OK, I don't know because I haven't got that far into it yet. I'm sure you are right but is it worth investing all of those perks on something which for a long time is not worth doing. Even then I guess they would still look the same, so you still have the issue that every Smith in the whole of Skyrim uses the same materials to make the same items. Seems a little odd to me. Again, if I had the talent, I'd want to create something unique, even if it didn't have double the function. Its well worth the perk points. A standard elven bow (me being a sneak hunter) is i think, at my current char lvl (33/35) is 32 Damage. Now, that alone isnt great, it takes so many arrows to take down one foe. With my elven smithing, and my smithing being about, idk, i think its 52 now, with a nice set of +%smithing enchants, i can put that normal elven bow from standard 32, to a (Legendary) 68 damage. Over double damage. Now, that, is well worth having, more than doubling your damage, is well worth it. Plus, if you only need the LIGHT side of armor, just go up the elven tree side, and not the dwarven heavy armor side. Smithing is an invaluable tool, and i'll level it at least to 60 on all characters because it helps immensely, i would say you just havent played around with it enough to get enough gain from it, in the beginning, added 1 damage to daggers etc, yes, was crap. At 50 on the other hand with some smithing enchants, it is WELL worth it.