After I spent all this time trying to prioritize my perks, I realized something.

It doesn't make a huge difference where your perks are. Sure, they're nice to have sometimes, but the basic perks will get you buy in most skill trees.

The biggest factor in being able to switch between magic, melee, and stealth all depend on how you're playing and where your attributes are. If you have a high magic and health count, even with no perks used, you'll be a decent warrior and mage. You still need a little bit of stamina for those long duration fights though.

Trying to make a strategic perk rank isn't going to help you. It's best to just place perks as you go along. The road to level 81 is a long one, and you'll likely be miserable before you reach that level anyway.

I've learned to put down my perk counter and just enjoy the game.

It's all a matter of personal opinion. Personally I enjoy the game more if I plan out my entire character (perks, weapons/spells, armor, enchantments on that armor, etc) before I even hop on the carriage to Helgen. It allows me to get a better picture of my character end game. But then again, I was a rather large supporter of the class system.

Ehhhh. The smithing skills (less-so for Alchemy) require higher perks, as do Alteration, Conjuration, Archery (at least to power shot), Sneak, Heavy Armour, Block, Restoration and Pickpocket, to reach reasonable end-game efficacy or drastically increase their potential (as opposed to "a nice little boost"). If you're playing at Adept or higher, I don't suggest squandering perks if you can help it. Likewise, the attributes aside from Stamina become almost moot once you have Skillful Enchanter and Corpus Enchanter, and even more moot when you can dual enchant.

I usually put some points in health and most of my points in stamina in any kind of fully strategised longterm usage character. Harder early game, but enchantment levels so fast that it's soon quite a breezy way to play.