Playing an sneaky character that relies heavy on backstabbing and taking people down unseen there is a lot of shouts I will find useful and use to certain extent,

Throw voice - Great for luring enemies to the spot I want them to be
Unrelenting force - Great for making crowd control if needed
Aura Whisper - Nice for detecting life forms
Become etheral - Nice for the situations where you need to escape
Disarm - Good to use as utility when needed
Elemental Fury - Increased attack speeds is never bad
Ice form - Nice utility spell for crowd controlling
Marked for death - Nice utilty for weakning enemies
Slow Time - Nice utility for combat situations
Whirlwind sprint - good for making distance or getting close to enemies

I usually go "marked for death" when I have to face an elder or ancient dragon or some tough bosses

I mainly use shouts to either take out groups of enemies, or to quickly help damage large enemies like giants and dragons.

My robed charcter wanders around with a big axe and Unrelenting Force is absolutely essential is stopping bosses landing the single strike that will kill her.Maybe the availability of shouts should`ve been dictated by the choice of skills and attributes because with magic,melee and shouts a character has perhaps too many ways to kill an enemy.

yep i forget that have them, and my latest character is a warrior and he doesnt use magic of any sort, so ye, just another game element that doesnt really add anyhting to me.

from the looks so far not too many people even remember to use them!
if the devs didnt waste their time adding this to the game, maybe we could have some better quests or something?

I always go with stealth so if I use a shout it's because I made a mistake and got rumbled. My favourite shout is Marked for death. Even on the first of these shouts you can easily despatch most foes. I also like Unrtelenting force, just for its sheer comedy value sometimes. It's especially good if you're atop a mountain and the victim stands on the edge of it.

Sometimes I use them a lot, sometimes I can go for hours without a single shout.

I think that if they didn't all share the same cool down, I'd use them a lot more. Might go looking for a mod that does that.

I use a variety of shouts. They help with mana management.

I previously didn't really use them at all - kept fogetting. I played for a long before going past the very start of the MQ - now I've done a bit more of it I'm addicted to using unrelenting force. Apart from the pragmatyic breathing space it can give by pushing an enemy backwards and rendering them helpless for a couple of seconds, it's just so much damn fun blasting enemies off any kind of high point. I find it such an entertaining device blasying bears off cliffs just never seems to get old. I guess I'm easily pleased.

Unrelenting force against deathlords, bandit chiefs and Forsworn ravagers and briarhearts, animal allegiance and Kyne's peace when travelling, stormcall against bandit forts, whirlwind sprint to get up mountains and ethereal to get down, marked for death against ancient dragons, clear skies because weather control just makes me feel powerful. Yeah they fit with my gameplay, a lot.

My current character is a level 22 Argonian duel-wielder, specializing in restoration, one-handed and light armour. He also is OK with smithing (awesome armour mod, I needed 50 smithing to get it ) and he is about 40 enchanting (it's an all-round useful skill, but at level 40 it's not yet very OP - no perks in it) and I find shouts are key to surviving. I play on master, with no followers or companions (like dogs) and no fast traveling. It means that you have to rely on your characters skills. The problem is, as a duel wielder I don't have much armour - I have about 150 armour, as I really like my armour and it's much funner when you're vulnerable - playing in full Daedric/ Glass/ pick your high end armour makes it kinda boring- and I have pretty low light armour, as I normally can take 2-3 hits from an average mob before I die. Thus my light armour is only about 38 (if I recall correctly) but my one handed is 76. I do large amounts of damage, especially from power attacks, but I have very low armour and only 200 health. This means that I have to stop enemies from hitting me, and Fus Roh Dah is a very useful shout (unrelenting force). I use it's second level to knock back the enemies a bit - causing mages and archers to stop shooting too- and give me a chance to get a sprinting attack in, then a power attack will normally kill them. Marked for death is also a useful shout, as even at level one it stumbles enemies.

i use shouts all the time for all kinds of circumstances.

the cooldown period is now a non-issue. and, i just quickly pick the shout i want and use my peripheral vision to know when i can use another shout.

adds great gameplay variety.

it's very second-nature now.

I love shouts. I can understand why people wouldn't use them though. If someone is RP'ing a character that either deals with no magic or doesn't care for their dragonborn power or EVEN ignores it, then it makes total sense. I just started a character and for once didn't go straight to the MQ at least for a little like I normally do. I haven't found any shouts yet that suit my character but she seeks ultimate power and therefore wouldn't pass up the power shouts give. When I find Marked for Death, Throw Voice, and eventually deal with the dragons - Unrelenting Force and I'm sure I can use a few others, I just don't have them yet.

On previous characters I use shouts almost all the time and it has become an extra power to utilize. Unrelenting Force would probaly be my favorite for its use and its humor.

I will explain again why Shouts are less than appealing and have left players posting topics such as "Shouts are worthless" or "What Shouts do you use?" or "Shouts svck!". Here are the problems with Shouts:

1) They all share the same cooldown. What this means is that even though "Fus" resets very quickly, if you used the 3 word Storm Call, you would have to wait the entire 600 seconds (10 minutes) to use ANY Shout. This is the single largest problem with Shouts. This has lead players to pick shouts to use and they end up only using a few, one, or no shouts as a result. We as players end up prioritizing and ranking shouts, to which we come up with the conclusion that the more situational Shouts are - worthless.
2) They do not scale. This goes against the entire design of Skyrim and RPGs. You CAN raise the damage through Destruction Perks, but as you level - they do not get progressively stronger. This is the exact SAME argument about Magicka in the world of Skyrim. Effectiveness should scale with level.
3) Hotkeys are done horribly. This is a larger gripe over the entire UI and control of Skyrim. You can only bind one key to perform a Shout the default on PC being Z. In order to use another shout than the one you have equipped, you have to select the Hotkey you have bound to that shout, or go through the cumbersome favorites list OR Spells UI which forces you to pause the game and go through multiple levels. It is all about simplification. Where some things got homogenized for good, UI and controls got homogenized for the worse. The way Shouts SHOULD function, is being able to bind multiple keys to perform different Shouts cutting an entire step out of the equation so using multiple Shouts is a 1 step process which fosters fluid gameplay.

Now, how do we correct these things?

1.) Categorize shouts. Shouts that share the same category will still share the same cooldown. These shouts will all have the same cooldowns and share the same cooldown. Shouts that do NOT share the same cooldown can be used in conjunction with one another. An example of this would be Fire and Frost Breaths would share the same cooldown, however Fire and Frost would not share the same cooldown with Aura Whisper or Become Ethereal as they are separate categories. They can be categorized as much as makes sense and helps provide more options to the player. This enables the Shouts seen as "worthless" because they are highly situational and not as high of a priority suddenly be an option to a player to help supplement combat.
2.) Scale shouts effectiveness with levels. Have multiple ways to improve shouts available to the player. Enchants and Potions being logical choices.
3.) Better Hotkey system. Ability to create certain macros that allow a player to bind the categorized shouts to multiple keys. Pressing these keys would activate that respective Shout.

There you go, now Shouts are improved.

Playing a mage on master difficulty I, can't see how anyone (playing a mage that is, not sure about other styles) doesn't use shouts. Without them playing a mage would be twice as hard. I love them and make plenty use out of them. Slow time and Ice form are my two most used shouts with unrelenting force bringing up the rear.

To anyone who is not using a Shout because it doesn't fit in with your Stealth character. Which is understandable, you all need to get Throw Voice shout or try it out. That shout alone has opened this game up for me as I use it almost EVERY group I come across. It's a great distraction for my Assassin, it has become my signature way or murder in Skyrim.

I use them when I feel like I will need it, though I usually do not use them. This approach is inspired by Ulfrics fall from the Greybeards teachings and how he still thinks the Thu'um should only be used when needed.

I have, but the only full questline I have completed is the mages college, but I use frost breath and ice form along with ice magic. I'm basically an ice mage as it's the only kind I use, except for the occasional thunderbolt, but I only have around 300 magicka due to only being level 30, so ya. I also push them away with unrelenting force to get a few hits in with melee.

Ok, so taking heart from this discussion I decided to really make an effort with Shouts and my new character. The chap himself is a big great-sword slinging Nord whose sole tactic was inspired by a post by The_Jackal on "the other place". In its entirety, because its so simple there is no need to summarise, my man kicks in the door, shouts "Y'all know what this is!" and then gets on with slaughtering everything in sight. It occurred to me that instead of "Y'all know what this is!" he could give a blast of unrelenting force - a bit more in character and probably more effective.

So, I send him off to the Grey-Beards and he goes through their training, then off we go, straight to a bandit infested dungeon to try out the new tactic. We just slaughter the outside guards without breaking step, and the odd one in the first few rooms - no pointing in wasting effort on the singles. Then we come to a room where there are four of the buggers. This is it. Shout, charge and swing, should get at least two before they can recover from the shout. Big deep breath, hold it, hold it to get maximum power and release.

Well, we ended up nose to nose with one of the bad guys - I had forgotten to change to Unrelenting Force from the Whirlwind Sprint I had been using with the Monks. Not quite the desired effect. Instead of charging into the front of a stunned group ripe for the slaughter and too disorientated to fight back, I had sprinted into a position where my man was surrounded by four,very un-stunned, enemies.

Still, all is well that ends well, my man quickly recovered his composure and laid about him like a Dervish on Crystal Meth. The opposition must have been laughing too much too fight back effectively.

And the moral is, always make sure the shout you have loaded is the one you need.

lol- yep, i've misshouted many a time. but, you lived. good job.

The only shout i usually use is the shout which powers your wepon and makes it faster ( i cant recall the name of it) but i think its the most effective out of the bunch.

Elemental Fury.

with my sneak archer i can fire, shout slow, fire more, draw blade, shout deathmark, swing, shout unrelent, deathblow.

I mostly use Become Ethereal to jump off high places to save time... but sometimes I use Unrelenting Force when theres alot of Drouger Deathlords around me at once.

I'm playing my latest character on Master (first time I have stuck with it) without putting any points into my perks. I gotta say that it is hella hard when you are up against Draugr Death Overlords that Shout you off a mountain or across the room and proceed to 2-shot you with their ebony bows. The Unrelenting Force Shout I use right as they are about to Shout and it has saved me from death dozens of times. I'd die a lot more without them.