Everytime I go to rant about something that confuses me, or in this case, gives me no end of grief and frustration, I feel the need to preface it by saying I love this game. So with that said: why. the. hell... do absorb spell effects STILL absorb summons? I grabbed the Atronach stone not giving it a second thought and come to find that I can't successfully cast my summons without doing it 2-3 times. It blows my mind that this problem STILL exists in this game, when it clearly is not functioning as intended. Worse, there is no excuse for having not fixed it as far as I can tell. Another issue that drives me crazy is smithing. It is rife with inconsistencies. Crafted gear can be improved no problem. Some daedric artifacts can be improved, and benefit from the Ebony perk. Some, inexplicably, cannot be improved. Few items have been left out of loot tables, and thus cannot be improved at all. Anyone, and this is most warriors, who invests in smithing thus won't be using non-crafted items.

They are small complaints in a huge game, but they just seem so blatantly obvious and fixable it makes one wonder why they still exist.

1- I know what you mean. I get discouraged from playing a Conjuration mage with the Atronach Stone.

2- More specific please?

Bethesda can't be bothered to spend 10 minutes to click a single check-box for each summon spell. And 10 minutes is being generous...

Bethesda doesn't like to fix bugs much...svcks I know.

It's not even a bug. They just forgot to check the "disallow spell absorption/reflect" check-box for each summon spell...

I'm painfully serious too.

For instance, Wuuthrad is what I would consider the end reward for the Companions quest line. It cannot be tempered, and thus, for someone who is investing a lot of time into smithing, it will never quite stack up to a craftable item. This is sad because it is unique and it SHOULD be a competitive weapon. The Ebony Blade is another good example, and until very recently, was even more screwed up than most other weapons (a 2 hander that benefits from 1 hander perks). The Savior's Hide benefits from the Ebony perk in the smithing tree, although it is improved with leather (I realize it is a daedric item, but still it seems ridiculous). To put it simply, smithing has a huge impact in this game and it feels like it was slapped together a week before release. Strangely, and more sadly, it was never set to rights.

Also, I would just like to add that I think smithing was a poorly thought out idea overall. Consider Dragonborn (the DLC). It is very confusing to have them randomly assign the new craftable armors to perks in the smithing tree. For a company with such a great pedigree in DLCs, Skyrim feels like it wasn't built to be added onto. Whatever they do for future games, they need to go back to the drawing board where perks are concerned.