I put about 35 hours into my destruction/conjuration mage and decided to make a new character aka robin hood. I'll probably go back and play my mage sometime but right now the combat for archery seems pretty satisfying especially doing sneak attacks. Even though I kinda svck when my targets are moving. =/

I was just wondering what everyone thinks good perks would be. I wanna play a little as a thief character this time as my last character was an honorable arch-mage. Right now I'm level 5 and have put all my perks into making my archery better, also I have the warrior stone activated to make it level faster. Also everytime I level I've been picking health, but maybe will do stamina sometime because I use one handed when they get up close. Any thoughts and opinions would be good. Thanks.

Once you have the paralysis/fast drow-Perks you will never ever again use a melee weapon, so putting any points into melee-related perks is a complete waste imo. Just get yourself an companion for those early levels, then get rid off him once you have the bow-perks completed.

The Eagle Eye and steady hand perks will help with the moving targets as they slow time a lot when aimed but they use stamina when in use so maybe invest in there a little bit.

keep up the archery perks. the one to zoom in slows time a bit and let's you better judge moving targets. the perk to stagger is pretty good too.

Go back and turn the thief stone on, since you're going to be a thief...not a warrior.

An archer-thief would benefit more by using the Thief Stone, IMO.

Besides the archer perks tree, I think there is one in the sneak tree that looks awesome. It provides a bonus for sneak attacks with bows. I haven't got it yet because I've not too high leveled and have been concentrating on archery perks.

I've also been collecting all the ingredients I can find to eventually make a bunch of poisons. Loved that route in Oblivion but really haven't delved into it yet in Skyrim.

If you don't plan to use much magic or melee (I don't use either), sneak is your friend as an archer.

I have been playing as a thief character as well and I found the Shadow Stone to be most useful when starting out. (Provides once daily invisibility power). Later when my Sneak was quite high, I switched to The Lord (+50 damage resist, +25% magic resist)

As others have mentioned, IMO Steady Hand is the most important perk for an archer.

Also helps to get the Sneak perk that provides 3x bow damage and you may want to invest a bit in smithing, enchanting and/or alchemy to improve, enchant or poison your bows, armor and jewelry. The Shadow Warrior perk is also very helpful but you need to reach 100 Sneak for that one.

I honestly didn't find any need for the lockpicking perks. There are some chests you can practice on in the thieves guild, and I found you can open Master locks even at a low level without any perks at all.