disintegrate = worst animation and not very useful compared to the others. Also adds save game bloating due to ash piles never goign away.

why are you complaining about that? you don't have to use all those methods...if someone wants to they can...its their game, bethesdsa does a great job letting you decide how to make your avatar..complaining about enchanting and magic reduction, seriously, any area can become super powerful and you can combine, thats a game mechanic..you can always not use anything, so don't worry about whether joe smith is using enchanting and smithing and magic all together...thats how the game is designed to be...you can combine everything, or use nothing and run around naked. its freedom of choice in a bethesda game. thats the trademark of their games. they aren't nerfing everything and ruining the game experience for 99% of the people just because 1 % doesn't like you can become super powerful.

Paralyzing Strike: Just adding one more to the chorus. Too hard to actually hit with it, especially considering it's more likely not to work than to work.

Any Enchanting perks: Not because they're bad, but because they're SO good that it kind of ruined the game for me. Once I was nearly indestructible and could wander into a room chucking infinite fireballs from one hand and holding up a permanent ward in the other hand, the game lost any sense of challenge.

Atronach: I actually really love absorbing magic, but it stinks if you're a conjurer because you can sometimes "absorb" your own summon spells. That got me killed more than once in a pinch.

I've been pleased with most other perks I've taken, though, including several folks here dislike (including bound weapon perks, all the Sneak perks, Arcane Smithing to make unique armors feel more worth wearing, etc.).

This is one of the things I think bethesda failed at, play how you want to play. They would say you've been play two hand and don't like go one hand, and you can't when you've invested perk points into two handed already. Same for the amount of perk points just not enough to make the type of character I like to play. Should have given the option of 1 or 2 perk points per lvl when starting a character. On the main topic, lots of dumb perks in this game your forced to take if you want the next one.

I am interested in your comment about heavy armor perks: Why do you want to avoid Heavy Armor perks ? Is Light Armor way better ? Did you pick clothing (if you're a mage) ?

There's a perk in Block that gives a chance to disarm an opponent. I picked that on my first playthrough character (sword and shield) and never once did I ever disarm anyone! :/

Second rank of Steady Hand

Shield wall. Yes, I know the word "shield" is in the title, but at the time it was unclear that we could not block if dual-wielding. ...still doesn't make sense that we can't.

There are no useless perks. Yes, investing in lock picking or pick pocket when you are building a shield and sword character will be pointless. It does not make the perks useless though. Some people will be happy for those perks. And not everyone takes enchanting with smithing so for them Arcane Smithing is a good skill to have.

In other words, just because you don't find something useful does not make it useless.

Any of the multiple level perks like Critical Strike, Bow Overdraw, etc. I maxed those out on my first play through and regretted it. When I found out how high I can smith armor and weaponry, what's the point? My second play through has seen much smarter use of the perks so far.

You see no significant difference? I've only started one character so far, but after I selected that I noticed a difference. I have no cross-character reference though. :\

I maxed out my two-handed skill tree, found that it was useless, and proceeded to max out one-handed and block levels. I maxed out the perk tree for my one-handed, and I'm doing the same for Block.

Similarly, heavy armor was becoming too good, and to challenge myself I started levelling Light Armor as well. I'm steadily advancing through the perk tree as well.

tl;dr I don't think your point is really valid. If anything it's a blessing to be able to play how I want to play - some days I get bored of being a thief and run around as a greatsword-wielding knight, and it's far more streamlined and fun than starting a whole new character.