Here's my take on the useless perks in Skyrim. I'd like to see what the community believes are wastes of space in regards to perks.

Heavy Armor

- All of it. You can reach the armor cap via smithing and potions. Conditioning is a good perk. Too bad the Steed Stone exists to give you the same exact benefits of the Conditioning perk.

Block

- Quick Reflexes
- Power Bash
- Deadly Bash
- Disarming Bash

Quick Reflexes is only good early game. Late game, your armor rating is high enough where you won't need to slow the game down to block an already obvious incoming power attack. Also, it's glitched where sometimes the slow down effect doesn't wear off and requiring you to save then reload.

And the Bashes? Get real. Usesless.

Two Handed

- Limbspitter ranks 1,2,3
- Deep Wounds 1,2,3
- Skull Crusher 1,2,3
- Great Critical Charge

Limbspitter's bleeding affect is hardly noticible. Skull Crusher? Serious? NPCs don't have armor in this game. Deep Wounds? Here's the problem with critical damage for two handed swords, one handed swords, and archery. They base the critical damage on the base damage of a weapon.

If a great sword, sword, or bow do 10 base damage, the critical damage is forever based on the 10 points of base damage. IF you smith those weapons to do 200 damage per strike, guess what? Critical still is only based on the 10 base damage. LOL worthy perks.

One Handed

- Hack and Slash
- Bone Breaker
- Bladesman
- Critical Charge

Read what I wrote for Two-Handed. Same thing here.

Archery

- Critical Shot (Read what I wrote about critical damage under Two-Handed)
- Hunter's Discipline
- Ranger

Hunter's Discipline? Are arrows really that hard to come by? Ranger is a good perk. Too bad you have to waste two perks to get it. Not worth it in my opinion.

Light Armor

- All of it. Damage cap can be reached with smithing and smithing potions and the steed stone nullifies Unhindered. Wind Walker sounds good in theory. But if you're in combat stamina still regerates at a snail's pace and out of combat you regain stamina at normal speed and isn't really needed. Besides here's the rule I use when enchanting gear More total stamina > Stamina regeneration

Sneak

- Assassin's Blade

Because one-handed damage increases via enchantments on your gear does not affect Daggers, a sword, war-axe, or mace at 6x damage will do more than a dagger at 15x damage. Unless you don't enchant fortify one-handed damage enchantments on your gear or use two-handed swords this perk is deemed a waste.

Lockpicking

- All. And it's obvious why. I don't need an explanation here. Everyone already knows.

Pickpocket

- Keymaster

Pick-pocketing keys is already near guaranteed.

Speech

- Bribery
- Intimidation
- Persuasion
- Master Trader

Bribery, Intimidation, and Persuasion are just lol worthy. Master Trader? Don't need it. Save your game and punch the merchant. Reload. Gold and stock is refreshed. You don't need that extra 1,000 gold on a merchant.

Conjuration

- Dual Casting
- Mystic Binding
- Soul Stealer
- Oblivion Binding
- Apprentice, Adept, Expert, and Master Conjuration

Bound weapons are again, LOL worthy. If you're a mage, you can still smith better quality weapons then what you conjure EVEN IF YOU HAVE NO SKILL IN SMITHING. As for Apprentice, Adept, etc. If you're a mage then you're investing in magicka on level up, correct? By end game, you can conjure whatever you like and not have to worry about not having enough magicka per cast. Besides, by this point you'll have dead thralls. You won't be casting conjuration spells much.

Destruction

- Intense Flames
- Deep Freeze
- Disintegrate
- Apprentice, Adept, Expert, and Master Destruciton
- Rune Master

Intense Flames and Deep Freeze are pathetic. Disintegrate is actually a great perk and makes shock spells perfect for destruction mages. Too bad ash piles never disappear unlike what the patch notes say. Get disintegrate and go happy with shock spells and your game will be littered with ash piles that never go away.

Runes are pathetic and as for Apprentice, Adept, Expert and master destruction perks? If you're a mage and haven't enchanted gear so that destruction costs 0% magicka then you're doing it oh so wrong.

Restoration

- Ward Absorb
- Restoration Dual Cast
- Avoid Death
- Apprentice, Adept, Expert, and Master Restoration

Ward Absorb? Hint. Atronach perk under alteration + Atronach Stone + Necromage and Vampire = 100% spell absorption. Dual Cast? Don't need it.
Avoid Death? impractical. And again, if you're late game had do not have restoration to 0% casting cost you're, again, doing it oh so wrong.

Alteration

- Master Alteration
- Mage Armor
- Magic Resistance

Mage Armor and Magic resistance are based on playstyle. If you want to be a cloth mage, then Mage Armor isn't a waste. Resistance? Again, 100% spell absorption is easy if you're a necromage vamp but if you're a warrior character then at least 1 point into Magic Resistance is useful.

Enchanting

- Soul Squeeze
- Soul Siphon
- Fire, Frost, and Storm Enchanter

This post is "oh so wrong." I don't even know where to begin.

Please do, I'd like to see what people's takes are on the different perks of Skyrim.

Heavy armor itself is pointless. You can reach the armor cap in low level light armor.

Exactly. Add in the benefit of the steed stone and the Heavy and Light Armor perk trees become completely and utterly useless. You are wasting perks if you invest anything in either of these two perk trees.

What if you don't use smithing and potions? How worthless is Heavy Armor then?

what perks do you really like to use?

For starters, those perks you listed for Destruction are actually essential.. without them, the school would be even more underpowered.

You can't justify calling something useless because something else has the same effect (ie; standing stones), nor can you justify it by saying one skill nullifies another (ie; smithing to reach armour cap as opposed to using perks).

What if I don't want the steed stone? Or don't want to enchant (which I haven't ever done by the way?) Or don't want to smith? These perks are all viable except maybe lockpicking because it's so easy.

Also, saying destruction without 0% costs is "doing it wrong" made me laugh. Yes it doesn't scale which svcks. No breaking the game isn't a fix. This thread is more lolworthy than the perks is talking about.

The weapon specialization perks in One-Handed and Two-Handed are definitely useless. If you've the perk points to spare, it would still be debatable.

Heavy/Light armor perks aren't useless in my opinion, at least the ones that increase armor rating. I don't use potions or wear a helmet, so every little bit helps my character builds.

From my brief dalliance with lockpicking, the natural progression is sufficient for even tougher locks.

Deadly Relfexes is my favorite skill, and the only one I would actually call a "perk". Can't comment on the bashing side of things, as I haven't used them.

I enjoy Ward Absorb, and your justification for forfeiting it is designed specifically for spell total spell absorption, which is the same as reaching the armor cap: boring.

The rest I don't have enough experience with to comment on.

Most perks on the list are useless, if you use infinite loops of stacking effects. But most players don't do that.
I'd prefer if that loop-possiblity wasn't even possible, because when it's there, so much things are pointless.

I'm genuinely curious as to how this is done.

Give me some imput.

I have a pure mage character. Runes are weak and as such I never used them. Intense Flames? I don't need my targets running away when they're at 10% health when I'm trying to kill them. Deep Freeze? They're getting paralyzed at 10% health? They're as good as dead. Disintegrate? That's actually a good perk and makes shock damage the best element in destruction. Too bad for console players that you cannot fix the permanent ash piles.

And if you're actually intending to be a mage why haven't you bee-lined for 100 in enchanting to make destruction casting cost 0%?

All you need is a single piece of fur armor, combined with enchanting and alchemy.

Because it's boring!

That's what I figured. The synergy of the crafting trees has been discussed to death, but is this something that is achieved casually? For me to get to this point, I would have to create a new character with min-maxing mindset from the get-go.

-Improving the armors condition level.
-Custom Fit: 25% armor bonus if wearing all Light Armor: head, chest, hands, feet.
-Matching Set: Additional 25% Armor bonus if wearing a matched set of Light Armor (for example, only Elven armor).
-Deft Movement: 10% of avoiding all damage from a melee attack while wearing all Light Armor: head, chest, hands, fee.

Also this:

The sad thing is, I'm not even talking about looping when I wrote these perks and my take on them.

Consider this. You have 100 in smithing and either went to the left (Light Armor side) or right (Heavy Armor side). Now, you have 100 in enchanting. You make 5 pieces of armor to boost alchemy on each piece of armor (Falmer Helmet, Circlet, Gauntlets, Right and Necklace). You make a smithing potion at 147% increase in skill. Now, make an enchanting potion at 37% increase.

Make 4 pieces of armor and enchanting fortify smithing. That's 29% increase in smithing x 4. Drink that 147% potion. Congrats. Armor cap is reached in nearly all armors.

Keep in mind, if you're a necromage vamp the potions and gear's increase are amplified even more to ridiculous levels. This is not exploiting like as with the fortify restoration loop.

Oh and wait until you finish a certain quest for the ability called "Ancient Knowledge". Because it's glitched, you gain 25% increase in rating on all pieces of armor worn and glitches where instead of 15% faster increase in the smithing skill it actually fortifies smithing by 15% permanently.

Because it's boring?

No, it is exploiting.

And so is your mage doing the equivalent in damage when it comes to destruction on master as smacking a Bandit Maurader with a wet noodle. But this is a different discussion already discussed entirely way too much.

No, that's called using intended features to the max.

Exploits aside, saying perks are useless because perk-synergy in othertrees override them is asinine. It is an option, and no one is denying that, but what I am denying is that it is the rule rather than the exception. It's all about choice.

I don't play on master.

Unless, of course, you're concentrating on Atromancy and not Necromancy. Then Dead Thrall is useless to you. Besides, I'd kind of like to have some magicka left over after I cast one spell, and I have to do something until my character hits the magic "OP" level. You can do a lot of stuff by end game that you can't do in the beginning or mid-game; the problem is it takes awhile to get to end game and you have to do something in the meantime.


Because Destruction Mage=/=Mage (necessarily). Try a Conjurer/Illusionist. That's a mage, too, and you don't have to cast any Destruction spells at all, if you don't want to.

Also, no-cost casting is boring.

(Edited for clarity.)

The shield bash perks are very usefull for a warrior character,staggering your enemies with a bash.

All the perks in the game are usefull depending on the roleplay.

Maybe your light armored warrior doesn't do alchemy or enchanting then the light armor perks are good.