every time, "oh, this time I'll play a melee build, hmm, but I need a ranged option for dragons so let me grab a bow and now I'm a stealth archer"

The conjuration slander tho. I'll have you know, collecting flowers as my two dremora throw hands with a dragon while yelling profanities at it in the background is peak gameplay.

Why stealth archery is the most common playstyle : - Because at early levels, it allows you to win fights you otherwise wouldn't be able to. - Because the stealth skill level pretty fast and give you a huge damage boost quite early. - Because at higher levels, it is still one of the most efficient way to one shot weak enemies, or deal massive damage to stronger enemies before having to properly engage with them. - Because shooting at stuff with a cool slowmo kill cam is more fun than going into a wetnoodle slapping contest, or using a magic system that make you ask "why does every NPC spellcasters seem to use a magic system 10x more powerfull than mine". Stealth is overpowered, but it also feel like the least jank combat playstyle of the game. - Because the fantasy of the stealthy "they're dead without ever seeing me" guy is appealing to a lot of people. You just have to be willing to explore the game with a reduced walking speed most of the time...

I cannot believe anyone mentioned the Ranger's Apprentice in 2024, I loved those books and hardly meet anyone who's read them.

This is like the Skyrim version of “why everything turns into crabs”.

tl;dw stealth archer is inevitable because it avoids the janky combat

It’s an incomprehendable amount of time in the future, the universe is nearing heat death, time is understood to be finite rather than infinte. The last motions of the smallest particles make their dying motions, a new stealth archer in Skyrim sneaks past the bear under Helgen.

"Magic can go f*** itself. Mages don't know how to sneak." I'm aware you were mostly referring to sneak bonuses, but illusion magic. Archery certainly helps, but the illusion tree is primarily how I'm able to play Skyrim on the maximum difficulty. I don't need a damage bonus when I can frenzy a room full of enemies, hide with invisibility, and watch in amusement as they kill each other.

You can take the bow away from an archer but you can't take the archer away from a bow

2024. Im finally healed. I no longer fight reality. I just started right out as a stealth archer this time.

I remember one playthrough. I told myself that this time I'd be a spell sword. Well, the bound weapons happen to be particularly strong for most of the game. So, I run off and hunt down the spell for single sword. "While I'm at it, might as well get bound bow. It'll be a while before I have good ranged spells." I don't need to explain the rest. You all know what happens from here lol.

My schoolmate was the model for Ranger's Apprentice. The writer was local to my hometown. Good dude. We gave him so much shit for it but It's nice to hear you enjoyed it.

When you're crouching holding a bow, your form somewhat resembles that of a crab, the penultimate shape that evolution seems to favor...

I think stealth archery is inevitable because no matter what kind of combat you focus on, it just makes good tactical sense to start each fight with a ranged ambush from stealth and then switch to your main weapon of choice.

Part of it, is that even tho the combat is janky, they got the feel of archery right, and it feels so good.

The moment Ranger's Apprentice was mentioned I knew this was gonna be a good video.

Everything you said is true and relevant, but Id argue there is another important reason for the rise of the stealth archer: safety. With stealth arching you are sneaking around in peace, choosing when to engage and dont have the stress of people hitting you, blocking or anything else. You are in control most of times. Which is a good thing for all the people who are not coming from action games.

And the entire poison mechanic is PERFECT for using with a bow! Putting paralysing poison on your bow is so OP its hilarious!

One reason I think archery has such a strong draw is that it rewards skill. There is a LITTLE bit of skill in melee, but mostly it's just a numbers game. You swing until they die. You block when you see them swinging at you. But if you try to side step an attack? Nope! The AI automatically follows you. They can turn on a dime and hit you anyway. Magic is even worse. You just hold down or spam a button until they die or you run out of magicka. Meanwhile, with archery, you have to time your shots, take into account gravity as it pulls the arrow down, as well as your own elevation compared to your enemy's. It's very satisfying when you see an enemy walking by in the distance and you nail them in the head.

Worth noting: Because arrows have no carry weight and can be sold, they are effectively also money. So it's a good idea to pick up every arrow you find even if you're not going to use them. This also applies to all types of ammunition in the Fallout games, which is worth keeping in mind because at some point you're probably going to have more .38 rounds than you have caps. Same thing goes for pre-war money, which I find hilarious, because they have a base value of ten caps (eight in FO4) and can be used to directly purchase other items via bartering. Meaning that even in the apocalyptic wasteland centuries after the fall of the United States, the US dollar is _still_ a more valuable currency than caps.

How to stealth mage: Get the silent casting perk and cast mage light into a room full of enemies. Now that enemies are gathered around the ball of light, cast a frenzy spell into the group then start casting fire balls at the group as they fight each other.

Devs tend to underestimate the sheer impact that having lackluster melee combat has on other combat systems, it could be lobbing wet noodles at enemies but if the melee doesn't feel good enough players have a tendency to want to avoid it as much as possible roleplaying aside for obvious reasons.

lmao minding my own business watching a skyrim video and my own thumbnail shows up

This tickled me so pink since the first time I played Skyrim I was a competitive archer in college and felt very much in tune with Skyrim archery mechanics the same way

Archery in skyrim leads to the best moments. I love watching people miss a shot but the arrow cam starts and the arrow flys by the enemy to nail a rabbit or bird in the background minding their own business.

Stealth archery in skyrim simply comes at no opportunity cost. You have to actively TRY to not do it. If you are sneaky it's a great way to kill any target you need to kill without taking risk. If you aren't it's still a great way to engage combat getting a few free shots. If you are a ranged combatant you'd rather start by sneaking. If you are a melee combatant a bow will still help you against dragons. If you are a melee combatant you have no reason to rush headfirst into melee against other melee combatant you can just pummel them with arrows and wait for them to switch to your melee weapon. If you use magic it's still optimal to have a bow to launch your first attack before you start using magicka since it doesn't consumes your main ressource. If you use magic it's still optimal to have a bow in case you run out of magic while it regenerates. Basically having a bow is the path of least resistance and is always an option that is there at pretty much no cost. So yeah everyone ends up doing it naturally unless they're doing a challenge run. Playing without a bow in skyrim is like playing dark souls without an estus flask, you can but the reason is going to be internal not external.

Having a way to "thin the herd" when taking on mobs makes sense for any build. Sneaking is basically a free damage button. Combine the two and you have the stealth archer.

This was a really well thought out analysis. Great work man, loved the video :)

it was pretty funny seeing you talk about how magic causes you to accidentally attack friends and then watch you kill an npc while trying to shoot a bear. Definitely done that multiple times

I think the fact that dragons fly is also important here. They are usually your toughest enemy and tend to stay in the air blasting you until they are wounded sufficiently to land. This makes bows essential when fighting them and leaves melee fighters running around on the ground getting zapped until they croak.

listen, I find you videos really nice and I've already watched this one once before, but I actually adore the blocked attack effect in skyrim, it has the perfect inverse effect on me, the slight shake and sound just fill me with the same energy as someone chopping a tree one swing at a time

I knew there was a reason I always gravitated to this build (outside of cool roleplay stuff), so it's really satisfying to have a breakdown of how the game itself makes it the best playstyle, rather than just personal preference. great video!

This video is now the official meeting place of Stealth Archers Anonymous.

The game kind of conditions you to be an archer when you really think about it. Helgen basically acts as the tutorial level of the game. When going through Helgen, there’s no real defined way of doing it, no playstyle that you’re told to adopt in order to succeed…until the end of the dungeon. Right after you get past the frostbite spiders, standing in the way of you and the exit to the cave is a sleeping bear. Both Hadvar and Ralof will tell you that they’d rather not fight the bear and would rather sneak past it. But they say that if you’re feeling lucky you could take a bow and catch her by surprise. Then they literally hand you a bow and arrows. So right there the game basically straight up tells you that if you come across a powerful enemy that you can’t handle in open combat, you should sneak and use a bow. The game doesn’t tell you to pick up a greatsword and use it or use a sword and shield, that’s just something that you try yourself, but the game flat out tells you that sneaking and bows are effective. So that strategy is planted in our minds right there at the end of the tutorial and it holds true for your entire playthrough. For a new player, that sort of guaranteed safety and success would condition them to adopt that particular style of play going forward. It’s low risk and very effective. It’s also a low maintenance build that doesn’t require much to work well. You focus on two skill trees, Sneak and Archery, that’s it. Anything else is just icing on the cake. For a melee build you would have to focus on your weapon skill tree, armor, block, smithing, etc. Stealth Archer is so simple yet so powerful that any other style of play is really just rendered obsolete by comparison.

Oh great. Now I have to play Skyrim again. Two weeks ahead of my scheduled biannual replay. Thanks a lot. Great video by the way!

Just wanna say that this video has a very unique thesis that I haven’t seen mentioned before in other vids on the topic and it definitely seems very insightful. Good work.

When 20,000 years of stealth archer epigenetic DNA sneaks into your builds

Something that I did that made Skyrim melee combat way more fun, was that I got a mod which disabled the reduction of player damage when you increase the difficulty, because a big issue with turning up the difficulty in Bethesda games is that you feel like you're fighting with nerf guns and pool noodles. After doing that it meant that I can kill enemies in just a few hits, but they also kill me in a few hits, so it becomes more intense and you have to use strategy, but you can still be aggressive and go on the offensive unlike the vanilla game on high difficulties where you just have to resort to cheesing the game. Now don't get me wrong, it's not something that "fixes" the combat in every way, it's still a far cry from games like Dark Souls or Mordhau (I love that system I wish we had that in an elder scrolls game so bad), but it's at least fun, which is enough for me.

Stealth archer is just the military’s survivability onion in practice.

First minute of watching and hearing you mention the Ranger's Apprentice instantly made me sub and like the video. That series was the joy of my childhood.

The allure for me, regarding stealth archery, and most forms connected to thievery in Skyrim tbh, is that sensation of being smart about it, in Dark Souls, you go “mano a mano” against your opponents, but TES has a built in ecosystem of “living” individuals going about their lives, and you’re specialising in outsmarting them all, being pickpocketing, stealth offing etc, you disrupt the ecosystem for your own benefits, without them even realising what happened, and of course, stealth archery being the strongest build only feedback loops the power fantasy behind it.

Stealth makes it so that enemies move around less before you attack them, which only makes it easier to leverage your bow's precision. Other fighting styles not only fail to have this synergy, but actually conflict with themselves. Shield-bashing an enemy in the middle of an attack results in a SHORTER stagger animation, meaning you're actually punished for properly timing your bashes. Melee stealth does a bit more damage but is ultimately a lot harder to accomplish since detection is range-based. Power attacking feels bad because it locks you in place yet has very little feedback on the enemy's side beyond damage numbers, and the stagger it inflicts is random

I played Conjuration mainly because it went so well with whatever I wanted to play it with. I never felt like the 1 summon limit was too much and I played archers but would rather do conjuration with illusion perks that silenced your Destruction casting. Yeah you lose the Sneak attack bonus but it all felt OP anyway. And when you go down the rabbit hole of Min maxxing your archery/sneak and therefore turning up the difficulty slider to keep it interesting. It pigeonholed your playstyle to exclusively Archery. It's great to hear your perspective on how you play but it just reinforces to me that what I was doing was for a reason! Great video and thanks for sharing!

Me : I'm going to be a necromage this time! Me an hour later : **putting points into the perk for 3x sneak damage for archery**

I think it was inadvertent, but happened because the *Thief* devs working on TESV just couldn’t help but bias the game towards stealth. It has its own vibe and I love it.

I suddenly realized I haven't played a stealth archer for the longest time, because my game is modded to Aetherius and back, and a handful of those mods make base Skyrim look positively pre-Cambrian. Timed blocking, stamina management, extra/more differentiating perks for weapons and elemental spells, support for unarmed play... ...and your vid made me realize it was mostly bringing melee and magic up to _parity_ with archery.

"Fisting doesn't come attached to any set of skills in Skyrim." And yet for some reason, Bethesda had it in their mind to program in special animations for OHKO with unarmed combat. I discovered it recently and it's nuts, I've seen 3-4 unique animations just for unarmed OHKOs. One of them is a suplex. The NPC with the least amount of Health has 75. The maximum damage you can do without the heavy armor unarmed perk is 32 as Khajiit with Gloves of the Pugilist, and 40 as Vampire Lord using Gloves of the Pugilist. If you take into account the Poison Talons perk for Vampire Lord, then that adds 20 for a total of 60 which is still too low. Gauntlets usually have low armor rating too, so unless Smithing was level 100 or something, I can't see it happening in normal gameplay.

Cut scenes may not be gameplay, but the German Suplex kill animation is sick af.

RANGERS APPRENTICE DUDE!! I can’t believe you mentioned that in the video lol, that series is so niche and absolutely incredible. I looooved it

Stealth is a natural play style for a lot of people because barging into an area results in getting aggro’d by a ton of mobs otherwise. It gives you time to assess the situation before engaging enemies. It’s a play style that values minimizing player damage, while also requiring less overall combat skill. Barging in means you’ll take hits unless you are skilled. I’ve realized stealth can be noob friendly and so have gravitated away from it to builds requiring more skill and quick thinking to avoid taking damage.

very good video! damn, you didexceptionally well foryour first mechanic analysis video

about the magic system I think one interesting thing is that it's actually a great system that happens to have been made by the least imaginative people on the planet which is depressing. With mods skyrim has the best magic of any game ever. There is so much potential for complex utility spells or varied summons, I've had spells that build ice walls, spells that create a vortex, localized hailstorms, spells that mark my opponent so I can track them through walls, spells that infest my target and summon spider if I kill them, there is just a lot of potential and while the lack of scaling can also be fixed with mods it's also not such a big deal when the spells do more than just deal damage. Having the option to dualcast or use different spells in both hands is also great. But again there could be real depth here if they just thought about doing more than just basic spells. You could have spells that combo with each other, or dualcast that alter the nature of the spell rather than "more damage but cost more". It's just so frustrating because the elements for a great system are there but the actual spells are boring af. I'll say the same thing about shouts. I used to play with a mod that would make every shout have an individual cooldown rather than a global one. And while it sounds busted and kinda is, it's just so much fun to actually just switch around between your shouts and use various different effect, and you really feel your power grow as you unlock more shouts, rather than stick to a few dominant shouts because using your cooldown on the other ones is just not worth it. And it gets even better with again, mods that add more interesting shouts to the game. I hate how good modded skyrim can get because it really shows that the game didn't have a fundamental barrier to doing those systems well, they just weren't interested in actually delivering a deep experience.

Turning off the targeting reticle (and sneak eye) makes archery in Skyrim so much more satisfying.

“I love the Ranger’s Apprentice book series” alright you’re getting my sub for that alone.

Where Skyrim went wrong with magic was not having it scale with Magicka. Having all your points put into mana makes you a glass cannon but you're spells are going to hit like a truck. Of course there are mods for this. Even without that mana scaling and mods of any kind, with the right enchants, potions and spells you can become a god like being. The trouble is it takes WAY longer to get there. With any stealth build, you can be a god by level 20 or even level 10 in the anniversary edition and the Bow of Shadows.

"Cutscenes aren't gameplay".... BASED

You MAY think alteration is weaksauce support magic. That's until you learn that the paralysis skills invalidate like 95% of all combat in Skyrim, turning it into hacking on helpless, frozen opponents.

Upvoted because it's good, but commented specifically to say well done on the "Large Spider Warning," I know an arachnophobe and that is a really important to do to help people. That was a good thing you did, and it deserved recognition. Thank you.

I love how serious this video is

I think perk synergy is also another thing that pushes people towards stealth archery, since there are very strong archery perks in the sneak tree. Even if you aren't going for a sneaky build, you naturally want to sneak at the start of combat in order to get that bonus damage, and it snowballs from there Compare that to magic's perk synergy with restoration, which most people don't know exists. All magic skills use the same magicka pool and the perk you need is very high up in the restoration tree, so they can't be leveled at the same time and you won't find out they work together unless you really look. Add onto that all of the extremely weak gear and low health, and it turns into a combat system that naturally pushes players away from finding synergies

Ahh yes, the primordial human urge to throw sticks at things while hiding in bushes.

Ranger’s Apprentice!! I never hear about those books! I always loved them :)

Clever, informative, and engaging!

btw I love Dragon's Dogma's take on the archer archetype. It gives you multiple arrow types that ranges from status effect to arrow that one shot but you get only one. But the most important are the skills that goes with it, it's very fantasy like in its execution but it still makes you feel powerful and it also reward accuracies when you combine it with the locational damage system the game has. Altho to be fair that's just DD in a nutshell every class feel powerful if you play it well.

Another point is that there are no penalties for shooting in melee. Even if the enemy closes the gap you can still use a bow effectively

Enjoyed your technical breakdown ❤

Very well done. You make many great points about why I became a stealth archer all the way back in 2011. 👍🏻

When every sword is a pistol with no range, the bow-shaped rifle becomes the only fun weapon.

7:50 "Please exist and also be good" It's in the hands of the Divines now, brother

Dammit, I was gonna make a video like this but then KZfaq recommended me this and you did way better of a job than I would have. Also I have to like the video just for that last pun lol

I’ve been playing Skyrim on and off since 2011, and have logged well over 200 hours playing on two different systems. In all that time, I have never deliberately pursued levels in either archery or stealth-I’ve really only used those skills when it felt like the game was effectively forcing me to. I’ve collected thousands of arrows, and shot perhaps a few dozen. For years, all the memes about stealth archery have simply baffled me-but now, having watched this analysis, I can at least understand the phenomenon. It’s not a part of my own ‘roleplaying’ engagement with the game (I’m still chasing the high from that original trailer, with the shouting mighty-thewed barbarian!), but I can see how other players, with different priorities, would find this route appealing. Thanks for an interesting video!

1:30 it was supposed to Do you know about a game series "Thief"? Enough developers from them have worked on Skyrim. If you've played Oblivion or Morrowing, you know that stealth was a joke there (unless you've used a full chameleon enchant). So it was reworked into what it is.

Two other things worth mentioning : - Carry weight : this is a limitation that everyone feels throughout the game, especially when wandering the land to collect things is much more fun than having to go back to the city to store or sell your overencumbered inventory. Melee weapons are notoriously heavier than bows, and that's before you take into account a greater need for good armor when you're into the fray, versus an archer who can go the entire playthrough without needing anything more than light armor, if at all (better stealth). - Controls & Shortcuts : Magic is versatile, but this comes at a cost. You need to change your equipped spell(s) all the time to really benefit from all its potential. It can be boring and tiring when it comes to pre-buff before every fight, and downright clunky when you have to do it mid-fight. With archery, the worst case scenario is having to switch to broad and sword in case you get swarmed in an enclosed space with little room to create distance (and if you get in such a situation, you're stealth-archering wrong). 99.9% of your gameplay is fluid, organic and dynamic from a controls point of view.

one thing i always appreciated is that your arrows actually arch upwards in the first leg of your shot. just as a real arrow shot form a real bow does. so instead of going straight for a bit and then just falling off, you get a much more interesting arc to your shot.

thinking about it, my characters were... a stealth archer, who did use a dagger at times a stealth archer a sword and shield fighter, which was pretty fun since you could take on a lot of stronger enemies because of the parry mechanic (also opened fights with a bow) a stealth archer a mixed mage a stealth archer that used silent casting, illusion and conjuration so he could use muffled movement and bound bow/sword without anyone noticing the last one was my favourite and did play it 3 times, i think something about not even having a weapon in the inventory when NPCs are giving you weird looks is funny to me

Whoa! It's like every facet of Skyrim was severely lacking depth, or something.

I've never played stealth archer. I've done stealth melee. it was always super satisfying getting the throat cutting anim.

I'd also add that in VR it's also the only type of weapon that's actually immersive. Melee just goes through enemies and the meta is to stick your weapon inside them and quickly shake your hand left and right. And magic is just point your hand at an enemy and pull trigger. For the bow you actually need to pull the string, and aim it like you would IRL, and then the result is a very satisfying, juicy shot.

I think another aspect is the fact that Skyrim has no hard defined limits on classes. You are free from beginning to end to engage in combat the way you like. Like you said, the tangible benefits to stealth archery are so immediately apparent, that even if you're sunk deep in melee or magic you're free to choose the more reliable option at any point in the game.

Stealth Archer was my JAM. I loved it. I love magic, and I just could not get out of the grip of that satisfying Archery Mechanic.

I love this video. Great job

That last line before conclusion: chef's kiss.

When you are 100% in archery and sneek skills you can literally break the game running around crouching and killing everything with a single but very common anciant nord arrow. Nobody can see you in your fully enchanted fancy bright white heavy dragon bone armor and gold diamond jewelries... I dont have much time to play games by now but I remember it very well. Let's all thank Faendal for his very handy free archery boost in the very first hour of the game as well as Ralof for his dedication helping you with your sneak skill!

I was playing this cute game called Bloody West. Nice pixel-art horror aesthetic. A reanimated outlaw chasing evils off. Before I realized it, I was a stealth archer once again, even though firearms are available. Todd scored once again that day.

0:45 wow the first time I've ever seen someone also mention this series. I was obsessed with it in middle school and it's one I've heard no one talk about before

Love the way you enunciate, "arrow," like Werner Herzog

Things I learned from this video: 1: Fisting in Skyrim is not fun 2: Fisting in Dark Souls is fun 3:Magic doesn't involve fisting in Skyrim. 4:Archers CAN fist, but it's not usually necessary. Did I miss anything? 😋

When you mentioned there was only one kind of bow it threw me because I’ve been using a mod that expands Skyrim’s weapons and skills for so long I forgot that there wasn’t variety in the weapons. I’m so used to having my longbows to enhance the strength and distance of my stealth archery and then having to switch to my shortbows when the enemy gets too close. I basically forgot what normal Skyrim was so… limited in the weapons and skills. I wasn’t aware that there were stealth archery guides, especially since it’s so easy and natural to gravitate to that a guide seems redundant.

So awesome to hear a rangers apprentice shout-out, I was so obsessed with the series when I was a kid!

I never really cared for archery in skyrim, I used it for a few characters but I always gravitated towards using magic and melee weapons, usually in tandem. If I'm playing a stealthy character I'm more likely to pick up Illusion and a Dagger than a Bow. One of my favorite playthroughs was when I played an Imperial who almost exclusively used Stealth, Illusion, and a little bit of Conjuration. He didn't carry any weapons and he rarely fought anything himself. He usually just let his enemies kill eachother and maybe used a summon. He pretty much just watched battles from the sidelines most of the time.

Even in Fallout I play a sneaky sniper. I just load up on +steal and +speed while stealthes and I run at the same speed I would normally. Blowing off Super Mutants' heads from half a kilometre away is poggers. And if you get into a sticky situation you can sneak away and you're already at a distance from the big mean monster.

max out illusion, sneak, and one-handed. illusion assassin was my favorite build, just as EZ mode as stealth archer but was a breath of fresh air and a fun new way to play.

"and I haven't even mentioned stealth, so I'll sneak it in here at the end" ha, punny.

I definitely was introduced to the stealth archer build by outside means and have done one or two playthroughs as such. My instinct, as a middle schooler who had never played a game similar to it before, was to pick up the biggest axe I could find and swing it for huuuge numbers. I even leveled quite a bit in stealth, so I was like a guerrilla ambusher with a two-handed axe popping out of the shadows. My roommate who plays the Soulsborne games a lot told me about his annoyance at the lack of difference between the weapons in Skyrim which I didn't really notice cause it was my first game of its kind. Thanks to mods, many of my gripes with Skyrim's combat, especially magic, have been helped so it feels much better to actually play. The game's adaptability is definitely what has given it longevity. But as a kid interested in high fantasy's first RPG game, classic Skyrim will always have its place in my heart.

I love how this video is in the context of Skyrim, but in Oblivion and Morrowind (much less so in Morrowind) the same "issue" exists. Even in Oblivion, a game with no "talents" or perk tree, levelling stealth with anything but a bow is... well impossible without cheese. Same exact deal in Morrowind. In both predecessors, the optimal way to level stealth is to auto-run into a wall, crouched, near an NPC (in Morrowind it doesn't even need to be a hostile NPC lol). In Morrowind, Magicka doesn't even recharge like it does in Oblivion/Skyrim - you need to rest or drink potions to replenish. In all 3 games, spells do not naturally level-up with you - you gotta buy/make replacements with higher damage... but also higher Magicka costs. Also keep in mind that in Morrowind and Oblivion, magicka as a resource is capped at 100int x2 = 200, with clothes or fortify potions bringing it up from that cap (in Morrowind fortify magicka doesn't even increase magicka total, just current, so you can end up at 350/200 magicka). A lot of the really "holy hell that's a nuke" spells cost well over 100 magicka to cast, so they're pretty much a one-and-done deal in fights imo). So out of the three combat styles, we have melee, which has no range but is otherwise solid; magic, which either has limited resources OR doesn't scale well into endgame (unless you custom-craft spells or cheese); and ranged, which exploits stealth bonuses, extreme accuracy, plentiful ammo, range (duh) and scaling damage. Unless I'm RP-ing and play by my own set of rules, ranged ALWAYS wins. It's literally "crouch, point and click and watch that unfortunate soul 2km away die lol".

Also... With magic, you've got to remember that you can only attack while you still have magicka. When you run out of stamina as a melee build, you can still attack and block, you just can't POWER attack or shield bash... As a mage when you run out of magicka, you're powerless. This means that when you level up, you almost always have to put the 10 points into magicka and not health, which you CAN do as a melee build; say 50/50 to health and stamina (which also has the benefit of increasing carry weight and letting you sprint for longer). You also effectively cannot use armor as a mage if you want the alteration spells to be worth it, since the flesh spells get MASSIVELY more effective if you are wearing no armor, forcing you to use robes. Those robes can also give you much more magicka and magicka regen, and can potentially make different schools of magic cheaper to cast on top of that, making them almost essential... but it's still never quite enough, because magic in Skyrim doesn't SCALE properly. Obviously the Adept level destruction spells like fireball being AOE spells that can hit followers and passive NPCs is terrible since as a mage you pretty much require a follower or atronach to soak up some damage for you. Now you're stuck using Firebolt or Lightning bolt until you reach Expert level spells like Incinerate and Icy Spear... but then those spells do not scale up in damage with their magicka cost - if they cost 4x as much magicka but do 3x as much damage, they're not worth it. Sure they do that damage instantly rather than having to cast firebolt 12 times as an enemy is running at you (a problem that's negated once you get the perk that makes destruction spells stagger enemies)... but you still end up running out of magicka before doing enough damage to put down higher level enemies (which are also more likely to have enchantments negating your attacks, or be able to heal with spells of their own) if you try and use higher level destruction spells, making the class... really boring (since when is mage the "boring" class?!) This isn't even factoring in that to learn Equilibrium (trading health for magicka like an inverse healing spell), you have to go ALL THE WAY THROUGH the College of Winterhold questline, and if you want to use a flesh spell, then conjure an atronach, and THEN have a healing spell or a ward available... you can't dual-cast destruction spells making that perk pointless. You also can't heal followers while attacking enemies at the same time for example, or trade STAMINA for magicka with something like equilibrium, and like you said you can't sneak attack with spells either (even if you are literally invisible!) I ended up with master level destruction robes, enchanted boots and gloves, and a REALLY powerful ring, amulet and circlet pretty early into the game (Expert and Master level robes have no hoods to go with them for some reason, and the Archmage's robes are literally worse than Expert level), giving me something like 400 magicka, 200% magicka regen and 30% cheaper casting for destruction spells, and yet I was still finding it basically impossible to deal with most enemies halfway through the game without stopping every ten seconds to chug a dozen potions! This compared to a one-handed, heavy armor build (using light armor is pointless given the reduced defence since the movement penalty for heavy armor is almost nothing and can be removed entirely by getting the steed stone right near Solitude). If you have a sword enchanted with fire damage, you are literally doing more fire damage than when dual-casting fire spells, AND YOU CAN BLOCK! If you enchant your armor you can negate a substantial amount of magic damage making wards unnecessary, gain more health, stamina or more weapon or armor skill points through relevant enchantments, you obviously get the defence boost (further increased with perks like well fitted and matching set) making flesh spells unnecessary, and on top of all of that you can get enchantments like absorb health on your swords making healing spells unnecessary too! Plus your weapons do more damage and armor give more defence as you go up in level (steel to orcish to dwarven to ebony etc.) and gain relevant perks, unlike with spells that do a fixed amount of damage whether you're level 1 or level 65! And all this STILL pales in comparison to the good ol' stealth archer build, because you get all the same benefits of a melee build, but you can also attack from range AND get the stealth attack bonuses! Well done Todd Howard!!!!!!!!

22:27 I genuinely did not see that coming, well done!

I had a modded build once that was indeed a stealth archer, but still very cool. He used a crossbow, which is very loud, so I had to use it as a last resort, but with a multitude of bolts ranging from paralyzing to explosive effects, it was very effective. Most of the time I used illusion magic to avoid or instigate combat.

drawback joke got me. glad to see the fellow weird archery kid rep

Playing as an archer in VR Skyrim is OP as hell. You basically just get to be Legolas.