I would have to say it's a match up between Pickpocket and Speech. I would think that Speech wins though because there's only so many times it can be useful.

i would go for speech, because theres nothing more hilarious than a banditchief fighting with his/her fists...naked!
Makes the life of a thief a lot easier.

pickpocket useless? naah...nothing is better than pickpocketing an enemy's equipped weapon and then starting a fistfight with them

I quite like Golden Touch and Treasure Hunter in the Lockpick skill tree, however mostly for roleplay purposes, otherwise I'd say Lockpick is probably the one I find least useful.

I'ld say Lockpicking. You can basically open every chest in the game if you are good at the minigame, and even if you aren't, there's still the tower stone.

I find Speech immensely useful. I play alot of thief characters so I'm always hauling around alot of junk, so being able to sell it all off quickly is definitely useful.

I'd say my least useful is Lockpocking perhaps ironically so. I just don't think it's that difficult to pick open even master locks, without any perks.

Speech.

You have no use for its money perks. There are plenty of merchants in the game usually with ~1000-2000 gold by level 10 you will most likely have more money than you will ever need.
There is no use for persuasion and intimidation since in the unlikely situation that they fail, you can just bribe people.

At least lockpicking and pickpocketing have some use in decent perks. Speech doesn't have even that.

Lockpicking is absolutely pointless, even a mage can pick locks without any perks ...not that they should have to pick locks at all.

Speech is useful for any character.

Lockpicking in vanilla is useless as it is implemented and only of interest for RP for very specific characters.

Pickpocket is the same as Lockpicking except that you may need some boosts if you don't take perks (i.e., gear, potions).

Smithing is useless as it is implemented because you don't need to upgrade gear at all. You can, but it certainly isn't needed. Also, like others, Smithing is only applicable for certain specific characters. (note: what is actually needed is a Crafting skill where Smithing is merely one type of Crafting... Bethesda?)

Sneak is pointless the way it is implemented. It's broken when you have a 50+ Sneak and no perks but enemies still detect you from miles away. Very immersion breaking.

One-Handed, Two-Handed, Light Armor, and Heavy Armor are all pointless the way they are implemented.

Block, because my character uses a great-sword.

Lockpicking. Easy to get around 150+ lockpicks and then you're set.

Some Block perks effect two handed blocking

I say lockpicking >.> atleast speech can be usefull early in game.

Definately lockpicking it's totally redundant!

Personally half of the skills/perks are useless to me but others make use of them so there's nothing really useless. I never perk up the armor skills, lockpicking, pickpocket, restoration, etc., etc. with any of my characters.

I wouldn't say that the Speech tree is entirely useless, the Merchant perk is for example a good time-saver and isn't really hard to get.

Lockpicking. You don't have to put a single perk in this tree to successfuly pick locks.

Pickpocket is alright. The two top perks are fun and very useful if you can sneak up on your enemy before the fight. Reverse-pickpocketing poisons adds variety to the assassin's profession.

Speech has a few useful merchant perks. Any character benefits from investing in stores, and the fencing perks is great for thieves.


Which lockpicking perk is decent? Quick Hands is the only one remotely useful, but you don't really need it if you can sneak.

Lockpicking

Speech and Block.

I don't block during battles.

I block so it isn't useless, but lock picking is because if you lockpick you don't need any perks to do it successfully.