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Ordinator Tip - Axe Combat

  • August 14, 2017

    This guide is just a quick look into the Ordinator perks that deal with One-Handed Axes or War-Axes. This might not be as in-depth as some of my other guides because I feel like Axes are a bit more standard, what works with Vanilla Axes is guaranteed to work here because the focus is primarily on bleeding damage with a few boosts that aren't really that interesting. Still read on and after you're done, why not check out my Ordinator Tips and Tricks tag, for...well my Ordinator Tips and Tricks :D

    Bleed like a Lamb - So at first I thought this might be a useless perk, a quick read of it will suggest that it's not all that powerful because it deals 1/2/3 damage for 3 seconds (so maximum of 9) and after the bleeding stops they take 15/20/25% of the damage taken while bleeding. If you read that as just the bleeding damage, it'd seem useless but you have to take into account that it's essentially dealing damage based off of all damage not just bleeding damage. So if you did 100 damage in that 3 seconds, the enemy would take an additional 15/20/25 damage at the end of it. It isn't insane by any stretch if you're dealing 100 damage a strike you probably don't need that 25 but it's helpful to get a bit more damage. 

    Mangle - As far as I know Mangle is relatively useless unless you've got a mod that changes the AR system. Attacks with Mangle ignore 25/50% of enemy armour rating as long as they're staggered, which would be fine if enemies had higher AR ratings but since the base game focuses more on high Health it's not quite as useful. 

    Shieldbiter - Alright, now this is an actually insane perk in my opinion. The base idea of it is that a forward power attack smashes through a blocking opponent (hardly revolutionary) but what makes it really awesome is that it causes them to drop the shield and inflicts five times critical hit damage. Being able to disarm an opponent of their shield is something that I think is unmatched by just about any other perk that I've seen for One-Handed, sure you get some interesting ones that increase damage but at the end of the day being able to strip a shield means your massively increasing how often you can get powerful hits off at.

    Wolfstooth - This is another fairly average perk that simply increases your damage by 15% each time you use a sideways power attack. It does stack which makes it a fair bit better and it becomes higher than average when you consider the fact that it lasts 30 seconds (I could easily reach 60% more damage in that time frame) so it isn't terrible just not anything I'd consider noteworthy because there are other similar effects in just about every skill (with spells, enchantments, etc. included). 

    Go For the Throat - Alright, so this is what (in my opinion) makes Wolfsooth actually good. Go For the Throat is a boost that removes each instance of Wolfstooth from you with a forwards power attack and does 50% extra damage for each of them. So with that four stacked bonus, I talked about briefly before, you'd be doing 200% extra damage and 1000% extra critical strike damage. That definitely makes Wolfstooth stand out a little bit more. 

    Apex Predator - The final perk in the 'War-Axe' tree of perks is rather simple in that it lets each strike do 4% of your enemies HP as extra damage (to a maximum of 40 points of damage) It might not be quite as powerful as some of the other perks, with Shieldbiter being more useful and I find Bleed Like a Lamb to be a bit more powerful, the best use of this perk is that it's rather consistent and should be able to do damage even if your opponent is blocking.  

    Overall I find War-Axes to be remarkably average. Sure Shieldbiter and Go For the Throat are fine but you are going to be doing more damage with Maces and Swords have a little bit more depth to them. That said, War-Axes do have a place in Ordinator, I find that a lot of these perks seem like they'll be really useful if your Dual-Wielding. I find that Maces seem to be a little stronger when you're aiming for a small number of more powerful attacks and that Swords and Daggers seem to go together rather well, but two War-Axes definitely seems to be the best option here, aiming for constant attacks rather than Power Attacks (with Shieldbiter being the exception).

  • August 20, 2017

    I haven't played Ordinator myself, but this seems like a very good guide. I'm considering trying out Ordinator after reading this. I just read up a bit on it, I'm used to playing with Requiem. Does Ordinator make it any harder/easier than Vanilla Skyrim? And do you know if it's very compatible or if it changes too much stuff to be used in a huge modlist?

  • August 20, 2017

    Ah, well, it doesn't actually change anything other than the perks, so there isn't really isn't anything about it that makes it easier or harder than the base game. Ordinator really is perhaps one of the most compatible large mods, as long as you don't have anything else that changes Perks you'll be fine there as well. 

    However, I suppose later on your perks are going to be more interesting/powerful. It just does more stuff and does it in cool ways so that when compared to Vanilla (or in my opinion Requiem, SkyRe or anything else that keeps the perks sort of similar to Vanilla) you will eventually get more powerful. Reducing Shout Cooldowns is probably my guide that shows it off best. In Vanilla you're going to be looking at 40% max without getting tricky but with Ordinator you really just need to grab a few perks and you can hit a 50% chance to reduce all cooldowns to 3 seconds and a 60% cooldown otherwise. Another really cool example is Warrior's Flame, which is a passive perk that can end up doing well over 3000 points of damage as well as potentially healing all attributes, or draining them.

    So yeah, but the thing with those examples are that they only really work late-game. You need 100 Restoration for both the tips I linked to as well as a number of perks that on the surface might not seem that interesting. Technically you also need a high Speech for the first (100 being optimal) and Destruction for the second, so it does require a fair amount of focus and determination to become strong, but you can become much stronger than Vanilla.

    I'd definitely give it a shot though, Ordinator is a really interesting mod, and there are a tonne of cool things you can do, but it is not as complex and game-changing as Requiem (doesn't change difficulty, barely touches crafting other than adding some cool things like Scroll and Staff boosting to Enchanting, Traps to Alchemy and Machine Guns (kinda) to Smithing) so if it's the overall package of Requiem that appeals to you then it's a better choice. Though I personally like to grab a bunch of the author's mods and just combine them to essentially change as much as Requiem (Imperious - Races of Skyrim, Aurora - Standing Stones of Skyrim, Summermyst - Enchantments of Skyrim, Apocolypse - Magic of Skyrim, Thunderchild, etc.)

  • August 20, 2017

    Alright, just uninstalled Requiem and installed this. I've browsed through the Perk trees, and I have to say, looks pretty interesting.

     

    I already had Apocalypse and Thunderchild, but I completely forget about Summermyst! (It's not balanced for Requiem, and has no patch D:) I'll be installing that, and I found a few other things (Elemental magic, Deadly Dragons) that'll get me to a nice level of difficulty early, and power later. Thanks for writing this, I think Ima do a spellsword character focused on bleedout now. (Apocalypse Magic adds some disease and bleed spells) Again, thanks for the help and the guide itself! :D

  • August 29, 2017

    Just wanted to let you know that I've submitted this to the Feature Voting. If you would like me to remove it, just give me the word.