I'm not one to complain and I'm not but truthfully it is. I just had a battle with 4 dauger in a crypt that were much stronger then me, I was at bottom of stairs and would walk up shoot 1 arrow then move against he wall. They come looking for me stand right next to me then leave, I repeated this about 40 times to kill them all, my follower went down like 30 times.

I'm a thief so I understand they need sneak but wow is it ever OP. Also killed a dragon priest by standing behind a pillar, if he saw me I just go to other side of pillar and he would leave. They should of made the enemy look harder for you, in closing just want to add love this damn game.

How have you levelled sneak?

Pretty sure everyone by now knows it to some degree. The real trick however, is getting people to admit it's true.

I didn't boost it, it's at 52 right now. It leveled like 3 times during that battle I mentioned. Each time they were looking for me then I went hidden it went up a lot. I could go get it 100 in 10 minutes right now If I wanted to but told myself no boosting this play thru. Not even training except for archery with fendale I beginning.

I always play thief like characters, I always use it because well I'm a thief. And I will be 1st to admit it.

While I've found sneak quite strong for thief/assassins, the key issue is that IF sneak is broken and you can't re-gain it, then fights get a bit tougher. Not crazy hard, but tougher. Especially if you've managed to level up your combat skills too.

With shadow warrior you can pretty much go into sneak then pop in behind them and slice their throats one by one. On a earlier character I've done this 5 against me. Now I just run back a couple rooms and go hide in corner until I'm hidden again then go back.

How many perks have you used in the skilltree?

3 on stealth, muffled movement, backstab, deadly aim.

Getting stealth to 5 but not buying any of the other perks, I'm more of a archer so don't need assassins blade. The rest on left side I don't need to be honest, silence is nice but don't want light foot and silent roll to get it.

i find sneak is inconsistent rather than just overpowered. they can either see me half a mile away, or don't notice me while they are walking into me.

sometimes it works too well and others it barely works at all.

Were these regular Drauger? Those are pretty low level so Sneak should be effective against them.

No they were in the shadow priest tomb, don't remember his name. It was one where you had to collect 3 samples of blood to summon him. These drauger took like 12 arrows to kill at 3x damage, they also were using shout.

I have not noticed this, my sneak is 100. If I shoot someone they almost always find me, 80% of the time.

Also getting sneak bonuses is very unreliable...

I'm surprised by that. I have even crouched in front of someone and shot 5 arrows in them, after 1st one they were searching for me guess they forgot to look 5 feet in front of them. Also never don't get my bonus.

Also sneaking with my heavy armor follower with no problem.

I've noticed that too, in some cases i fire an arrow and everyone instantly knows where i am, in other cases i can fire a whole quiver of sneak attacks. I guess it's a just symptom of the late game "one hit kill or be one hit killed" level scaling.

Don't forget there is a big and I mean BIG difference on sneak if you are playing master as opposed to say adept. I think that causes some of the differing opinions. Those that play on master often assume everyone posting here is doing the same while those on adept can't understand while somethings seem overpowered. I started my sniper character on adept but eventually had to move the difficulty up as some people are saying it was just too easy. But I found that the higher difficulties solved that sneak power issue rather quickly.

we all know it, but some us of like playing stealthy, but if you think its too powerful, don't use muffle spells or boots, don't take any sneak perks, that should fix it for you, but just because some people don't like to be so stealthy doesn't mean everyone feels the same, its a sandbox game, the option is there if you want.

Try doing that on a dragon.

I have, it's impossible to hide from one after it's seen you, unless it gets distracted by mudcrabs

Speaking of mudcrabs, i saw one, and i do mean one, kill a sabre cat, the dragons are right to fear them

Dude, 1/3 of the skills in skyrim are OP, the other 2/3 are practically crap.

There's not even any point in talking about it, because they have no plan to fix it.

That's why I bring followers.

Well the point is you can't claim sneak is OP if it is only OP in dungeons and in certain aspects, but mediocre against dragons.

A warrior on the other hand is good in all situations.

Sneak is always OP in Bethesda games. I really don't have a problem with it as much as some other people, mainly because all types of gameplay get OP eventually. The only real problem in my opinion is that stealth brings out the horrible AI in virtually every encounter. I'm hoping one day The Elder Scrolls will at least raise itself to the level of Deus Ex: Human Revolution (which also has Imperfect stealth, but it's lightyears better than any Elder Scrolls stealth) and include things like:

1) Body Awareness Penalty - Enemies related to the same faction (Bandit, Town[IE: Riften], Etc) will became Alert if they discover a body of one of their own, resulting in the inability to score additional Sneak Attacks against them (Except for Dagger backstabs) as well as a much higher level of awareness for a fairly long duration of real-time.

2) Recognition of actually being attacked - Maybe I'm crazy, but should we be able to launch 4 or 5 arrows into a targets head without him knowing someone is shooting arrows at him? Situations that don't result in One-hit kills of a particular enemy should raise his awarness level until he is killed, as well as raise the awareness of any nearby enemies (Ones that heard the attack, not unlike what already happens in-game, but without such short memory). It should take At most Three shots before an enemy can locate where the arrows were coming from, though the wise ambush archer could still move to a different location.

3) 6x, 15x and 30x Backstab limited to actually Backstabbing.- Maybe it's not possible for Skyrim to detect when you specifically hit something in the back, and maybe it is, all I know is, of all the things that are OP, Broad daylight, right-in-front-of-you backstabs for 30x (Assuming you have Dark Brotherhood killhands) are about as broken as you can make the game without exploiting the crafting issues.

some people like to be super powerful, its a sandbox game, you can easily adjust the difficulty yourself, if sneak is too strong, don't take the perks, its like some people take all the appropriate perks, raise the skill, max it out, then complain its overpowered. since its a sandbox game that means you get to make your character your own way, including super powerful.