Tarrax

From my own experience, I use Shield Bash as part of my regular melee cycle and save Power Bash for only very tough and/or very hard hitting enemies. I find that giving any regular enemy a tap with Shield Bash not only acts as an interrupt, but also creates a very short opening in their defenses (more for Mages), so I alternate between Shield Bash and Sword Attack in regular fights. I save Power Bash for big hitters, e.g. Dragons, Giants, elite melee combatants, etc. On these guys, Shield Bash seems almost useless anyway, unless it's used during one of their Power Attacks. I've always found either attack will Stagger an enemy, if used while they're performing a Power Attack. This is why I stick with using Shield Bash as my Power Attack interrupt, even after I acquired the Quick Reflexes Perk. Besides, once Staggered I follow up with my stationary Sword Power Attack, which seems to always do way more damage than I've ever seen from the 5x Power Bash Shield Damage (and also has a chance to either land a Crit or simply behead them). Much better usage of Stamina IMHO. :biggrin:

Here is my one single Dream Mod request that, for me at least, beats any other Mod for Skyrim that does or could exist. To use my Shield in my right hand. That's it, nothing more. You could offer me a Skyrim MOD that doubles the graphics resolution or fills the land with sexy naked ladies and I'd still take this one little Game MOD hands down. However, it's not quite as simple as it sounds. Sadly, here's yet another example in Skyrim of how little Bethesda still cares for their once loyal PC fans (yes, I've played every Elder Scrolls game released since Arena). They never even bothered to include mirror images of the Shield textures and animations, as it's not required on an X-Box 360 Controller which maps Right Trigger to Right Hand. Instead, PC gamers get the super intuitive Left Mouse button mapped to Right Hand & Right Mouse button mapped to left hand. Swapping the Mouse buttons back to how Bethesda advertised Skyrim's controls would be (right button to right hand, left to left, etc) still means I'm blocking with left and attacking with right, which is the reverse of every other sword/shield game I've ever played. And even if Skyrim was never released for PC at all, I'd still be somewhat disappointed with Bethesda, being left-handed IRL. Many Games already out include a simple "Left Handed" option. Err, Hmm, ok I'm stepping down for the soap box now............sorry about that. :blush:

Ahh bugger. You're right, the lack of left-handed Block animations would be a big hurdle to overcome. :(

Actually, the fact that I'm left-handed in RL is not my main gripe with the lack of left-handedness being available in Skyrim. It's mainly that in all other games, Primary Attack is Left Mouse button and Secondary Attack/Defend/Shield Block is RIght Mouse button. This is also how I played Oblivion. Having it locked the other way is very annoying. I could swap the key mapping, but then everything else would be backwards. So, although it's nice to see Bethesda doing the whole whatever is in which hand thing, I'm disappointed they then went and ruined it (for me at least) by not including such a basic thing as being able to choose your handedness. In short, I would really love to see a handedness swap Mod. Pretty please. :D