There's a perk to give summoned undead 100 more health and one that makes Atronochs stronger (do more damage? not sure). Most of the magic perks are decent.

It all depends on style of play, I'm aiming for the 'sell any stuff to any merchant' perk, just so i can dump more crap, quicker

and anyway, lets face it, by the time you are at level 55, are you going to just hoard your perks?

No, you probably have a job, a wife and/or a life and do not have have as nuch Skyrim time as the rest of us

If you're getting hit very often as a wizard, you're doing it wrong.

The only reason those perks are, IMO, less useful than they ought to be, is because dragon skin makes the other mage shield spells obsolete. Dragon skin does not benefit from that perk.

It isn't that big of a deal in this game as it is in Oblivion, and the system sort of breaks when you get above level 50 and the enemies stop scaling, but while you're actually leveling up (and I have a feeling in future DLC the levels will scale beyond 50 and it will bite you in the rear if you went to level 80 unless you used exploits to make yourself really that powerful), your actual effectiveness relative to your level is important. If you have 70 alteration just for the magic resistance perks, that's several levels you gave to the enemy and only received some magic resistance for your trouble. Meanwhile, a wizard could have just as much armor as you in combat (and his movement speed is possibly faster) but he's facing enemies several levels lower than what you're facing while his other combat skills are the same as yours. Not a big deal if you play on lower difficulties or you went beyond level 50, but on higher difficulties, the level of enemies relative to your effectiveness is relevant.

Getting to level 50 and then turning the game on master difficulty once you're OP =/= playing the game through master difficulty.

As far as speech goes, the economy is one of the big disappointments for me in Elder Scrolls games. I had really hoped they'd design a more interesting economy, and how it interacts with the rest of the game, in Skyrim, but quite disappointed. For one thing, there just needs to be some things later in the game that you can spend a LOT of money on - like starting your own trade empire,financing the storm cloaks or the imperials, rebuilding towns, philanthropy on a large scale, or, well, *something*. This could even be worked into some quests - quests you need 50k or 100k gold to complete.

Give players a compelling reason to want to take speech, like maybe the master-level spells require very rare, expensive one-time use reagents. Maybe something equivalent for melee and archery (although I'm not sure what at the moment) that you'd really want to spend money on.

On lockpicking...
I just didn't finish a certain questline that has you return a certain artifact to its rightful place, so I am not doing anything with the lockpicking tree.
Gold accumulates just from exploring and dungeon crawling.
I probobly have 200,000 gold worth of loot in Breezehome
Other than that, I can see ALL trees being useful, it just depends on your character build
I don't want to say anything cause these mods are all hot on NO SPOILERS on this board. But for real though, how can you possibly talk about a game without ANY spoilers involved?
Any information on a game is a spoiler to someone that hasn't played the game. town names, weapon types, items, artifacts are all spoilers to a new player.
AND on top of that, who on these forums isn't at least 50 + hours deep into this game?

The best perks my argonian thief/archer loves the most.

Extra cash.
Extra magic loot.
The ability to walk over trap plates and not trigger the trap... too bad it doesn't work on tripwires lol.

And my fav - the slo mo bow effect.

A lot of people seem to say lockpicking but I don't think it's a bad perk tree, the lockpicking system is extremely poorly balanced though; giving you WAY to many lockpicks.
Making the lockpicking procces occur in real time might have helped (rewarding beeing able to pick a lock quickly when guards are around)

In my personal opinion, lockpicking or pickpocket shouldn't have been a skill. Just put them under sneak, hell.

Can't wait for modders to replace the Lockpicking perk tree with H2H

Maybe the speech tree would be much more useful if there was a sufficient money sink. Maybe a DLC will allow you to own an up-gradable keep that you can invest hundreds of thousands of gold to customize to your liking and you would have to defend in properly by hiring guards and paying them a salary. Like say you don't properly invest in it and you return from your adventures to see it smashed up and overrun with bandits who have taken all your valuables.

As far as lockpicking...I really wish they'd just do a fallout system where you have to have the necessary perks to unlock the different levels of locks. I actually kinda liked the lockpicking mechanic from oblivion compared to this one where you had 4 tumblers and if you messed it up you risked resetting the entire lock.

....oh and lockpicking is somewhat necessary for breaking out of jail. That's about as far as the usefulness of the tree goes though.

Lockpicking is useless if your good at it.

I just wish there was an ANTITHIEF stone.

...

Thief skills don't level up.
At all.

I hate picking locks, just to see what's there, only to find random loot and level up as a result, making me weaker and the enemies stronger.
But there's locked stuff EVERYWHERE, and I can't HELP myself.
...

Bows do 20% more damage -- or spend an average of 0,01 less lockpicks on novice chests?

Tough choice.

Next playthrough, my character WILL NOT bring lockpicks.
Not one.

I'm not talking about the perks here, but those little devilish hellspawn that makes the enemies stronger every time you successfully open a chest and find randomly generated loot.

Lockpick. Even blind, deaf, completely retarded noob could open master lock, thats how much it got screwed. Oblivion was a challenge.

I do not have much of an issue with the Lockpicking, Speechcraft or Pickpocketing trees. I have a problem that they SHARE PERK POINTS WITH COMBAT SKILLS. If they moved these off to their own separate progression path that don't share perk points that would be fantastic. Further, I think they should add even more non-combat related Perk Trees to this pool for characters. These would be Utility trees and trees specifically aimed at increasing the immersion and ability for players to create a unique character. Also, on a side note I believe CRAFTING in particular should be moved to its own pool and the crafting system should also see the introduction of Spellcrafting with all 3 of the current trees receiving a TREMENDOUS overall and the addition of many more perks to compensate for them moving to their own pool to help players to specialize, rather than pick up the obviously best perks from all 3 trees with minimal investment. What this would mean would be that Light and Heavy Smithing would be separated much better. I see a particular problem with the fact that the only thing that really matters from the Smithing tree is Daedric and Dragon (if you are Light) or really JUST Daedric if you wear Heavy since it provides both the best armor and weapons. Anything up until then is obsolete the moment you are able to craft a higher tier. I would like to see for the crafting tree perks to always give you a benefit and never become obsolete and simply "wasted" pre-req points.

You are definitely wrong on that one. I went light armor path and have crafted myself a full set of dragonscale armor, plus i've crafted Dragonplate helm, chest, and gloves for lydia. Just boots and shield left.

This perk is actually a blessing for every thief who knows what I'm talking about.

Locking isn't bad - I am after the treasure hunter perk - "50% greater chance of finding special treasure"

This is an RPG - only you can decide what is best for your character

I took lockpicking perks for roleplay reasons

*dual weilds greater ward whilst drinking potion of resist flames*

Wait.. Oblivions lockpicking was a challange? ARE YOU HIGH!?
You could go through that game without breaking a single lockpick! I mean, the skeleton key was compeltely worthless, all you had to do was use your eyes and ears, poke the tumbler until it slowed down and click, bam, done, easy peasy.

Anyhoo.. lockpicking and speech are as worthless as they've always been. Why they didn't acually cut them instead of acrobatics and athletics which acually had some use is beyond me.
Imagine a perk tree with acrobatic dodges, climbing skills, kicks and punches, how awsome would that be?
Way more awsome than making wax keys and getting 10% better prices in a game where you have too much money, that's how awsome it would be.

Lockpicking tree is utterly useless.

At least with speech it can be fun to intimidate people.

I do like the fact that I can TRY any lock, without simply being told I can't. The real problem with Lockpicking is just the sheer number of lockpicks lying around. I'm never below 99+, and therefore don't mind spending 10 of them trying to open an adept lock. What they need to do to balance it better is:

A: Make low-level lockpickers break picks VERY easily on harder locks, much easier than now, like with just one touch, forcing you to go through them faster, then add perks that strengthens the picks little by little, rather than making the harder locks statistically easier to pick. That makes the perks totally independent of player skill, thus truly making Lockpicking easier as you gain perks. This allows me to still TRY an adept lock at low levels, but the chances of actually succeeding drops, at least not without dropping 30-40 picks into it.

B: Simply reduce the amount of lockpicks in the world and/or give them some weight, so that 99+ picks actually take up space.

You need to do some fact checking.

Might I direct you to page 4 of this very thread?