I was thinking about why the elemental enchanter path may be more beneficial to some characters.

Now, if you are trying to use enchanting to boost skills you aren't perked out in on a permanent basis, then yea middle path is the way to go, the middle path is the way to go for many builds, obviously most so for mages. Really any character that uses magicka would benefit from the middle path, the 25% extra health,stamina, or magicka on enchantments can be much more useful, but for someone with out magicka, not so much, because its ultimately a smaller percentage of your overall health or stamina.

As a pure melee character, dual wielding or two handed warrior, and possibly a sword and board, the extra 2 potential enchanting slots could go either way and elemental protection, along with spell breaker kinda makes it less useful on armor, though extra resistance without relying on the shield is nice, it makes it mainly a weapon enchantment boosting perk.

As a warrior with 1h or 2h perked out, how important is an extra 25% fortified combat skill, its nice, its 8% per fort 1h or 2h enchantment. But if you are already putting perks into those skills, do you really need that? How important is an extra 25% on a health or stamina enchantment, once again its nice, but with all your stat points going toward health or stamina, its definitely not as needed.

The left side of the enchanting tree is both more offensive and more defensive at the same time for a character such as this. You can get extra elemental damage on your weapons and extra elemental resistance on your armor. The elemental damage gives you more versatility in how you damage enemies, now being able to exploit the weaknesses they have even further. Also, it allows you to get either more damage out of your weapons(the main reason) or you can get more charges out of them.

As far as the elemental resistance, youre gaining about 10% extra resistance, which if you use it with say, Otar, you will get more use out you enchantments, being closer to the cap, without giving up the most versatile enchanting slots you have, your necklace and your ring, by using resist magic, both versions. You would hit 85% resist magic through 3 elemental enchantments and Otar, rather than hitting it with 4 magic resist enchantments, again both versions on a ring and a necklace.

You do give up your helmet for self enchanting, but ultimately your helmet is useless for self enchanting as a pure warrior. You are much better off with using a priest mask or some other found helm. This is what makes some helms better than they appear, such as Rahgot, one enchantment on a dragon priest mask, and one that you could match yourself with enchanting or by finding an item of peerless stamina. But items of peerless stamina only come in the form of boots, rings, or necklaces and you can't put fortify stamina on a helmet, so Rahgot is alot better than it first appears as it would be required for reaching max stamina and I believe its the only helm with fortify stamina in the game(unsure). You also can't put resistance on helms, so Otar, the ancient helmet of the unburned and the helm of Yngol are unique and useful. Same could be said for the Savior's Hide with its resist magic enchantment on armor.

Anyway, don't always assume that you should get dual effect by going the middle path, the left path could very well be more useful to your build, and may be worth that extra perk. The left path is the reason why orcs have enchanting as a minor skill, well, maybe not, but they are usually pure warriors and thats what this path is for.

Another thought, wouldn't it be cool if there were effects or sub 'perks' in between other perks if you take a certain path in a perk tree? Like if you went the elemental enchanter path, in between shock enchanter and Dual Effect there was a bonus where all magic resist enchantments were boosted by like 10/15/20%?

note: sorry if some of the grammar is incorrect or if the writing in general is a bit convoluted in some parts or if there are some incomplete thoughts and sentences. I have been up for over 36 hours and I am really starting to feel the effects of that. I just typed this out real quick and then went back over it splitting it into paragraphs.

Not many people bother with "pathing", they just max the tree.

Realistically, for most builds you can go both paths, its only 3 perks to get Fire, Frost, and Storm Enchanter. If you plan on fighting a lot of dragons, a high shock weapon is a good way to go, as a dragon without magicka cannot use its breath weapon.

Honestly though, the middle path gives you the most bang for your buck, and all but the tightest build could spare one perk for Fire enchanter, which is a good all around damage type anyway. Personally, I think the middle path is a bit to easy to go and gives you too much. 40% more damage, times 4, for one damage type? Thats the equivalent of 8 more armsman perks for a one-handed weapon. Way overpowered in my opinion.

I have a character in her early 70s now, and I only have 2 fortify one-handed enchants and 1 fortify archery enchant, and I'm playing on expert. I'd probably go one more of each if I wanted to play on master, though I doubt I'd need it. Even when Ancient Dragons land I cut through them like a buzzsaw. Anyone who says enchantment is not overpowered failed 2nd grade math.

Edit: That last part is going in my signature.

Hmm. It's never occurred to me to take the middle path. Mainly because the primary thing I've looked for from Enchanting (so far) was elemental resistance. Rarely use enhance skill, and never bother with health/magicka/stamina.

I have never found the left hand tree useful at all. I only play fighter types with some small casting ability so those bonuses would do basicly nothing. +25% of 0 is still 0.

And the comment about dual perk being better on a weapon than on armor is ass backwords. On an item using the best soul gem you have you can get two good enchantments that never need a refil of their abilities. On a weapon you lose a large presentage of your charges when you are dual enchanting. I made a firey soul trapping 1 second sword once with max vampiric health regeneration. Using a black gem with a grand soul it had less than 100 charges. That is not cost effective and it was so expensive to refil I sold it quickly. Now make that sword w/o the second enchantment and a grand or even a common gem. At 1 second it will have hunderds of charges, the last one I made had over a thousand.

I see where your thought was going, but your sleep dep is really got you off in the wrong direction.

As far as I was aware, the elemental side of the tree does two things: makes Elemental Damage enchants on weapons better, and makes Elemental Resistance enchants on armor better. Nothing to do with casting spells.

I dont think I said that.

Yea, I didn't say anything like that. Perhaps you are mistaking me saying that when taking the elemental path, the main reason for its use on weapons is raising the damage, but you can also use it to keep the damage you have and get more charges out of it.

or maybe it was when I said that taking the left path to dual effect may be more useful to your build, that isn't really close to me saying it is better on weapons than armor either.

This whole thing is more about elemental resistance than elemental damage, so why you would even jump to that conclusion, i don't know

I'm currently playing an Orc, and so far have only one perk in enchanting. All my other characters who have used enchanting have gone straight up the middle, so I'll give this a go.

Haha, good man! lol

Really, which one benefits you more depends on what enchantments you like putting on your armor and weapons and what type of character you are playing, the orc line was kind of a joke, but i thought it was a good example. of a character that might benefit more from the left path. Like someone earlier said, you ultimately get more bang for your buck out of the middle path, but if you are conserving perks, the left path could very well be more useful while building your character up, and then when your character is all set up and you need to start grinding other skills, grab the other two perks to help supplement your lack of levels in a particular skill.

I mean, you are talking about boosting like 20 enchantment effects by 25% and boosting 6 by 25%, but those six may serve you better when making your character as good as he can be while leveling up and such.

I stand corrected I clearly misread something.