how so?

Whoa!

Mine's Legendary, but I don't do near that. I'm guessing you have Archery perks? I don't use bows much because I like the backstab animations, but I haven't seen any of the bow execution animations. Can I get them without perks?

Cheater!

I have archery perked out all the way on the right side to Bullseye (although I wish I hadn't perked Bullseye, because it's bugged). It's been one of the first things I perk out after setting up my character with gear. I absolutely hate the kill animations and would dearly love to get rid of them completely. I play in first person and have competed in archery since I was 12 years old, so it's more realistic to me (and enjoyable) to see my target keel over in the distance. I'd also never be interested in any of the zoom or slow time effects, which I think would just be gimmicky for my playstyle.

I'd assume there'd always be a chance at kill animations for archery now. In any case you could be doing huge damage to get the animation just by improving your bow with Smithing with your set up. Maybe purchase some Daedric Arrows from the fletcher in Solitude?

1) The Necromage perk from Restoration increases the magnitude of all magic effects applied to targets classed as Undead.
2) Becoming a Vampire flags the character as Undead, thus he or she gets said increase applied to all self-targeting magic effects.
3) Armor/clothing enchantments are always flagged as targeting Self.

You can also use this to create some pretty powerful weapon enchantments; while they will not be directly affected by the perk the ability to make them will, so you can go significantly higher than the normal 'cap' of 23 or so points for damage enchantments or a few seconds for Paralyze.

I love them...in all games in which I've seen them. Fable III has some awesome ones. There should be an option to turn them off because I know a lot of people don't like them.

Sweet. I'm good with rifles and respectable with pistols, but never got the hang of archery...very limited access I must admit, though.

I love those, too. When I've been in hectic situations in RL time has seemed to slow down. I've attributed that to adrenaline making my mind race.

I've improved it with my 4 pieces and potion and it's no where near 700. I can one-shot many low- to mid-level targets with head shots so I may have to try. I have 1200 or so Daedric arrows...from...um...yeah...Solitude.

Disregard the haters, OP. You did what you wanted to do in your single-player, not-online game. You enjoy the results.

I like being pretty powerful because I'm the protagonist. I still get challenged, but I'm the hero, so I'm supposed to prevail most times.... not constantly be set back for various reasons. That makes a game seem like not much fun if you're constantly frustrated.

Now that sounds like an MMO.

I don't think you understand the meaning of "intended" or "abuse", using the falmer helmet to get an extra enchant isn't intended, it's not intended at all. and using the enchanting/smithing/alchemy skills in tandem to achieve results that were above the intended ability of any of those skills individually is abusing the way they work together.

as I said, it isn't cheating and it isn't "wrong", so don't take any offense.

what is wrong is suggesting that anybody not doing what you did is gimping themselves, if players were intentionally not using a mechanic at all or severely less than intended they would be gimping themselves, but to use it in a reasonable manner to achieve intended results is not gimping,

I know using a falmer helm was an exploit, I was referring to using those skills together.
I just don't think that using them together is abuse at all, if you use the restoration loop or something that's surely abuse
but using each skill once to benefit your character is in my opinion totally reasonable within what they intended you to be able to do.

As for the last bit there, I wasn't suggesting that anyone should do or not do anything.
I just didn't realize that I was unknowingly keeping myself at a certain level when I could potentially be much stronger.
Perhaps I simply worded things poorly.

OP, you get to play however you'd like to play. That's part of the beauty of TES and open world...major selling point: do whatever you want. I ended up bumping up my setting to expert last night and it gave me back the challenge I needed...so much freaking fun last night in Forelhost. After playing for all these months and learning the systems, I'm able to build a strong character just the way I want but then, when things start getting too easy, I'm able to adjust the game settings to keep things challenging. It's great. Do whatever you want to do.