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Ordinator Tip - Bladed Weapons

Tags: #Dragonborn1721  #Tips and Tricks Ordinator  #Tips and Tricks Guide 
  • August 7, 2017

    This post is really a continuation of my Ordinator Tip - Using Maces in Combat which delves into the use of the Mace Perks from the Ordinator, One-Handed tree. Today I'm going to be showing off Swords as well as Daggers, in my opinion Maces are something that Enai has really made interesting when compared to Swords (which have one good perk) but Daggers, oh now they can be very interesting with some incredibly powerful perks and combinations.

    Clash of Champions 

    Attacks with swords reduce the target's attack damage by 10/15/20% for 3 seconds.

    Clash of Champions is a rather cool perk in my opinion, that stands out as one of the more potentially devastating options. The ability to focus more on debilitating your opponents (rather than increasing your own damage) is something that is useful in a whole manner of builds or characters. I can see this particular perk working rather well for a Spellsword or Assassin character rather than specific perks because it would allow you to get off your first attack and then take a few more hits from your enemies because they'll be a fair bit weaker for a few seconds. Sneak Attack works fairly well with Clash of Champions because it lets your first hit there be 100% more effective.

    Cross Cut

    Unblocked regular attacks with a sword increase the damage of your power attacks against the target by 25/50% for 4 seconds.

    I'm not entirely sold on the usefullness of Cross Cut to be entirely honest. It's certainly a useful looking perk but 4 seconds isn't a lot of time to get off two unblocked power attacks with a sword. Sure it's not impossible to get off one, in fact with Shield Bashes from Block it's really easy to get that first one off. The only possible way that I can see for you to actually activate Cross Cut is to use three words of Unrelenting Force or something similar. In that manner you can push them to the ground and get a few attacks off.

    Falling Sword

    Forwards power attacks with a sword cause targets to bleed for 20 seconds. When a bleeding target falls below 25% Health, your attacks against that target are critical strikes that deals ten times critical damage.

    Now this is really interesting to me, I have no idea how much bleeding damage is inflicted but the secondary effect of doing 10 times damage to your opponent if they're bleeding. Well now that's where it gets really powerful, especially when you look at perks like One-Handed Mastery which increases your critical damage by 2% per level of One-Handed which means an end result of 200% bonus...multiplied by ten. Just, it's kind of insane to be honest.

    Windswept

    Sideways power attacks with a sword fling targets backwards up to 6 feet, dealing up to 40% more damage based on distance traveled.

    I can't really think of any perks that fit in extremely well with Windswept, but the perk itself is fairly useful. 

    Into the Dust

    Repeated standing power attacks with a sword against a target do escalating damage if no more than 3 seconds pass between each. This effect stacks up to three times, each doing 15% more damage. Reaching four stacks knocks the target off their feet.

    I see this as a much more useful version of Cross Cut, you've got a combination of increasing your damage simply for hitting an enemy with a power attack, regardless of whether or not it's blocked (the main problem I had with Cross Cut), and the fourth level kind of takes the best part of Windswept and adds it in as a kind of extra effect. Honestly, I can see this working well with just about anything that increases damage, but for me the Power Bash perks work really well with Into the Dust. 

    Judgement

    Slaying an enemy under the effect of Clash of Champions restores 100 points of Stamina

    Just a minor little effect really, but still a benefit. Restoring a good 100 points of Stamina is useful for any melee character so there's really not much for me to say.

    Bite Marks

    Unblocked attacks with daggers deal an additional 1/2/3 point/s of bleed damage per second for 30/45/60 seconds to living targets. This effect stacks.

    Bite Marks is both a really cool but also fairly basic perk that is definitely powerful. The third level does 180 damage over 60 seconds which is rather powerful without coming off as overpowered, and when you take into the consideration that it stacks, well now that is where it can get interesting. Daggers (unlike Swords) are designed against opponents that aren't blocking, so it's not entirely impossible to get off three attacks for each attack your opponent tries if your careful. Falling Sword actually seems to work fairly well with Bite Marks, if your using a sword and dagger, it'd be possible to weaken the enemy with Bite Marks and then unleash that amazing critical hit with Falling Sword. 

    Savage 

    Attacks with a dagger deal 25/50% more damage if you rapidly hit the target three or more times. Resets when 2 seconds pass between hits.

    Another perk that works really well as long as your opponent isn't blocking (the main theme of Daggers) and rewards you for constant attacks. Savage is really cool but can be a little difficult to pull off, essentially you have to be contiously attacking your enemy in order to get anything done with this and even then it's really easy to lose that bonus simply by missing. If it was a little different, rewarding attacks for 10 seconds or something once you chain four hits I could see it being more useful, but the perk suffers a lot from that need to keep up attacks. Staggering or Shield Bash would work rather well here in my opinion, being able to disrupt Power Attacks, stagger just about any Two-Handed fighter and just stop enemies from attacking would make Savage much easier to use (Paralyze is also good, but that's always overpowered so...)

    Twin Fang

     

    Forwards power attacks with a dagger impale the target, dealing double Bite Marks damage, whether or not the attack is blocked.

    Oh, now this is pretty cool. The main benefit of Twin Fang is that it's powerful even if any enemy blocks your attack which is something that otherwise cripples Dagger Fighters in Ordinator. Being able to do 2/4/6 damage per second for 30/45/60 seconds is just something that's really cool (I mean a max of 360 damage isn't anything to sneeze at). This perk just works on it's own, sure there are a few perks that would work well with it like Falling Sword but overall it's just a solid perk that gives you an out if your enemy is one of those annyoing idiots who just stands there with his shield facing the sun for days.

    Swaying Cobra

    Sideways power attacks with a dagger inflict distracting wounds, draining 100 points of Magicka and Stamina and halting regeneration for 5 seconds.

    Now here we go. Arguably the first true utility perk of the Dagger tree (with the others juts being damage increasing perks and not that interesting). Swaying Cobra is just honestly an insanely cool perk. Beinng able to drain Stamina and Magicka from foes at such an intense rate with only a single attack can be crippling to a lot of enemies. No longer do you need to worry about Shield Bashes, Power Attacks or spells as long as you can chain together a few of these and it's fairly easy to do that. To me this works pretty well with Warrior's Flame from Restoration, which drains the Health, Stamina and Magicka of nearby enemies periodically, so you'd get a pretty good combinatiion of weakening enemies. 

    Death Adder

    Standing power attacks with a dagger ignore armor.

    So, it's not terrible but honestly Death Adder is underwhelming unless you've got mods that edit how enemy AR/Health proportions works. In Vanilla combat (or close to it) your not going to be doing a hell of a lot more damage, so it's rarely something that I'd recommend when compared to Swaying Cobra or Smite (with Maces) there's just better perks and better options in combat. If you do have something that boosts enemy AR, or changes that system in any manner then this is probably a better perk than what I say, it's just that Skyrim has a fairly common weakness in video games of preferring Health to make enemies hard to kill.

    Coiling Python

    Hitting a target with a forwards, sideways and backwards power attack with a dagger within 30 seconds paralyzes the target for 20 seconds. Your attacks against the paralyzed target are critical strikes that deal nine times critical damage.

    So, Coiling Python is obviously an insane perk in theory. It isn't that difficult to inflict all three types of Power Attacks within 30 seconds and being able to Paralyze an enemy for that long? Well that's just already insane without even factoring in the Critical Strike. There are a few perks that work well with this, obviously anything that increase critical strike damage like One-Handed Mastery is incredibly powerful but you also have to take into consideration that Bite Marks will also have an effect here, meaning that this is powerful even when fighting more than one enemy (being able to damage the paralyzed enemy even when you aren't attacking them.)

  • Member
    August 8, 2017

    I enjoyed reading this one yesterday, too, sadly ran out of time to comment. I like those dagger perks! A few months ago I was playing as a priestess who uses dual-wielded daggers and was very impressed by how Ordinator makes them even better. Bite Marks was the one to get me excited: A bit of slow time (she used the mod which grants those Yokudan time spells, if you know the one?) and then unleash on something like a dragon to rack up that bleed damage. I didn't get as far as Swaying Cobra, but she did use Restoration and was in the 70's with that skill, so I think the synergy you point out would have worked wonderfully.

  • August 8, 2017

    Damn that sounds like a fun character Phil, I delved pretty far into One-Handed and Daggers with my Karliah build and Bite Marks is just insane, maybe I should've gone into a bit more detail on Dual-Wielding... Hmm, ah well, I'll have to check out that Yokudan Time Spell mod, usually those sort of spells get kind of overpowered but hey who knows :D

    Thanks for dropping in here (and the Maces one) Phil. 

  • Member
    August 9, 2017
    On daggers, they still have the same shitty animations if dual wielded so there isn't much to do here, even with Dual Flurry or whatever.
    Looking at those perks, they much rather favor a Dagger/Sword (left/right) playstyle with much quicker and stronger dual power attacks that should in theory use standing power attack perks. Now you cant use too many of those dagger perks but Bite Marks and Savage in conjunction with all but the sideways and forward powerattack perks from swords is an insanely good combination.
    I could go on and on about how much better that is than sword/sword. Actually, I have no idea why anyone would go dagger/dagger or sword/sword over a combination.

    Tbh I just bought Skyrim for pc and got Ordinator.