Gonna be a short opening post, since I'm itching to return to skyrim.

But Hand to hand, while powerful as a khajiit or with the heavy armor perk, just isn't viable. The reason is because there's only one power attack (standing power attack), the attack speed is really slow, and sneak attacks are stuck at recieving a 2x bonus for the entirety of the game.

H2H does not benefit from Two Handed or One Handed perks. It does not benefit from any Sneak Perks. And you do not learn any power moves, such as running, sideways, back, or forward.
All you've got is a punch, and a power punch.

There are 3 finishers - one is a stealth finisher, but nearly impossible to activate since you won't be killing many humanoids with a 2x damage bonus from stealth attacks. The other 2 finishers I've used is one where you punch them in the face 3 times, and one where you sort of elbow them in the chest so they thump on the ground.

There's also no reason to use both hands. Equipping a shield is the logical, though less cool , choice.

Anyone have anything else to say about their experiences with hand to hand?
I'm wishing they at LEAST added more than 1 power attack.

Yup, I was pretty disappointed when I found out. I was looking forward to making my guy punch everything to death. I'm not even really sure how finishers work.. I've just come to the conclusion they're a frequent animation that plays on the blow that would have killed them. They really could use an entire skill tree for it, and tune it better than Oblivion. Also, what happened to spears and halberds? Was that just a rumor or are they in?

I plan on making a tanky character with a shield and fist eventually though, 'cause why not.

I might be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure theres a boxing syndicate somewhere in the game.

there's no boxing syndicate as far as anyone knows. If you have confirmed this, then post it. But there's no reason to believe there's a boxing dojo without any hints

I'm pretty annoyed by no hand-to-hand skill tree myself. I was really hoping to make a Khajiit brawler since I think a race of cat people would think it a point of honor to only use their claws in melee combat. Oh well, guess I'll svck up my pride and start using a dagger.

If you pull both triggers, it does like a little flurry of punches too. Only used hand to hand for the Bar Brawls.

bummer

the dagger is pretty cool though. but i still wish i could go with h2h