The Titan
Quick, think of the worst weapon in the game. Did you come up with the Rueful Axe? I certainly did. Seriously, let’s take a look at the pros and cons of this weapon. Pros: its base damage is good (same amount as the Glass Battleaxe), it’s absurdly light (half the weight of the Iron Battleaxe) and it looks awesome. Cons: it has a terrible enchantment (so you can’t put a better one on or use Elemental Fury, also means that you need Arcane Blacksmith just to temper it), requires you to give up the Masque of Clavicus Vile to get it, prevents you from getting the Oblivion Walker achievement (unless you do the glitch to get both the Savior’s Hide and Ring of Hircine), doesn’t benefit from any smithing perks, requires an ebony ingot for tempering rather than something easier to get/make like an iron ingot, doesn’t have the correct sheathing/unsheathing noises, and has the slowest swing speed of any weapon in the game. Seriously, it has a swing speed of 0.5, while swords have a 1.0 swing speed, and even warhammers get a 0.6 swing speed. Hell, even forks are a better weapon than this thing. Of course, since there aren’t any builds on this site that use the Axe (to my knowledge, anyway), I decided to fill the void. So then, let’s get on with the build!
Race: Orc gets boosts to this build’s primary skills (+10 Heavy Armor, +5 Two-Handed, Block, and Smithing) which, combined with the awesomeness that is Berserker Rage, makes them the ideal choice for this build.
Stone: The Lord’s AR boost is nice in the earlygame, while the magic resistance is useful the whole playthrough.
Stats: 0/2/1. The Titan doesn’t use magic, leaving the focus on health and stamina.
Equipment: The Rueful Axe, Steel Plate Armor, Jewelry of Magic Resistance
Shouts: Become Ethereal is nice for avoiding damage while moving in on ranged opponents, as is Unrelenting Force for crowd control. You’ll also want to grab the word for Slow Time found in Hag’s End as it’s used for a particular technique.
Skills
Two-Handed: Needless to say, this skill will be getting a lot of use via the Rueful Axe. Since you can’t start A Daedra’s Best Friend (the quest you get the axe from) until level 10, just use a simple Steel Battleaxe in the meantime. Grab all the perks in this tree except for the greatsword and warhammer ones.
Block: Gives the Titan an extra defensive edge and injects a little more variety into melee combat. You’ll want to grab Quick Reflexes, all ranks of Shield Wall, and the perks on the right side of the tree up to Shield Charge.
Heavy Armor: True to the idea of being a bulky, imposing titan, this character is outfitted in a suit of heavy armor. Grab all the perks in this tree.
Smithing: Considering how slowly the Rueful Axe swings, you’ll want to maximize the damage per hit. As such, you’ll want to grab Arcane Blacksmith so you can temper it. While you can also get Advanced Armors to double the improvement on your Steel Plate Armor, between fortify smithing potions, the Lord Stone, and your well-developed heavy armor skill, you won’t need it.
Sneak: Weren’t expecting this, now were you? The Titan actually makes good use of the Silent Roll + Great Critical Charge combo, so you’ll be needing this skill. Grab the first rank of Stealth and perk your way up the left side of the tree to Silence.
Alchemy: The Titan uses potions for healing and a variety of other effects as well as poisons to cripple his opponents. Max out Alchemist and grab Physician, Benefactor, Poisoner, and Concentrated Poison too.
Illusion: This is completely unperked, but until you get the Silence perk in the Sneak tree, you'll need it for casting Muffle. Since it costs around 130 magicka, you'll need an item of 30 magicka to cast it. The Novice Hood found in Helgen is fine for the early going, but you'll want to buy a Ring or Necklace of Magicka from Radiant Raiment as soon as you can (the 30 magicka versions start appearing at level 8). Once you get the Silence perk, you can swap it out for a Ring/Necklace of Magic Resistance.
You should be at level 52 once the build is completed.
Alchemical Concoctions
Restore Health: As your primary means of healing, you'll want to have a bunch of potions with this effect on you at all times.
Restore Stamina: You shouldn’t be running out of stamina that often, but it's still nice to have a backup option.
Fortify Two-Handed/Fortify Marksman: Your damage booster, naturally. Unfortunately, there are only a few ingredients with fortify two-handed as an effect, so you can use fortify marksman as an alternative, since it actually boosts all forms of physical damage due to a glitch.
Resist Magic: While your inherent magic resistance from your jewelry and the Lord Stone should be enough by endgame, you may want a little extra for tougher battles (e.g. dragons) fought earlier on in the game.
Invisibility: Having trouble sneaking up on an enemy? This effect will make it much easier.
Paralysis: Your axe might swing slowly, but with this poison, enemies won’t be able to swing their weapons at all.
Tactics
The Titan uses fairly standard two-handed combat tactics as well as the following techniques. Most of these, namely Lockdown, Extended Slow Time, and Overrun, go a long way towards making the Rueful Axe more useful, especially Extended Slow Time, seeing as when time goes faster for you than your enemies, your slow swing speed doesn't matter that much anymore.
Lockdown: Battleaxes are great for staggering enemies, and since the Rueful Axe uses comparatively little stamina for power attacks, with a good stamina pool, you can quite easily stagger-lock an enemy into submission.
Shadowstrike: This is what you’ll want to open your battles up with. With Great Critical Charge unlocked, use Silent Roll and then use a power attack at the end of the roll. The resulting sneak attack will deal both the doubled damage of the sneak attack and the double critical damage of Great Critical Charge. Be sure to judge your distance with this one; too far and you’ll alert enemies to your presence, too close and you’ll bump into your enemy, thereby becoming detected and foiling the sneak attack.
Debilitate: This one’s pretty simple. With the Sweep perk, you can apply a poison’s effect to multiple enemies at once. Throw Concentrated Poison in there and you can do another pass at the enemies you didn’t get to hit the first time around.
Extended Slow Time: By using one word of Slow Time immediately after the slowdown effect of Quick Reflexes ends, Slow Time’s duration is extended significantly. This is absurdly useful for the Titan and by far the most effective of all his techniques, allowing him to effortlessly dodge his opponents and defeat them before the Slow Time effect even ends.
Quick Dodge: The slowdown effect from quick reflexes lingers a little after disengaging block. Thus, with good timing, you can disengage the block and use the lingering slowdown effect to dodge the power attack instead by sidestepping it, or better yet, circling around to the enemy’s back. This is particularly easy to do against opponents performing a charging power attack. Once you’ve dodged the attack, you can either follow up with an attack of your own or use Extended Slow Time.
Overrun: By sprinting into an enemy and pressing the block button the moment you make contact, you can activate Shield Charge without actually using a shield. Needless to say, it’s a useful tactic for the Titan.
No city walls were harmed in the making of this build.
Replies
Yeah, I kinda forgot about staves when I called the Rueful Axe the worst weapon.
I never liked the Rueful Axe much, it's slow and I have to kill Barbas.