It would be great if every skill tree was of equal use, but clearly they aren't. Speechcraft, Lockpicking and Pickpocketing are all a waste of perk points, even for a rogue character.

What I wanted to ask from those who have leveled up is whether some of the perks in the more useful trees are actually more or less useless.

So:

1) At 100 Sneak is there any value in ranks 2-5 of the improved Sneak perk?
2) At high levels of Illusion, is there any point to having Hypnotic Gaze, Aspect of Terror and Rage?

In both cases, the perk points just add points before the roll (I assume that this is also the case with the Lockpicking perks) but it would seem that the point would rapidly arrive at which your rolls on these trees would always succeed, except against mobs that are immune to Illusion or scripted to see through Sneak.

If my suspicion is correct, I really wonder whether the perk system isn't still more complicated than it would need to be in order to meet people's character design. In a game frequently accused here of being dumbed down, wouldn't further simplification help more?