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Character Build: Scabbard Savant

Tags: #Character Build Spellsword  #Character Build Knight  #Character Build Enchanter  #Rank:Exemplar 
  • TZ
    Member
    December 5, 2012

    A Scabbard Savant focuses their power not only on tempering a powerful blade but to also enchant a powerful scabbard. By having a scabbard enchanted with multiple magical powers, a Scabbard Savant can at will choose the power of fire, ice, lightning, vampirism and soul stealing. A Scabbard Savant also focuses their time on improving rarer armours rather than spending time on forging the armor of the common folk, quite ironic considering they are scavenging Scabbard Savants. By using their skills and gifts of imparting magical properties onto objects, a Scabbard Savant improves armour and weapons and eventually aims to have a powerful enough magical scabbard that can coat their blade in two enchants at once.

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    A Scabbard Savant infusing fire into his scabbard to use later in his sword. They may lack the power to project magic from their hands as they lack the mana pool to do so, but their blade or axe will never fail them in the heat of combat. The little mana that a Scabbard Savant has is used for instant bursts of vocalised magic, by the time they are ready to use another burst, their mana pool has regenerated.

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    Premise

    By enchanting 5 identical blades/axes then later 4, a Scabbard Savant gives the illusion of having only 1 weapon that changes its enchant every time it is "dipped" into the scabbard. As a blacksmith swords or axes will be improved but not crafted, the whole point is that they can only use weapons they find and then improve and unique weapons can't change their enchant, as they stay fixed.

    Weapons such as Scimitar's, Blade's Swords, Ancient Nord Swords/Axes and Dawnguard War Axes etc, these are found in multiples but cannot be crafted by a blacksmith so they are used.

    The same rule applies for heavy armor, so using armor such as Wolf Armor, Dawnguard armor and Blade's Armor are used.

    A Scabbard Savant uses their Thu'um as their ranged weapon. Fire Breath, Ice Breath etc, while maintaining a weapon and shield.

    Variations

    Using axes or swords is where the variation comes into account as well as what shield to use, I suggest with axes to use Targe of the Blooded,the shield bash causing a bleed with an axe bleed perk in the one handed tree works well. For swords I suggest Shield of Ysgramor, the extra health and magic resistance helps you survive long enough for a critical or simply in general.

    Synergy

    By using a succession of attacks, a scabbard savant can deal out more damage than simply having one weapon. For example using a fire sword then swapping to an ice sword allows the ice sword to do more dps since the target is on fire and targets on fire take more damage. Using an Ice sword allows a target that usually does power attacks to be drained of stamina and then can be finished off, as would draining the mana of a target with a shock blade. Combination enchants also help to have greater synergy as when a Scabbard Savant makes their tier 2 scabbard with combinations such as Fire and Absorb HP, with an enemy taking more damage, more HP is drained.

    Points and Perks(Level 50):

    Magicka/Health/Stamina: 0/2/1, After every 2 levels into HP go 1 into Stamina.

    Heavy Armor: Juggernaut 5/5, Well Fitted, Tower of Strength, Matching Set, Reflect Blows.

    Block: Shield Wall 5/5, Deflect Arrows, Power Bash, Deadly Bash, Disarming Bash, Elemental Protection, Block Runner, Shield Charge.

    One Handed: Armsman 5/5, Fighting Stance, Savage Strike.

    Either: Hack and Slash 3/3 (Axes), Bladesman 3/3 (Swords).

    Smithing: Steel, Elven, Advanced.

    Enchanting: Enchanter 5/5, Soul Squeezer, Fire Enchanter, Frost Enchanter, Soul Siphon, Storm Enchanter, Extra Effect, Insightful, Corpus. 

    Gear, Race, Standing Stone, Shouts:

    Both the Amulet of Talos and Ring of Namira will help this build immensely, the Amulet of Talos is needed to let you use your Thu'um for ranged attacks more often and the Ring of Namira helps with HP regen which is needed since you have no healing aside from Absorb HP enchant and potions. Blessing of Talos is a must. Gear must be named and heavy i.e Dawnguard but not craftible i.e Daedric armor.

    The Five Enchants(Five Weapons): These are the Five enchants you will need for your weapons:

    Fire Damage, Frost Damage, Shock Damage, Absorb HP, Soul Trap.

    The Eight Enchants(Four Weapons): These are the Eight enchants dual enchanted onto 4 weapons:

    Fire Damage+Absorb HP, Frost Damage+Damage Stamina, Shock Damage+Damage Magicka, Soul Trap+Fear

    Fear can be changed with other choices such as Banish or Paralyze, I use Fear for the fun of it, if it doesn't kill them it make's me free to hit them while they run. 

    Race Choice: Orc covers a lot of the talent tree's well and Nord comes close, I find also when using the orc racial versus dragons in the limited amount of grounded time they can have, it helps a lot.

    Standing Stone: The Lord Stone: The extra magicka and damage resistance helps with such a tanky build, allowing you more jabs at enemies, but do remember to use the Warrior stone when crafting and the Mage stone when enchanting to increase gains.

    Shouts: Fire Breath, Frost Breath, Unrelenting Force, Soul Tear, Marked For Death, Drain Vitality, Dragon Rend.

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    Early Playstyle and Followers:

    Early in the game you will play it very sword and board until you get to disenchant items with the enchants that you need but I suggest simply working on the skills that you also need like block, heavy armor and one handed, each are pretty self explanatory. When it comes to questing follow the main quest to unlock being a dragonborn and get your first shout then work with the Companions to naturally come across fire breath. Once you have fire breath as your range with an Amulet of Talos and Blessing of Talos your range will be set for a while. 

    Spell and ranged followers like Serana, Durak, Illia, Marcurio, Aela the Huntress and Eola are all excellent choices.

    -

    My Other Builds:

  • TZ
    Member
    December 5, 2012

    Video Now Uploaded. 

  • TZ
    Member
    December 5, 2012

    Hey Ben C, 

    I added "The little mana that a Scabbard Savant has is used for instant bursts of vocalised magic, by the time they are ready to use another burst, their mana pool has regenerated."

    Yeah I wanted to make a flavour build for a change of pace but I have a more complex build coming up soon, still needs a lot of tweaks, as for the axe, they do have scabbards but smaller ones so as part of the mythos, they enchant the handle once dipped into the smaller scabbard. The scabbard size itself doesn't matter just the power within it. The shouts are meant to fit the magical power the class has but in small bursts and not constant, where as making that power onto an item i.e the scabbard allows it to last longer. It's sort of meant to feel like a candle lit at both ends, less longevity but more direct power.

    As for special moves, I thought of some but they seem to be very basic and common sense, to use one after another, to use a certain shout then attack but I must also add Dragon rend as a shout so will edit that in now. :) 

    I very much like the build your talking about, I wanted to experiment a bit more with this build but felt it was a good solid fun one as is, I have had fun playing melee again all part of using higher powered fire/frost/shock rather than relying on Chillrend etc.

    Cheers for the feedback! 

  • Member
    December 5, 2012
    Is that on novice difficulty(the video)?
  • TZ
    Member
    December 6, 2012

    Adept, I tried expert and to be able to kill faster you need to drink an enchanter's potion, then enchant a blacksmith set, use a blacksmithers potion then use the set and improve armor/weapons and make sure you enchant weps with an enchanters potion before you enchant.

    So for the sake of the video just kept it on Adept. :)

  • Member
    December 6, 2012
    I liked it, its creative. I'm playing it right now on master, but i intend to add atleast augmented destruction perks and maybe add some alchemy to fortify my shouts just to give me a little edge due to playing DiD. Lvl 18 so far. To make up for the lack of range I took that wizard guy from riften, hes brutally strong, maybe he would be a good recommended follower?
  • TZ
    Member
    December 6, 2012

    I believe your talking about Marcurio(Spell guy from Riften). The funny thing is for followers it can go a few ways, either get another tank follower so that they take the brunt while you you power attack and shield bash or a spell/ranged follow. Spell and ranged followers like Serana, Durak, Illia and Eola are all excellent choices. I think I will edit and add them into the build. Cheers for that note. 

  • Member
    December 6, 2012
    No problem. Yea thats the guy. Hes brutal, chain lightening, lightingbolt, fireball,turn undead to name a few. Lvl 28 so far and havn't died :D
  • TZ
    Member
    December 6, 2012

    Yep, later on using the Fire/HP blade lets you survive so much longer, but remember to swap to Storm or Ice blades, it not only allows them to be more effective but saves you charges on your Flame/HP blade, nothing worse than running out of charge mid combat >.<

  • TZ
    Member
    December 7, 2012

    If you tag enemies with the fire sword and swap your shield out for a spell it also gives great synergy.