The 10 WORST Perks Skyrim's New Leveling System Has To Offer

[TheBalance]

So thanks to all the feedback stemming from - The 10 Best Perks Skyrim's New Leveling System Has To Offer, I've come up with a polar opposite addition - The 10 WORST Perks Skyrim's New Leveling System Has To Offer. Originally posted on my website, permalink can be found here.

 

Rune Master (40 Destruction) - Comparatively speaking, for a perk this low down the skill tree, it has almost nothing to offer. Runes are only useful and mana efficient when not cast during combat, IE. used to set up and trap an area before engaging enemies. This perk lets you cast runes five times further away - that's awfully useless since I could just walk there and trap the area, and spend the perk-point elsewhere and actually have an impact early-on, instead of wasting a point for this 'time saving' perk.

 

Disintegrate (70 Destruction) - Your lightning based spells turn low-health enemies into dust when it kills them. Cool, so not only are they dead, but I can't animate their corpses. This doesn't do any damage, it's a strictly aesthetic effect. Sure, its great eye candy, but it ultimately doesn't do anything except deny you a summoned companion, if that's your thing.

 

Illusion (The entire tree except for Quiet Casting) - I can't keep droning on about how easy the game is, and how ultimately worthless crowd control is in the game. Most enemies die quickly, and it isn't worth casting (fear) on them when you could just as easily kill them outright. Also, bosses can't get feared. Just kill them, whats the point?

 

Wax Key (50 Lockpicking) - If you successfully pick a lock, you get a copy of that lock's key - if possible. So in a random dungeon you can save yourself the five seconds to pick a lock and open it instantly. Opening a lock with the wax key also denies you the chance to raise your lockpicking skill. Oh, and most locks don't have keys; something like 70% of them, from what I've read.

 

Golden Touch (60 Lockpicking) - Gold is more or less infinite in this game, especially if you invest any points into the speech tree. Even if this doubles the amount of gold found in chests, its still not worth it - almost all your income stems from dragon slaying, grinding out your enchanting or smithing skills, or just selling random loot.

 

Deflect Arrows (30 Block) - This skill isn't TOTALLY useless, as it's required to get further up the Block skill tree, for Elemental protection (which gives you 50% elemental resists when blocking). However, the actual benefit of this skill really makes me question why they even tried to implement this mechanic into Skyrim. So, with this perk, if you manage to block an arrow with your shield, it'll do no damage. Aside from a few VERY high level bosses, I can't remember when I was even concerned about an enemy wielding a bow, let alone threatened by them enough to try and block arrows instead of just walking up to them and owning face. It's also pretty gimmicky at best, even at point blank range - being able to consistently block arrows with your shield isn't very reliable.

 

Ward Absorb (60 Restoration) - Wards in and of themselves are 100% useless. I quote myself from my Skyrim review article; "They put wards into this game too. Spells that take up a hand and let you block other spells. Every character comes with two wards, the A and D buttons, which safely let you dodge every spell in the game except lightning-based ones, which don't hamper physical damage dealers in any way, and are really just invitations to smear the caster's face on the ground with a hammer."

 

Poisoned (40 Pickpocket) - This gem lets you place poisons onto enemies after you sneak within inches of them. This poison then hurts them. I'm dumbfounded at anyone who even considers this perk. Poisons are mediocre sources of damage at any level. Also, you can quite easily raise Sneak (enough to even allow you to get close enough for a poison attempt in the first place) and just backstab them for a 15x multiplier, often two to three times consecutively, instantly eliminating the threat and the need to stand right next to them and risk detection while you try to plant a poison in their inventory.

 

Bribery (30 Speech) - Why would I want to bribe a guard? At level 25, my latest character has over 17,000 gold. I have nothing to buy, and am carrying around at least another 20k worth of gold in equipment. Also, I don't commit crimes because there's generally no reason to. If I feel like going on a rampage and leveling an entire city, I save the game before hand and get it out of my system. Since the random crashes force me to quick save at least twice a minute while adventuring, I always have a fallback in case I mistakenly shoot a guard in the throat. Pointless.

[worldofscotty]

I agree with some of the above but you have to consider in the RP side of things and that people play a certain way and do things a certain way because 'that is who the are.' It doesn't always have to be the best and most practical way around the situation.

 

for example. While low level reanimate spells are available to all mages really those spells are outlawed by many of the races and religions so we don't use them. This spell stops your opponent from reanimating the dead to fight against you.

 

Rage spells are pretty epic in the illusion tree. This combined with Warzones mod can wield some fantastic results.

Pacify is also very effective. If your on master mode and you have the dungeon boss who can kill you in 2 moves + his mates it's fun to turn him against them and clean up after.

Obviously these are the spells not the tree but the tree allows for use against higher level opponents and casing more spells for less magicka

I play as a Priest of Mara. Pure restoration and I don't kill anyone with my own hands. I have a bodyguard who I heal and I use pacify and rage spells to level the playing field.

 

Wax key and wards I agree with. I never bother since I have more lockpicks than any normal human would ever feasibly need. Wards tend to waste too much magicka which could just as easily be used to heal with. I'm not in a position to make a defined judgement on them though since I really have never bothered.

 

I've always wanted to get the poisoned perk but never did. I have heard that you can one shot a lot of enemies with a pickpocketed poison though so that fits well into certain RP styles

As does bribing guards.

 

On the other hand I never invest in much of the left hand branch of the speech tree as like you said there is already far too much gold floating around. Any further increase would overpower the situation imo.

Edited March 30, 2012 by worldofscotty

[justwannaddl]

I actually disagree with two points: Rune Master and Bribery. As a pure 100HP unarmored mage, I found any extra range on a spell very beneficial. At a safe position, I toss a trap at say a closed door and if it blows, I am far enough away to either run, hide or commit to an attack. If not, my mana would have recharged by the time I am at said door.

 

As for bribery, it really is a major pain to reload every time I go on a crime spree and I don't always like being part of the Thieves guild and going through the hassle of making all the cities comply so the perk makes sense.

 

Ultimately, the real useless perks are a lot of the dual cast perks. Dual cast conjuration is especially pointless since all it does is raise duration. Double summoning duration just doesn't fly in the face of the master lvl thrall spells.

Edited March 30, 2012 by justwannaddl

[Roxana]

Umm I agree ...to a degree but...

 

Any lockpicking perk is pointless...after the three previous games even very hard locks simply waste a few more lockpicks.

 

Onviously you have never been attacked by more than one archer as that blocking perk while not good ( ie you still cop

damage, albeit reduced) it is far better than not having it. Three archers will pincushion you in 20 seconds.

 

Similarly any pickpocket perk is pointless:if you do it often enough 100 gallops towards you, So, unless you are determined

to get that dwarven axe at 0% chance, I never waste any points on this skill.

Poisons are only of real use in the beginning when they can have a game changing effect. By the time you could afford the

point it is useless

 

The wards are only useful if prearmed which isn't often but they are part of magic lore in most games.

IMHO they are too weak and short of duration to be really useful.

 

The runes have their role if you are planning a tactical retreat with a far superior enemy.

the silent casting is essential whatever the cost.

 

Disintegrate??? I really only reanimate in desperation and there is always enough bodies left if that desperate.

 

The above is at very hard with constant warring and attacks...if I go 5 minutes without someone trying to kill me

I wonder what the hell is going on. I have found archery to be the BEST offensive skill and that includes 100 dest

but conjuration is a close second for distraction/reinforcement.

What is so funny is that with 100 Block Heavy armour and 1H I am still sliced & diced by gang leaders in steel plate

and me with my dragonbone armour but 6 arrows backing off and down they go.. hmm a bit lopsided IMHO but

it means that those skills a re only useful on nonbosses. I was going to switch totally over to magoc at level 30

but my bow is still betetr than 100 dest.

[Lokiron]

You're saying Illusion is useless which is no wonder if you think the school is about fear. Frenzy is the spell line to use, and this is extremely useful. Illusion is also the school to get the most out of dual casting as it doubles the affected level. This multiplication also doubles the level increases from the perks.

 

Even if your enemy is too high level, you can just frenzy his friend, and they will fight anyway.

Edited March 30, 2012 by Lokiron

[Njorunn]

"Deflect Arrows" is on the contrary very useful...

 

I'm playing with PISE, on Masterful and got some other mods that make the game more difficult - I sometimes get one-shotted by archers if it hits my body. Deflect Arrows and strafing is the only way I can survive. :ohdear:

 

Sincerely

[blaa.nOx]

"Illusion (The entire tree except for Quiet Casting) - I can't keep droning on about how easy the game is, and how ultimately worthless crowd control is in the game."

 

Try playing with PISE and Deadly Combat on Master Difficulty... it´s good those things are in the game, even if you don´t really need em in the vanilla version.