Incorrect. Scale armor is specifically a light armor using steel as the base material; it has nothing to do with making dragon armor. Going up only the right tree all the way to dragon will allow you to craft both light dragonscale and heavy dragonbone armor.

I don't think any are "useless", although some are more useful to more people. I can't really pick locks, so the Lockpicking tree is quite useful, plus adds a nice roleplay element.

It's all entirely subjective. For those who roleplay everything is useful in some way. For powergamers not so much. At least those options are there.

Sorry to tell you that, but you think wrong.
Some things are useless no matter how you look at them, or simply don't make sense.

I have never used pickpocket except for that one time in that one quest.
I really dont see the point of it, especially as a skill on its own.
If it had beent the same skill as lockpicking at least we would be left with one useful skill, instead of two that really have no in-game advantage except for roleplaying.

Here's my retort to anyone that thinks Lockpicking / Speech isn't useless:

They are adding a new skill tree. The name has not yet been released. The tree has 9 new perks and 13 possible perk points. The tree's focus is on players that don't know any better who sink valuble and limited perk points in useless ability's that are situational at best and with patience and skill become completely irrelevant. However the final perk at 100 skill is almost useful yet not worth sinking the ~8 points into the other useless perks to get there.

I absolutely love pickpocketing, but it doesn't really warrant an entire skill tree I guess, I wouldn't claim it was useless like Lockpick though, but I think perhaps those two should have been merged together and entitled something like Thievery.

Sigh.
I was talking dragonscale armour.

And you are really, really wrong.
If you only go up the heavy smithing tree you simply cannot make dragonscale armour.
If you only have the light side you cannot make dragonbone armour.
You will need both perk trees if you want to make them both.

I think you'll find most of the stuff you say is personal opinion, for starters yes you can hit the AR cap with anything, but that though abuse of the system dragonscale still has its worth if you don't intend to do that, more so then say having 10% better prices when all you really need is 1.5k extra gold perks, without the buffs it'd still remain easy to bankrupt merchants.
Good inventory management habits? you mean looting less then 10% of anything in a dungeon? Personal choice of how you feel on completion, leave the sly backhanded insults out of this.

I find most of the perk trees useless tbh, or at least 90% of the perks within the tree, great spending a point in smithing which you have a finite number of and it only really sees the one use in making and upgrading your set of gear. Should have been quests instead to learn from other blacksmiths, simalar to how you already do for some in the game. I dislike the seperate reduction ranks in magic and lockpicking schools (novice, adept etc.) more so because you need to take at least the novice on to get where you actually want to spend the points. The restriction on abilities (see some items in pockets, focus when aiming etc) should have remained tied to skill levels, being a master in most of the skills 100/100 points has been left kinda hollow by the sheer number of perks theyve squeezed out. I wasn't a huge fan of fallout perks, but they done a far better job of actually feeling like bonuses and not half bothered ways of introducing teaching to the game (where is my hermit blacksmith that is a touch crazy but is the only person who knows how to work dragon bones), broken flows of skill though needing to take skills you don't want because for some reason theyve been shoved into the opposite branch they should have been in, and restrict gameplay rather then enhance or be a choice (instead of 50% less cost which can be achieved across of schools and ranks with enchanting anyway, perks to enhance certain types of conjured pet, make them more permanant, permanant wolf etc, change it's skin to a different color or even a different model, your familar is now a troll)

And yes there is such thing as a perfect build because the are so many perks that are meaningless, they add so little to gameplay (30% better prices again a great example where it doesn't add anything to gameplay if anything more annoyance cause you can sell less to a merchant then usual). Admittedly the "Ideal Build" so to speak is more about avoiding certain perks, not "wasting" them (whether you plan on heavy or light armor take the heavy armor smithing path, you get far better weapons and a choice with either dragon armors, shame about steel plate being in the wrong branch if you wanted that).

To Noxious yeah shame they felt the need to split those 2, why add a new tree when you just streemline and remove 3, how about acrobatics for a 6 thief skill, give me back the fun that was roof climbing in oblivion (admittedly the cities don't lend themselves as much to this but it would have been nice anyway)

To Merari I've taken only the heavy side and been able to make dragonscale, so unless it's a change in 1.2 which I haven't installed to "fix" a perk giving you all it says it does when you take it, in which case how about making them seperate next time, there seems to be no such restriction on how you get there, just prevents you from continuing round the circle into taking say glass or daedric armors.

The lock pick game gets boring FAST! Why you wouldn't throw four points into the tree so that you just walk up and hit D is what really doesn't make any sense.

Its a convenience tree, it makes lock picking faster.

I can kill anything in the game with zero one-hand perks, it just takes more swings, but I bet you all have perks in a combat tree. Putting perks into combat trees doesn't make an impossible fight possible, it just makes them faster, easier and more fun.

They made lockpicking easy for the blind and deaf people.
Adept level locks should be as hard as Master currently is, and master locks should require THREE open cycles that are at least as hard as they are now.
Fail one, and you have to restart all three.

Wrong. I can make a short video if you don't believe me...

You are all so impressive. I am surrounded, on these boards, by such amazing, elite, impressive players.

I feel so small, standing here, in the shadow of your collective greatness.




And since I'm sure most of you will believe exactly what I just wrote there?


/sarcasm

Yes please, because when I went up the light side only in my first playthrough I was unable to make dragonbone armour, and other posters have reported the same.
Its not that I dont believe you, its that my own experience is different.

What this thread really boils down to is that everything we do in this game is essentially useless if you want it to be, and useful if you want it to be. It's up to the players to define their game, rather than being led through it with a set class/story.

If you perk enchanting, you don't need to level/perk lock smiithing.

Master lock? Don my 40% easier circlet, ring, and necklace, and the lock is opened easily.

Items are named Lockpicking Necklace, Lockpicking Ring, and Lockpicking Circlet so they are easy to find in the inventory list. Then it's back to Emerald Destruction [Ring/Circlet/Necklace], also all next to each other on the inventory list.

I'd say speech, Lockpicking can be really usefull now that they removed the [Censored] Key

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6atrr267ueA

Vid is still being processed atm, but will be up shortly.

I also had Mjoll in a full set of Dragonplate (without the helmet) for the most part of my game.

Are you playing on PC?

//edit

@Vangrabish

The Skeleton Key is still in the game.

I have 450 capacity which is much needed...mostly because I am level 35 and still have not bothered to unlock a home.

The lock picking tree would be some one useful...but way to many crappy perks. Novice, Apprentice & adept should not have even been included.

I would like something like...after unlocking a door in stealth mode you remain undetected until an action is performed. I hate opening a door...then loading screen to only find 2 or 3 enemies staring at me before I can react.

There's some good perks in Lockpicking, like the increased loot one, but honestly its not worth it to climb the tree at all. Speech is pretty useless too, I could see Pickpocketing being handy (stealing everyones weapons and armor before a fight sounds pretty lulz), but again I wouldn't climb that tree either. I put one point in Lockpicking on my current guy thinking I would climb it a bit but once perk points starting getting more scarce I gave up on it.

Hmm, thank you for your video, I guess I was wrong.

The odd thing is that I could not do what you did, though I suspect a bug.
Either that or Im crazier than I thought, Ill keep it at bug.
My first char also had the rather amusing bug of not using any enchantment charges on weapons, ever.
Now on my second playthrough it suddenly works just fine, so who knows what that was about.

I was wrong though, you can make heavy dragon armour just by going up the light armour perk tree.

Speech is helpful if you're a thief and like stealing and selling your spoils. I just like cleaning out places.

Pickpocket is worth it for the 100 carry bonus.

Lockpicking is pretty useless. Once you learn the sweet spots in the mini-game it isn't that hard to pick a lock. I spent about 5 points in it early on with my thief. I wish I could have those points back. Believe me.

Speech tree is nice. Sell stolen stuff, shops always have 1500 gold at least, persuasion/intimidate gets by paying for info. Plus at 100 (like my char) stuff is WAY cheaper. And there is always stuff to waste gold on, so why not be smarter with it?

Lockpicking seems useless though.

Or more meaningful. Since, instead of like Oblivion (where you can get everything in every skill, no matter what your "class", and become a Jack of all Trades, Master of ALL), you actually have limited choices and can't get every skill at max power.

Seems better to me. :shrug:

------

Personally, I've got 4-5 perks in Speech and Lockpick. I ran Speech up to being able to invest in stores, and Lockpicking up to the "find better rare loot" perk. (Eventually. I think I got the loot perk in the mid-high 30's, and the investment perk in the high 40's.)

There there for peeps who need them.... but to answer your question, no i didn't

The only perk I really could use in the speech tree is being able to invest in a shop.

The entire game, I've had simply too much loot to sell all at once. I'd come back from an adventure, clean out all the merchants, and go dump all the surplus in my Breezehome chest. Makes it tougher to get the achievement for having 100,000 gold.

But I'm not complaining, I did it to myself. I still have PLENTY of money, like 40K, but I'd like to clean house without literally giving all my stuff away.
What can I say, I'm a greedy adventurer. :shrug: