If a game allows me to (ab)use stealth mechanics and fight unnoticed at range, I'm absolutely going to do it.

Why would I want to fight you up close? I might get blood on me, positively ghastly. No thanks, I'll do it from over here.

Honestly, with >400hrs in Skyrim (VR+pancake), I can't deny that falling back on sneaky WMDs is a fully viable solution to many hurdles along other builds' leveling paths. Unless you're holding yourself to a "no ranged, no sneak" run, it's simply irrational to avoid it at multiple points throughout the game. 🙂‍↕️

Personally, I don't see why the gripe is still active. No one has any room to judge how anyone else enjoys their fully offline, single-player games. 🤘🏼 Especially in this era.

Find your happy places wherever you can. Shit everywhere is pretty fucked. Let others be happy, and you'll get there, fellow lemmings —and more easily. 💚

That's how I was with paladins in diablo 2 LoD. I would try making a zealer or some other different build but always come back to the hammerdin cause its so cheesy lol.

Skyrim fight system are shit and magic lacks variety and punch that's why the way of least resistance is a one hit kill without being noticed.

It's been eons since I touched Skyrim.

But I did do some enchanted two axe berserker build that plowed through everything like butter. Honestly got boring just mulching through every encounter without any strategy. Probably why I quit.

I once played through like that by prohibiting all bow use for myself, just have to be consistent at first and then you get used to selling all arrows because you finally don't need to hoard them anymore.

My dude, if you spam the crouch button while at 100 stealth you can stand on the face of people and they won't see you. You legit can hit them with a dagger for x30 dmg (off handing a mace for stupid dmg) and they don't recognize your existence. Oh, you do onehsot them with that tho. But still.

100 stealth completely breaks the game.

Higher difficulties made me do stealth archer more. Needs multiple hits to take down this now very dangerous enemy? I'm not doing that in melee, or with some limited resources like a mage. I'm flinging pointy sticks from inside the walls.

Yeah, the lack of damage scaling means magic is only really viable in the early and mid game. By the time you’re level 40 or 50, the damage potential for magic has dropped off so drastically that you’re basically forced into using other styles.

Because with every other style of combat in the game, your damage scales based on your level. A higher One-Handed skill means you do more damage with one-handed weapons. But this isn’t the case with magic. With a higher Destruction skill, you simply use less MP to cast your Destruction spells. But the damage of those spells doesn’t change. Which means that as you level up and enemies begin to get stronger, you need to cast more and more spells to take them down.

If an enemy has 30 health and you’re doing ~8-10 damage per hit, that means you take them down in 3 or 4 hits. And if your damage scales based on your level, maybe you’ll be doing 80-100 damage when the enemies have 300 health. It’s still 3 or 4 attacks to take down an enemy. Higher stakes, but you’re hitting harder. But that isn’t the case with magic. If you have a spell that deals 20 damage, it always deals 20 damage. The only thing that changes the damage is the enemy’s particular resistances. So if you cast a spell that deals 20 damage, you’ll initially take that 30 HP enemy down in roughly 2 hits. But then when that enemy has scaled to 300 HP, you’re using ~15 casts to take it down.

And on the surface, this seems fine. After all, you have more MP now, and you’re using less MP per cast. Except that each cast takes time, which means that enemy is getting 5x longer to wail on you. And the enemies do more damage now too, (because their attacks scale to their level), so now you’re getting downed in 3-4 hits and can’t effectively kill anything before it reaches you.

And sure, the game has other ways to mitigate that issue. Armor spells like stone skin, wards, turn undead, etc… Except all of those are just ways to prolong or avoid a fight. They don’t actually help you end it any faster.

Well, I don't want to align with the Empire because they're an empire. I don't really like the Stormcloaks either, and the Dominion isn't really good for anyone. If it weren't for the poor blind people of Skyrim (bless their 12 second memories), I might have to side with Alduin.

There's a DLC idea. Become the champion Miraak could never be and show the Dominion how to stage an invasion!