<eleanor>after testing in oblivion, i can confirm that short swords are superior to both daggers and long swords when using the busted combo weapon enchant (which are read in reverse order by the game) of 1 second soul trap, x fire, ice, and shock damage, 100% weakness to fire, ice, and shock, and then 100% weakness to magic to cause the resistance to badly bork. daggers are too short, and longswords are too slow and costly energy-wise to get your enchant to work as consistently as on a shortsword.
daggers are usually praised for their 8x sneak attack damage, but for combat, they are no fun lol
further learned that at a certain level at master difficulty armor means fuckall (either armor type is capped at 85 armor, usually achieved by 1-3 enchanted pieces) so you are very much heavily encouraged to get 100% normal damage & spell reflect/absorb from certain quest rewards (only after level 25 for getting the highest stat roll) so you also need to struggle on the way there lmao.
the meta path on the hardest difficulty, is to basically ignore the terribly set mechanics. for instance, the meta weapons blow up the damage resistance on enemies and delete them, perma stun them, or force them to never attack you if you hit them every second. you use these to level 25 and you can get 100% damage and spell reflect (commonly as breton due to their innate spell resist) and then you are more or less invuln forever at that point and then it's "easy" because you broke the game.
this is the answer i was seeking, because i always knew people either said master difficulty was atrociously balanced and is blatantly unfun for casual players while people that know the game inside and out say it's stupid easy, because they know how to break the game. but these things very much do not come naturally to most casual players i'd argue. i'm always trying to seek out ways to break games because i find that fun, but i don't think that's a common feeling for games for many really.