The legendary difficulty doesn't really have anything to do with legendary skills. You can chose legendary difficulty at any level if you enjoy doing less damage and fighting enemies that do more damage. You can change the difficulty setting as often as you want at any time.

The design is flawed, at least it shouldn't refund the perk points when you choose a tree to go legendary

Indeed. Honestly I find the whole "legendary skills" feature completely idiotic. Why would want to experience a sort of skill amnesia to break the level cap? Much better way would have been simply allowing skills to advance past 100 which the uncapper does.

You can if you want, but get ready to be slaughtered by mudcrabs while you're still low level.

You're on the right track, though - it's really for jaded, high level characters who are already godlike. Master is just about right for a new character who wants a challenge. I wouldn't want to be trying to kill things with Imperial Bow + iron arrows @ level 3 on Legendary. Someone else might like that though.

I love legendary skills, it allows me to have enough perks to make the characters I really want, like back in Morrowind and Oblivion where we could master more than one thing. I've already reset Pickpocket alone many times; I have 120 perks or so now. Combined with Dragonborn's respec that let me recover my enchanting/smithing perks after being done with gear upgrades, this is great.

And when you have this kind of character, yes, Master can be a tad on the easy side depending on how you play. I use destruction magic alot, which is worthless on Legendary though, so Im sticking with Master for now.

Yes, its totally unrelated. And do not reset one handed weapons or other combat skills, they are slow to level and you do lite damage leveling up. Reset alchemy, alteration or other skills who are easy to level up.

It gives you the ability to also respec.

It is a mixed feeling really.

Example. Orcs and Nords are the muscle in the game, two handed, one handed, heavy and light armors, smithing etc. They do not touch magic at all. So in theory, Orcs and Nords should only upgrade healtha nd stamina every single time. From level 1 to 81, one gains 800 points to spend between health, stamina and magicka.

Normally, if one maxes out the 6 starting skills, the level would be at around 50-60. So, here comes the choice to either focus on magicka and spend the next levels in magicka, or hit legendary, reset the skills and focus on the warrior skills again. Problem is, skills such as smithing, enchanting and alchemy are such a grind. So ideally, it would be the one handed or two handed.

Problem here, is that when you'r character is level 50-60 and you hit legendary, the enemy is still at the same level. Meaning you'r level 15 two handed would do such minimal damage, sure the light/heavy armor would make you take a beating, but the game moves so much slower.

I am facing this issue right now, i just created a new Nord yesterday, focusing her on enchanting (basically giving her Orc skills except heavy armor) to avoid magic completely. I recall having a redguard with 1,400 armor rating (heavy armor) and the one handed dragonbone sword was dealing 300+ damage, not including enchatments, and she was a level 77. Master was just...fine (pre patch 1.9).

The other big problem is what Bethesda did with dragons and enemies. Example, there is an achievement for slaying a legendary dragon, but i never saw one spawn till i was level 77 (i know some saw one at level 71-74). And how about that Ebony Warrior at level 80-81? So, if you wish to face really different enemies, one would have no choice but to either hit legendary and reset the skills (major grind), or focus on Magicka and spells after level 50-60 or so......What would i do? i dont know yet......

I find alchemy a huge grind to level up again, alteration....maybe. Any other skills that can be worth resetting? speech would be good, only after you fully restore the thieves guild to it's former glory i guess (having fences that carry 4,000 would be nice so sell all those flawless gems you find).