honestly id say dual daggers

If you face shield stackers: dual swords
If you face heavy armoured players: dual maces
If you face light armour users that don't stack shields: dual daggers

So outside of duelling you need to figure out which enemies cause the most problems for you, but in general mace + dagger is a good and balanced choice.

Olen_Mikko wrote: »

I use daggers with precise trait, for increased critical.

I need to burst people down fast, and that's why i need my critical change to be over 50%

Somone with impenetrable traits or heavy armor or blocking or using damage shields will shut you down hard though. This setup only really works on noobs who don't know how to pvp imo.

Duel sharpened maces for PVE. Works very well for PvP also.

zornyan wrote: »

Meh works well for me on my nb too, very few people seem to run impen nowdays, and my build is a pure glass cannon stealth ganker, sitting on 76% crit rating and shadow mundus with all divines gear, and a khajit for more stealth damage. Most people are a one shot from stealth, even if they aren't a quick fear and another suprise attack always finishes them off.

+1

Swords = 5% extra dmg (this always works)
Maces = 20% armor penetration (useless against light armor and dmg shields)
Axes = 50% bleed chance on weapon attacks (not very useful)
Daggers = 10% weapon crit (useless on block and dmg shields)

10% Weapon crit is roughly 5% extra dmg so I would choose swords in most cases.

Im not sure if penetration works correctly atm, it could be that the penetration is higher than the intended 20%.

Elijah_Crow wrote: »

TheWolfJeW wrote: »

For a while in PvE it was dual sharpened maces, but after testing it multiple times I have found that dual sharpened swords is actually more beneficial. This is mainly due to the change they made where swords no longer increase just your weapon damage, but raise all damage you initiate. Before while dual wielding swords it increased your max weapon damage by 5%, but now it just raises all damage you do by 5% making it better than the armor penetration you get from maces. At least this is what I have found on my Stamplar.

Knowing that things can change over time I went and tested this. I made two purple sharpened swords and two purple sharpened maces at VR15. All other things being equal, every hit with the maces was 1000 points more damage than the swords. Tested with surprise attack crit from behind the mob as I can repeat the exact number every time. Tested against VR16 troll in Orsinium.

For now, duel wield sharpened maces is still superior.

Alright, so I decided to hop onto my nightblade and test this further as well. My conclusion is that Dual wielding swords is better.

I used a surprise attack from behind on v16 ogres in wrothgar during these tests.

With dual sharpened v16 gold swords my surprise attacks did 42,611 damage on the ogre. As can be seen in this FTC report
imgur.com/fqIxIEI

With dual sharpened v16 gold maces my surprise attacks did 42,273 damage on the ogre. As can be seen in this FTC Report
imgur.com/uH9Fa9a

I then went on to test ambush as well to make sure that swords were consistently higher than maces. These tests were performed on v16 bears in wrothgar.

With the same swords as before my ambush did 35,098 damage from stealth towards the bear as can be seen here
imgur.com/lKtlHDP

With the same maces an ambush on another bear from stealth only did 34,820 damage. As can be seen here
imgur.com/rrUk4PC

The difference is not much, but as can be clearly seen the swords do produce higher numbers than the maces.

TheWolfJeW wrote: »

Elijah_Crow wrote: »

TheWolfJeW wrote: »

For a while in PvE it was dual sharpened maces, but after testing it multiple times I have found that dual sharpened swords is actually more beneficial. This is mainly due to the change they made where swords no longer increase just your weapon damage, but raise all damage you initiate. Before while dual wielding swords it increased your max weapon damage by 5%, but now it just raises all damage you do by 5% making it better than the armor penetration you get from maces. At least this is what I have found on my Stamplar.

Knowing that things can change over time I went and tested this. I made two purple sharpened swords and two purple sharpened maces at VR15. All other things being equal, every hit with the maces was 1000 points more damage than the swords. Tested with surprise attack crit from behind the mob as I can repeat the exact number every time. Tested against VR16 troll in Orsinium.

For now, duel wield sharpened maces is still superior.

Alright, so I decided to hop onto my nightblade and test this further as well. My conclusion is that Dual wielding swords is better.

I used a surprise attack from behind on v16 ogres in wrothgar during these tests.

With dual sharpened v16 gold swords my surprise attacks did 42,611 damage on the ogre. As can be seen in this FTC report
imgur.com/fqIxIEI

With dual sharpened v16 gold maces my surprise attacks did 42,273 damage on the ogre. As can be seen in this FTC Report
imgur.com/uH9Fa9a

I then went on to test ambush as well to make sure that swords were consistently higher than maces. These tests were performed on v16 bears in wrothgar.

With the same swords as before my ambush did 35,098 damage from stealth towards the bear as can be seen here
imgur.com/lKtlHDP

With the same maces an ambush on another bear from stealth only did 34,820 damage. As can be seen here
imgur.com/rrUk4PC

The difference is not much, but as can be clearly seen the swords do produce higher numbers than the maces.

The difference must be in the champion points and diminishing returns for Penetration. I have 100 in mighty but only 5 in penetration. I'm guessing that you are above 331 champion points?

I like duel wielding Dagger's for cosmetic reason's. I also use precise on both because if i get crit for having dagger's, might as well maximize on it.

I've never had any issue's with it. People always tell me "you can't crit sorc shield's"... that is true however at least i can guarantee a pretty good chance to crit once i get those shields down to finish them.

Use what you want and have fun doing it. Fun is the biggest key factor.

Elijah_Crow wrote: »

TheWolfJeW wrote: »

Elijah_Crow wrote: »

TheWolfJeW wrote: »

Elijah_Crow wrote: »

TheWolfJeW wrote: »

For a while in PvE it was dual sharpened maces, but after testing it multiple times I have found that dual sharpened swords is actually more beneficial. This is mainly due to the change they made where swords no longer increase just your weapon damage, but raise all damage you initiate. Before while dual wielding swords it increased your max weapon damage by 5%, but now it just raises all damage you do by 5% making it better than the armor penetration you get from maces. At least this is what I have found on my Stamplar.

Knowing that things can change over time I went and tested this. I made two purple sharpened swords and two purple sharpened maces at VR15. All other things being equal, every hit with the maces was 1000 points more damage than the swords. Tested with surprise attack crit from behind the mob as I can repeat the exact number every time. Tested against VR16 troll in Orsinium.

For now, duel wield sharpened maces is still superior.

Alright, so I decided to hop onto my nightblade and test this further as well. My conclusion is that Dual wielding swords is better.

I used a surprise attack from behind on v16 ogres in wrothgar during these tests.

With dual sharpened v16 gold swords my surprise attacks did 42,611 damage on the ogre. As can be seen in this FTC report
imgur.com/fqIxIEI

With dual sharpened v16 gold maces my surprise attacks did 42,273 damage on the ogre. As can be seen in this FTC Report
imgur.com/uH9Fa9a

I then went on to test ambush as well to make sure that swords were consistently higher than maces. These tests were performed on v16 bears in wrothgar.

With the same swords as before my ambush did 35,098 damage from stealth towards the bear as can be seen here
imgur.com/lKtlHDP

With the same maces an ambush on another bear from stealth only did 34,820 damage. As can be seen here
imgur.com/rrUk4PC

The difference is not much, but as can be clearly seen the swords do produce higher numbers than the maces.

The difference must be in the champion points and diminishing returns for Penetration. I have 100 in mighty but only 5 in penetration. I'm guessing that you are above 331 champion points?

Yes, I am currently at the max amount of champ points allowed. So I have 100 in mighty and 67 in piercing.

If you're not adverse to testing again and pulling some champion points out and then re-spend I would bet if you have no points in piercing, the maces will produce higher damage. That would confirm the deminishing returns from sharpened and mean at lower champion points maces are better (as we know Mighty is where your first points should go) and swords at higher champion points.

Alright so I went and did some more tests as advised. I took all champion points out of piercing, leaving just 100 champion points in mighty. I then went and conducted the same tests as I did before.

So once again with 2 sharpened Gold v16 swords I did a surprise attack on a v16 ogre in Wrothgar. It hit for 41,155 damage as seen in this FTC report.
imgur.com/XCBZM2m

I then tested my 2 sharpened Gold v16 maces using the same method on an ogre in Wrothgar and it did 40,886 Damage as seen in this FTC report.
imgur.com/ZiQ72xo

As before I tested an ambush from stealth on a v16 Bear in Wrothgar and got similar results

With my previously mentioned Swords the ambush did 33,899 damage as seen here
imgur.com/TqIQRa1

And with my Maces the ambush did 33,678 damage as seen here
imgur.com/vhWbMIK

So even without any points in piercing the swords still do a bit more damage than the maces.

Elijah_Crow wrote: »

Appreciate the testing. Now I'm confused why I'm getting the opposite results. I will play around again tomorrow and see if I can figure it out. Thank you.

I haven't been able to figure out why I'm getting different results. I thought I would post a link to this that people may find helpful.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/232480/optimal-weapon-and-trait-combination-for-2h-and-dw