So you're a master of Heavy Armour now and victoriously take your level 100 perk 'Reflect Blows', thinking to yourself "this will help soften up enemies while they beat on me!".
This perk has surprisingly little written about it on any major site and while a few people have made passing subjective remarks on the various Wiki's about it's worth, I haven't seen anyone explain how exactly it works. This will be another very brief discussion as there isn't a whole lot to mention but for the sake of clarity it seems like a worthwhile thing to finally write down and take note of.
Your character in Skyrim has an 'Actor Value' (AV for short) called 'ReflectDamage' which is, not surprisingly, your CHANCE to reflect damage back onto an enemy; When the number is 0.0 you reflect all damage 0% of the time and when it is 100.0 you reflect all damage 100% of the time. There is no modifier to the amount of damage you are reflecting (it is always 100% of the damage you are taking from a blow), the only changing factor is your chance to reflect it. Since Skyrim uses only either 0.0 or 100.0 we can think of it as a toggle that is simply ON/OFF.
When you take the 'Reflect Blows' perk your 'ReflectDamage' AV begins to do dice rolls and if it lands on a number within the 'ON' set, the perk is activated and you will reflect 100% damage back. Think of it as a string of numbers from 1-100 and if the dice land on any number between 1-10 the perk is ON, if anything else it is OFF. The 'Random Number Generator' (RNG for short) rolls every 10 ingame seconds which is the equivalent of 0.5 real world seconds, basically every half second the computer rolls to see if the perk is activated.
So what does it do?
'Reflect Blows', if activated, will reflect 100% of the damage you take back onto the enemy that dealt it to you. You STILL DO take that damage yourself, you just also reflect it back meaning this is not a two sided bonus where you avoid the damage while your enemy takes it. Although this is the case and the perk is not as awesome as some might have hoped for, it still helps your DPS by weakening enemies for you! Well, not so fast.
The damage that you reflect back mirrors the damage you are taking. At it's core 'Reflect Blows' is basically a type of spell that, if triggered, you cast back at the enemy that mirrors the damage you take. Unfortunately what this means is that if you are running a character that has reached the armour cap (567 displayed AR) then the damage you are taking is reduced by a full 80%, this also means the damage you reflect back is also reduced by that same 80%; it gets worse. If you are also running with the Block skill and have capped your blocking (85% damage reduction) that also affects the damage you reflect. Considering you need 100 skill in Heavy Armour to even take this perk and you must be wearing a complete set of heavy armour, it is safe to assume most people that take this perk will likely be close/over the armour cap and many will also be using block. With a maxed defensive character using block the most damage you can mitigate is 97%, meaning you will be reflecting a whopping 3% of the damage your enemy can do back onto them. The upside to all of this is that the damage you are reflecting is not reduced by their AR as well, only yours. The other main factor is difficulty level. While you take double damage on Master (compared to Adept) the damage you reflect is also subject to the half damage you deal meaning it's a wash.
In the end this is a perk that can only be used by people wearing full heavy armour with 100 in the skill, yet ironically that type of character will recieve the absolute least benefit from the perk.
Not a long discussion today but I hope I cleared up any unanswered questions about this perk.
So you're a master of Heavy Armour now and victoriously take your level 100 perk 'Reflect Blows', thinking to yourself "this will help soften up enemies while they beat on me!".
This perk has surprisingly little written about it on any major site and while a few people have made passing subjective remarks on the various Wiki's about it's worth, I haven't seen anyone explain how exactly it works. This will be another very brief discussion as there isn't a whole lot to mention but for the sake of clarity it seems like a worthwhile thing to finally write down and take note of.
Your character in Skyrim has an 'Actor Value' (AV for short) called 'ReflectDamage' which is, not surprisingly, your CHANCE to reflect damage back onto an enemy; When the number is 0.0 you reflect all damage 0% of the time and when it is 100.0 you reflect all damage 100% of the time. There is no modifier to the amount of damage you are reflecting (it is always 100% of the damage you are taking from a blow), the only changing factor is your chance to reflect it. Since Skyrim uses only either 0.0 or 100.0 we can think of it as a toggle that is simply ON/OFF.
When you take the 'Reflect Blows' perk your 'ReflectDamage' AV begins to do dice rolls and if it lands on a number within the 'ON' set, the perk is activated and you will reflect 100% damage back. Think of it as a string of numbers from 1-100 and if the dice land on any number between 1-10 the perk is ON, if anything else it is OFF. The 'Random Number Generator' (RNG for short) rolls every 10 ingame seconds which is the equivalent of 0.5 real world seconds, basically every half second the computer rolls to see if the perk is activated.
So what does it do?
'Reflect Blows', if activated, will reflect 100% of the damage you take back onto the enemy that dealt it to you. You STILL DO take that damage yourself, you just also reflect it back meaning this is not a two sided bonus where you avoid the damage while your enemy takes it. Although this is the case and the perk is not as awesome as some might have hoped for, it still helps your DPS by weakening enemies for you! Well, not so fast.
The damage that you reflect back mirrors the damage you are taking. At it's core 'Reflect Blows' is basically a type of spell that, if triggered, you cast back at the enemy that mirrors the damage you take. Unfortunately what this means is that if you are running a character that has reached the armour cap (567 displayed AR) then the damage you are taking is reduced by a full 80%, this also means the damage you reflect back is also reduced by that same 80%; it gets worse. If you are also running with the Block skill and have capped your blocking (85% damage reduction) that also affects the damage you reflect. Considering you need 100 skill in Heavy Armour to even take this perk and you must be wearing a complete set of heavy armour, it is safe to assume most people that take this perk will likely be close/over the armour cap and many will also be using block. With a maxed defensive character using block the most damage you can mitigate is 97%, meaning you will be reflecting a whopping 3% of the damage your enemy can do back onto them. The upside to all of this is that the damage you are reflecting is not reduced by their AR as well, only yours. The other main factor is difficulty level. While you take double damage on Master (compared to Adept) the damage you reflect is also subject to the half damage you deal meaning it's a wash.
In the end this is a perk that can only be used by people wearing full heavy armour with 100 in the skill, yet ironically that type of character will recieve the absolute least benefit from the perk.
Not a long discussion today but I hope I cleared up any unanswered questions about this perk.
