Melee combat needs overhauled very badly - I'll put the things that would make melee combat much more enjoyable first and reasons (bitching) second DoT effects made useful (dangerous for NPC and player alike) 1-handed/2-handed options (speed vs. damage) Attack animation speed (esp. for the PC in 1st person) Block (hold) with significant penalty to percent damage blocked (this is important when fighting animals with very fast attack speed) NPC Block rate NPC Percent damage blocked Guard break Executions (DaedalusAl's The Dance of Death from the Skyrim Nexus - more or less) I play solely melee in 1st-person on very hard. I'm over level 70 and melee combat is definitely not OP like I keep hearing. My character is clean, I don't pump myself full of drugs, I just eat food and use the melee perks. At this stage of the game I pretty much hate getting into a challenging fight because it's either suicide or takes forever to kill a single enemy. Sometimes the former is even true for weaker enemies. I have some of the best melee weapons in the game - some even more powerful with the legendary modification (swap only) mod. Yet melee v melee is a painstaking process with virtually zero entertainment value. Tactics are to swing once, block, swing once, block, swing once, block - over and over again until the enemy stops blocking me (for all of my damage). Trying to time attacks in order to interrupt incoming attacks is virtually impossible. Charging a ranged enemy usually results in a perfectly timed elbow by the NPC that interrupts the animation. On and on it goes and I'm sick of it. I've poured all this time and effort into a build that ended up just being lame. I'm not looking for melee to made easy - I want a challenge - I want it to be more varied and versatile with less repetition (notice melee damage isn't on my list) Tl;dr Random a**hole blocked my unique super sledge with his fist Please feel free to share things you think I should add or take away from this list Not just items but details for already listed items Anything to help improve the post and get the word around The inspiration for this post was MadMAX713's Super Mutant Redux which I think looks really cool but would totally suck ass with my melee build the way melee combat currently works.