Swords would allow a higher overall damage output for your spells. Bows can work if you need some extra crit. Honestly I recommend the swords. Two swords allows you to get extra set bonuses and the dual wield passive allows higher overall damage.

For leveling you can do anything you want, but I'd suggest you use Dual Swords. Dual Wielding swords is very normal of a magicka build.
If you can do medium attacks reliably and reasonably, you might want to use destruction staff on your main bar.

Daggers give crit though, yes?

adriant1978 wrote: »

Jaemeson_Foster wrote: »

Daggers give crit though, yes?

Only weapon crit, not spell crit.

This, and you don't need daggers to get crit as a NB, since you can easily get them from slotting assassin skills, inner light, and CP passives.

One thing to consider is that using melee weapons puts a melee limitation on your light attacks too. If you can't land your light attacks, you won't get Assassin's Will procs, which has incredibly high damage potential. Normally the procs (for me) crit between 30-40k, but I've seen them land for as high as 62k, and I can regularly recreate 50k+. It would be rather unwise to forego these procs, since they are high damage and virtually no cost.

I'm not saying you can't melee as a magblade. There are lots of people who do it, and I do it sometimes too. I'm just saying to keep in mind the limitations for melee in this game. I'm willing to bet in the vast majority of cases you will lose damage by forcing yourself into melee, especially when there are staff alternatives that have both higher damage potential, and are comparatively safer.