Hey guys,
Sorry for all the typos and all I am on my mobile phone. I am currently rolling a paladin and doing a sword, board, and two handed. My question is how good are the power bash perks? Are they decent and worth the perks?

Also because the smithing tree is two sided with light and heavy I can't upgrade all the weapons. How do you guys about this? Do you just get all the perks or just focus on one side. Also is there damage output cap like armor rating?

In terms of Smithing I didn't worry about "wasted" perk points so I pretty much bought everything in the whole tree. This was more of a Role Play decision than anything else. While it's wasteful if you want to be a "smithe" that can equip all your followers, companions, guild members, whatever then you really need both sides of the tree and tailor the equipment to the targeted person.

Also even if you are focusing on "heavy" but happen to find Glass or even an Elven weapon that's nice it's cool to be able to improve it.

As for the bash perks I haven't really invested in those so I can't really speak with authority how they would effect your game. I was so busy "wasting" extra perks on Smithing, One Handed, Restoration that I never really got around to Blocking much ...

The power bash, it only uses slightly more stamina than the normal bash, but it has much larger stagger effect. I think its worth it, also you can disarm the enemy and do 5x damage with the other perks on the right side of the tree.

If would get all the block perks (only get the first perk once though as +5% is pathetic), they are all worth it IMO.

For example, I can use the spellbreaker shield (which has a +50 ward effect), combined with the elemental resistance block perk, also the move faster with the shield perk. I can close the distance between me and mages/dragons very fast taking barely any damage. I'm also breton, using the lord stone, so mages (even on master) are a piece of cake now.

Thanks!

I like the idea of more stagger.

Any other opinions or advice?

I've maxed out perks on Two-Handed. My Nord character is pretty unstoppable with an enchanted Ebony greatsword. But as I'm focusing on One-handed now, I only use the greatsword when I'm in a pinch.

I find shield bashing to be super useful. Disarming Bash is quite fun too and you can grab their weapons before they retrieve them.

Get all the block perks and focus on the right side of the smithing tree. You will want to wear heavy armor and Daedric are the best weapons. You can't get to Daedric from the left side.

Awesome. Thanks all!!

I bought perks up the left side to elven and the right to ebony. Now I'm wondering if that wasn't a bit of a waste. My smithing skill is high - about 87 or so - and that's all I need to get a reasonably high ability to improve my arms and armor. I don't see that legendary ebony armor is all that much more protective than legendary plate steel, yet takes like three more perks spent. I'm starting to think I could have saved quite a few perks by only taking the steel smithing perk, which would still allow me to improve my steel armor and weapons really high if I maintain a high skill level. Then I could spend those perks elsewhere.

Just a theory though.

It's no theory, my friend... it's a fact. If you use smithing and enchanted gear to improve smithing, the differences between the armor material types become cosmetic only. See this thread:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1317202-complete-character-design-freedom-damage-resist-caps-and-ridiculous-damage-thread-8/

Any armor can hit the armor cap... light or heavy... doesn't matter. There is no cap on damage, but you can make any weapon very powerful if you want.
-Loth

True, I think smithing is only really beneficial perk wise if you go one direction. If you wear heavy armor it makes sense to perk just the heavy side through Daedric (although you are correct, once you hit the armor cap it doesn't matter and I think that can be done with Steel Armor if your skill is high enough). But on light armor it's a toss up because you want to get up to Dragon because it is the best light armor in the game. You just have to choose if you want to make really strong light armor on your way to 100 smithing or if you want really strong Orcish and Dwarven weapons and decent light armor.

Huh. Yeah, I knew that you could make things pretty powerful with the enchanting/smithing loop, but I haven't done that. I just practiced smithing with iron daggers (as well as actually smithing stuff to use) up to where I've got a skill in the mid-eighties, and while of course the higher-tier armors and weapons have higher ratings, the added oomph just isn't worth all the perks it takes to make and improve them. If I really wanna see what daedric and dragon armors look like, I can always use Google. I'm likely to just stick with the steel plate all the way.

Steel plate is my favorite, too.
-Loth

Yup. I might have been tempted to stick with iron, but there's no iron-smithing perk to let you get its values up to the levels you can reach with steel.

One thing in favour of learning both the left and right side of the Smithing trees: At level 46+, Chillrend has the highest base damage of any one-handed sword. It can be improved twice as much if you have the Glass Smithing perk.

As for Power Bashes, I got myself all the way to level 60 without using them, so I guess it's a case of preference.