, than I reloaded and found a dungeon with a lot more enemies and used a more powerful weapon. By my counts it takes the same strikes to level up the same levels. So, what I do instead to compensate for this is I use the Silver Greatsword (Damage for me is 24) so that the enemies "last longer", thus allowing more strikes per target and thus raising my level "faster", since I am now making more contacted swings rather than fewer power-housing swings. This probably should be confirmed, but I've gotten my Two-Handed up to the 80s in this fashion in a matter of a few hours (With Dungeon raiding), whereas before with the Daedric Greatsword I was using I would spend days because I was killing everything off too quickly. In other words, for best leveling technique other than Shadowmare, I'd suggest using a Silver Greatsword on Master and raiding Drauger tombs. The benefit of Silver helps keep the player alive a little more while the weakness of the Silver Greatsword allows for the most minimum amount of damage per swing. — Unsigned comment by 50.44.13.162 (talk) at 17:14 on 17 December 2011

My findings directly contradict yours. My experiment is very simple and easy to repeat. It requires two 2-handed weapons with significantly different damage (preferably the same type), a character with a relatively low two-handed skill (easier to count the number of strokes for a complete levelup), and a target that doesn't block that you can hit enough times to level up without killing it. For the record, I used an unimproved Steel Greatsword compared to a Glass Greatsword improved with level 100 smithing (glass smithing perk, but no buffs). My two-handed level at the time of the experiment was level 22. I set the difficultly of the game to Master, then walked up to Shadowmere. I saved the game, pulled out a Steel Greatsword, and attacked Shadowmere exactly 6 times before leveling up. I reloaded the game, pulled out the Glass Greatsword, and attacked Shadowmere exactly 5 times before leveling up. The results support the hypothesis that Two-handed increases as a function of damage (or at least weapon quality/degree of weapon improvement). — Unsigned comment by 69.181.26.125 (talk) at 01:20 on 20 December 2011

Sign your comments. You're making this much more difficult than it needs to be. Just take a two handed weapon and a similar one handed weapon. With one handed and two handed skills set to 50 through the console, go find a bandit and make a savegame. Kill the bandit with the sword and note your skill progress. Reload your save and kill the bandit with the greatsword and note the skill progress. The bandit requires the same amount of health to kill, but the kill will require fewer swings with the greatsword. You can count the swings with the sword if you want, but I doubt it's important. Two handed weapons are much more damaging than one handed weapons. To make the skill advance based on number of swings would be a very noticeable problem. I also find it highly suspect that one handed weapons advance based on the number of swings and I tend to think that they use the same formula (i.e. damage dealt) as two handed weapons. Kastagir 17:44, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm thinking that's kind of unreliable for measuring this. I'd imagine the XP per whatever causes it (dmg/swings w/e)is going to be adjusted for 1h vs. 2h weapons. What I would consider the most reliable method to test this is actually take 1 weapon, see how many NORMAL swings it takes to gain one level vs. some opponent. Then, take the same weapon & see how many STRONG attacks it takes to get a level. Then repeat w/ various weapons/smithing bonuses & etc. I'm thinking to really be accurate people need to do this kind of thing. It could be based on actual damage done, could be based on swings, could be based on base damage of weapon, weapon type, swings of weapon type, etc. etc. I don't particularly care enough to do it myself, but if we're looking for the real answer this type of thing needs to be done. 99.28.98.182 19:48, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

The way one-handed works is that XP gains are based on the base damage of the weapon. I suspect two-handed works the same way. The best way to test this would be to compare how many swings it takes to level up using three different weapons - one unimproved iron battleaxe, one unimproved daedric battleaxe, and one improved daedric battleaxe. You will find that the two daedric weapons will take the same number of swings to level up despite the difference in damage done. But the iron will take more swings because it has a lower base damage. You could even try an improved iron battleaxe too, for science. FWIW, I have a daedric warhammer that does over 1000000 damage, gave Shadowmere 1000000 health and my skill still doesn't level any faster. --Razorsoup 00:46, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

A Fortify Two-handed by 40% potion increases damage by 40%, not the two-handed skill by 40%, so it will have an effect even with a skill of zero. 99.186.225.51 05:59, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Bleeding?Edit

Greetings, could you please tell what Bleeding damage actually does? Is it some sort of "over a period of time" damage or is it an instant bonus damage? Looking at the methods how the game operates my first guess was that Limbsplitter/Hack'n'Slash are the very same thing as Fire spell damage aftermaths. Maybe the damage increases with the melee weapons damage? Or maybe it is fixed? If it's fixed then it would be better to play maces or swords. Thank you. — Unsigned comment by 94.21.201.74 (talk) at 17:13 on 25 November 2011

Bleeding does a little damage over time. I've seen a few enemies drop dead just when I was about to deliver the killing blow. No idea how significant the damage is when the perk is fully leveled up. On first level, however, the damage seems miniscule. — Unsigned comment by 46.163.204.248 (talk) at 02:48 on 28 November 2011

I believe we won't know until we can take apart the game files but the increase per level is somewhat drastic last I checked (It has been a while though). It is a DoT and I find it more useful on A) things that try to outrun you such as dragons and, more importantly, B) Once you gain access to the two-handed sweep. When you are somewhat surrounded it allows you to ensure those few that survived the sweep by the hair on their chins will dies, either as they drop to a knee or attempt to flee. The bonuses between the 3 are all purely situational and thus slightly inconsequential in my opinion. Ikthyace 23:18, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Fortifying 2-Handed Past 100Edit

Can greater damage be attained by fortifying 2-handed weapon skill past 100 through enchants/potions? I know that this was not case in Oblivion,but I was wondering if it has been changed for Skyrim.208.84.58.199 20:04, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Well... yes and no. The spirit of your question receives a yes, since fortify 2-handed effects will always give you a working damage bonus. However, fortify 2-handed potions/enchantments will not actually raise your skill score; they just give bonus damage to weapons. This bonus stacks multiplicatively with the one given by the skill itself, by smithing enhancements and by the barbarian perk. (read: if you have a +40% from a potion, that means that the game calculates the normal damage with the usual formula and *then* multiplies the total by 1.4)

If you somehow increase the actual skill past 100 (say, by use of the console, or by gaining something similar to the temporary +10 to speech that you get when you give charity to beggars), then you will *not* benefit from scores over 100. In other words, the max bonus from the skill itself is 50% --Mef 13:30, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

i think i've misunderstood the "speed" partEdit

--79.31.241.137 21:22, 30 December 2011 (UTC) in the page is written that the Attacks per second of the Greatsword is 0.7 and that the attack per second of the Warhammer is 0.9. shouldn't it be reversed? i mean, maybe i've just misunderstood it, but if greatswords are faster than wahammers, then, why is the attacks per second of the greatswords inferior to the one of the warhammers?

The table used to be completely different - 0.9 attacks/second for Greatsword AND Battleaxe, and 0.7 for Warhammer. The comment still references this. Who changed it and why? 178.183.238.122 10:36, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't know, but I tested a few yesterday and the steel great sword and ancient nord axe were both 0.909a/s, but the ancient nord great sword was 0.962a/s. This was with the same skill level and perks. So even within a weapon type, the speed changes. This warrants further testing, but perhaps we need an attacks/second column on the weapon page. A similar note is on the one-hand discussion page indicating ebony daggers are much slower than other daggers. --Nten 14:13, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

More testing. All warhammers I've tested except volendrung are 47apm or 0.78a/s, volendrung is 54apm (0.9a/s) longhammer is supposed to be fast too. I have not tested elven,orcish,ebony,or daedric warhammers. All greatswords and battleaxes are 54apm (0.9a/s), even the ghost battle axe thats 5lbs (drainblood) is 0.9. The exception is as above, the ancient nord and nord hero greatswords are 58apm or 0.966... I have not tested honed ancient nord. The ancient nord battleaxe is still 0.9a/s and I have not tested the hero version. I've tested skyforge and silver, both are 0.9a/s. I have not tested daedric or glass but its beginning to look like the draugr greatsword is the lone exception. --Nten 17:04, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Since when?Edit

While your skill does improve when you hit your companion, they also get fed up with your shenanigans and will refuse to carry stuff for you. Either dealing damage or dealing so much damage that the companion returns home will reduce the available carry capacity.

If you hit your companion, not carrying your stuff will be the least of your worries, they will straight up attack you. Is this line even a little true? --DaedalusMachina 08:48, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to say no. 99.186.225.51 05:45, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, there is a bug that adds copies of unplayable companion gear after rehiring a companion, leading to a decrease in available carry weight. Kotekzot 09:23, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Warhammers with less dps?Edit

The Warhammer's slower attack speed gives it lower DPS than an equivalent Battle Axe or Greatsword. I disagree. I used the speeds for the weapons listed on this page and calculated the dps based on the iron and daedric types of the two handed weapons. With the iron, Battleaxes and Warhammers share dps, 14.4, while the Greatsword has a dps of 13.5. With daedric weapons, Greatswords and Warhammers share dps, 21.6, with the Battleaxe having 22.5 dps. All things considered, I find that the weapons are actually quite balanced. I am going to remove this statement unless some can give a reasonable explanation for it. APSX3427 19:47, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

The reason for this is once the item gets a bonus from Smithing or Enchanting, the faster swing time weapons will do far better dps, seeing as the bonus DMG from Smithing/Chanting is the same # regardless of the weapon's swing time.

Two-handed experienceEdit

I was training Two-handed yesterday eventhough I never use Two-handed weapons in an effort to make getting to the level 81 easier once I've maxed One-handed. I noticed that my experience bar for getting to the next level was about 2/3 full. Is there something other than two handed weapons that gives a small increase to this skill? Mining or dual casting maybe? I don't use bows yet either. I just thought it was interesting since I definitely haven't used Two-handed weapons since the last time I trained it. (159.182.1.4 15:58, 20 February 2012 (UTC))

Training a skill doesnt seem to reset you back to the start of a level, and partial progress to the next level is retained. So at somepoint since the start of the game you have done 2/3 of a level's damage with 2H. 121.44.182.133 21:23, 16 March 2013 (GMT)

Maximum?Edit

Why don't any of these pages have the maximum damage for weapon or the maximum armor for shields, etc. etc. I would like to know what is possible without exploits. That seems like the type of thing I ought to be able to find on this game. 108.73.81.75 03:11, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Probably because that sort of thing has so many variables involved, like what perks you take, whether you're using poison, whether you've enchanted the weapon, etc., that calculating something like that would be virtually impossible. Sure, you could just limit it to base damage, but even then, telling people what a weapon can do only if they take all the appropriate perks isn't something that applies to most people's play style, only to a min-maxer's play style. Whenever possible, we try to make most of the information on the wiki apply to a broad range of players. – Robin Hood↝talk 07:30, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Guard's quoteEdit

In the note's section it says that guards will say "The Gods gave you two hands, and you use them both for your weapon. I can respect that." when you have a high two handed skill.I have encoutered them saying this even when my two handed skill is low.I was dual wielding weapons at the time so I believe they say this whenever the player has both hands on a weapon — Unsigned comment by 2.51.103.16 (talk) at 17:02 on 4 June 2012

"High" is a relative term. All it takes is a Two-Handed skill of 30 or better. – Robin Hood↝talk 21:43, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Bug with Great Critical Charge?Edit

The trivia section lists a bug with the Great Critical Charge perk, can someone please confirm what exactly the bug is or if it even still exists? I don't have the perk yet to test but I found it odd that this bug was listed under trivia, so I wanted to confirm if it is in fact still a bug with the perk. If no-one knows then I'll likely confirm for myself in a while. Haravikk 16:12, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

So, I now have the perk but as far as I can tell it isn't doing anything special, when I attempt to power-attack while sprinting my character simply stops and performs a normal standing power attack (even though I'm still holding sprint at the time), no obvious increase in damage or critical chance. So it seems to confirm that this perk is glitched, which is annoying as it would have suited my style well since I've been using sprint to close quickly as a pure melee class. -- Haravikk 20:33, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

I am Playing on Xbox 360 and it performs a quick forward power attack without losing momentum. I'm having to hit the power attack when I'm about two sword lengths away as I continue moving. In fact if I just tap sprint then power attack I can perform this from a stationary position. In areas with lots of targets u can advance on a pack by repeating this towards each target covering a lot of ground and hitting things very hard.

It does not appear to be bugged on any of my three toons (one for each two handed weapon with varying builds) at least on Xbox. I'm sad you can't use it because its pretty awesome. — Unsigned comment by 108.162.126.70 (talk) at 02:55 on 3 August 2012

I am playing on the PS3 and it seems to work almost every time. I have a feeling it may someday be patched to where there is only a chance to work like is described in the perk description, so I am hesitant to put a perk into it permanently. --67.160.149.107 20:38, 9 October 2012 (GMT)

Damn; I was playing on XBox 360 and it definitely wouldn't work, every time it just caused me to stop and do a power attack at normal speed. I wonder if there was some kind of conflict with something else I had chosen or done, though I can't think what. It'll probably be a while before I play another two-handed weapon character though; it was great fun all the same, but I've so many other styles to try =) Haravikk (talk) 14:09, 9 November 2012 (GMT)

What is the damage increase % per level?Edit

This has been marked as a question that needs to be answered.

Aside from perks, how much does your damage increase just from leveling it up? — Unsigned comment by Jpalmss (talk • contribs) at 19:55 on 1 July 2012

I've been wondering this myself for awhile. I'm on PS3 so I can't test it but if someone wouldn't mind testing then we should add it to the page.--Dotto88 (talk) 00:34, 7 October 2013 (GMT)

It's 0.3% more damage per skill point. Like 1.27xdamage at skill 90. I would add it to the article but the first edit button goes to the perks section, not the introductory part where this belongs.

Sorry, I forgot to calculate my enchanted gear. It truly works just like One Handed which means it's 0.5% per Skill point. Like 1.5x damage at skill = 100. Harkon's Demise (talk) 21:38, 2 July 2014 (GMT)

Stagger Chances, Relative to the Information on the One-Handed Page?Edit

The One-Handed page features information that this one doesn't; most notably attack range and likelihood of causing a stagger on every hit. While not of extreme importance, such things are useful to one interested in learning the metagame such as myself, or even a newcomer to TES who simply pays attention to details. I can reasonably assume that for all of the two-handers the attack range is the same, as well as two-handers causing more stagger per hit than their one-handed counterparts, that's all quite obvious, and I'd be surprised if there were in fact minute differences in two-hander range. But what about providing exact data on two-handed stagger chances?

I know that the heavier weapons take more stamina per power attack, that's also obvious. But can we assume the same stagger chance/weight ratio that the one-handed page outlines? I know that I can cause more power attacks with a greatsword, and theoretically do better damage, depending on who you might ask. But the ability to stagger is in my opinion a very underappreciated tactical advantage, similar to how the two-handed sweep attack has the advantage over the one-handed equivalent, of being able to hit, stagger, or possibly even one-shot kill multiple enemies in a split-second. That's just not possible with much else, not dual-wielding, not many spells can do that unless you have a huge AOE Master level Destruction spell. But then if you're a console command user, or an enchant/alchemy/smithing overpower sort of player, it may not matter to you. But on a PS3, where I have no console commands, and I refuse to use that exploit to cheapen my Skyrim experience, details like this are something I want to see. If I knew where to find them myself, I'd add them to the page.

My point is, if the two-handers have equal stagger chances, I'll stick to my greatsword. If the warhammers stagger more, I just may have to switch over, because that stagger can help me survive. So can we add the stagger chances to the two-handed page, if possible? Thank you. -Kylaen, 4:04 PM EST, 2/10/2013

DecapitatingEdit

I think Devestating Blow would be really cool because it decapitates. But has it more value? Like finishing moves it can do extra damage?

WeeziMonkey (talk) 08:47, 23 February 2013 (GMT)

Decapitation is aesthetic, the 25% damage is applied to all standing power attacks whether it is a finishing decapitation or not, I believe ~ Dwarfmp (talk) 09:21, 5 March 2013 (GMT)

Understanding how Damage works?Edit

I have a question regarding how damage works. Say for example, my Two-Handed skill is 75, and im using a Ebony Great sword. For simplicity lets say i have No perks in 2H. I will obviously deal X amount of damage. However, if my 2H skill is instead 15, will I deal less damage with that Ebony Great Sword? Or is 2H Skill Level just a number used to determine what Perks you can have? If you can answer, it would be Much appreciated! 68.146.81.253 23:47, 16 January 2014 (GMT)

Unable to shout while wielding a two-handed weaponEdit

For whatever reason my guy won't shout with his two-handed weapon drawn. All of the shouts in the "magic" list is darkened and cant be selected and the shouts I've favorited are no longer. But as soon as my weapon is sheathed he spits out a little shout And everythings normal. No big deal because as soon as my two-handed skills 100 I'm done with it, I dont like two-handed. Its at 95 Right now. But any idea why? Also, while speaking of shouts. Why does the talos blessing reduce my shouts by 0%? Pretty useless.. its 0% with or without the talos necklace. — Unsigned comment by Cjesseg (talk • contribs) at 20:29 on 10 March 2014‎

Are you running any 3rd-party mods? They can have unusual effects. --Xyzzy ^Talk 00:11, 12 March 2014 (GMT)

Nope, no mods. I'm on the PS3.

Cjesseg (talk) 02:50, 12 March 2014 (GMT)