I think the idea is not to have all the enchantments be able to be duplicated with smithing, though.

Personally, I think the concept of Light Armor versus Heavy Armor does enough distinction - especially to warrant two different crafting paths. Further, weapons should be exactly comparable or have advantages/disadvantages between the two paths but still be equal.The Smithing tree however should not be structured to where a new tier makes the previous one obsolete. The tree should supply a constant effect, not just be a pre requisite for a higher tier.

My first time around I went left as well as right because I assumed there would be plate versions of all the armor types. It would make a lot more sense if that were true.

Some people have raised the point that they think the tree should be split between weapons and armor, as opposed to light armor vs heavy armor, but I'm not so sure. I kinda think the material in question is probably more relevant, with ores suitable for heavy armor being somewhat similar in the necessary techniques, and ores suitable for light armor being similar to each other. That said, non-metal armors like leather, hide and fur should possibly be their own branch, with fairly low prerequisites.

Well, just to be nitpicky, all the metal types are plate armor. Even iron armor is plate armor, as evidenced by the large briastplate, and so is regular steel. Steel plate armor, dwarven, orcish, ebony, and (I presume) Daedric are all full plate armor, meaning they have more than just a briastplate and actually use plates to cover the whole or nearly the whole body, arms and legs included.

And one related question: I keep hearing about "ebony mail". Is this some sort of unique armor? No spoilers, please, just a minimal answer if there's something unique about it.

I only took the Heavy right side of the Smithing tree along with Arcane Blacksmith, and i'm able to make both Dragonplate (Heavy) and Dragonscale (Light) Armor.


Yes. The Ebony Mail is a Daedric Artifact from Boethiah.

This ^

My legendary elven bow > than flawless Deadric bow... and it fires much faster

Advanced armor is a way to equip heavy armor followers if you go light yourself.
Yes it's a bit out of place however it's fewer light armors.
Even adding fun and iron and fur would just give one more of each.
I have a mod who add iron and fur under steel.

I'd bet the perks are useful for people who don't have an array of multiple Extreme Smithing items & potions.

There should be a heavy and light version of every armor. There already sort of is for many, there are two elven armors, some types of armors even have three. It should be split up to have a version of elven that was heavy and one that was light, but that would probably throw the whole smithing tree out of whack. Light armor doesn't really get much variety. There's basically elven and glass. There's so many more heavy armors than light armor mods too, I have at least double the variety of heavy armors compared with light.

I had a mod called 'alternate armor appearances' that made light versions of all heavy armors and visa versa, but I had to disable it because it had the same load order as another mod and I couldn't figure out how to designate load orders.

Exactly, that's why it would make more sense if each material type had scaled, standard and plate variations.

I think the entire smithing perk tree is a weak attempt to reinvest in character building in a game without much of it. Have to play another character before you can do light- or heavy. In oblvion if you could swing it it was yours.

You know, those items didn't just randomly fall out of the sky one day and land at my feet. Anyone can get them. If you're determined, like I was, to put perk points to better use elsewhere, then you can shop around for fortify smithing equipment/potions and make your own legendary-rated equipment. Maybe not quite as legendary as a character who has the associated perks and who also employs the fortify smithing items, but more than a character who has 100 smithing, plus perks, but doesn't use fortify smithing items.

This.

And that's when Bethesda ran out of ideas, honestly.

They should have asked the community what armors we'd like to see, while telling us that Deadric and Dragon armors would be in the game so that we'd have no reason to bother asking for the typical stuff.

Any armor type can be improved whether you have the perk or not, but with the perk you can improve the item twice as much. I don't have any perks in smithing, but I can still improve my steel sword.