Was wondering what builds you guys do and what choices you made that had a great impact in your game.

My first character was a Breton semi-pure archer. I perked Archery whenever I could, followed by One-Handed and Block, with a point or two in each of Sneak and Smithing. No magic, Alchemy, or Enchanting. I smithed my own armor and shield, but used whatever swords and bows were upgrades. Speaking of which, I carried two bows - one heavy-duty bow for long-range sniping, and one lighter one to throw arrows at a faster rate. Sunk points about evenly into Health and Stamina. Used the Thief stone pretty much exclusively.

I tried a semi-pure, non-magic thief, but found that she got regularly outclassed in combat. Her rapidly advancing thief skills pushed her into higher combat brackets a little too fast; and given that petty thievery was way too easy to be interesting, I just gave up on her.

I also had a Destruction / Alteration mage who was a lot of fun. Got pretty far until my first big mod meltdown, and just never seriously remade the character.

Currently I'm running "twins." One is a magic-using thief; perking the left side (and only the left side) of the Sneak tree, any and all Illusion perks, the Atronach perks in Conjuration, some Alteration for personal defense and Telekinesis, no investment in weapon or armor skills. The other is a magic-using assassin; Illusion strictly for Muffle and Invisibility, Conjuration strictly for bound weapons, Alteration per the other twin, heavy investment in One-Handed and Light Armor, some investment in Archery, and entirely perking the right side (and only the right side) of the Sneak tree. It's fun to see how heavily overlapping skill sets across two stealthy characters can result in such different gameplay and strats.

I've also tried a One-Handed, one-weapon "fencer" (got bored), a Two-Handed / Archery / Heavy Armor "Valkyrie" type (fun, but I keep getting drawn back to sneaky or magic characters), and a "witch" build who relied heavily on conjuration and restoration spells, many of which come from mods (currently on hiatus while I figure out what I want to do).

I'd say the two biggest impacts on my game are 1) the personalities I envision for my characters, as personality heavily influences what I'll do with them (e.g. my sellsword Archer was all about the Companions, but my Valkyrie stayed away from them because of their mercenary nature); and 2) whether there are particular quest lines I want to follow or avoid (my destro/alt mage was made for the CoW and the Civil War quest lines, while my magic-using twins avoid both lines in as much as they can).

Instead of focusing on a "build" per se, I prefer to focus on a character and what motivates a character and let the "build" flow from the character's motivations. I've enjoyed all sorts of builds that way, from pure mages, to battle mages, to pure warriors, to hunters who use no magic with the HUD completely off. The latter makes archery really challenging and fun.

My wood elf is too weak and frail to effectively use melee or armor. Even her bow is (pretend) enchanted to help her fully draw it. As a result of her limitations, she long ago turned to magic and stealth to back up her bow. So her key skills are:

Archery for direct damage.

Sneak to improve damage and avoid being found.

Alteration to find/avoid foes (detect life/dead).

Illusion for mind control spells if foes get too close.

Conjuration to summon distractions when needed so she can keep shooting her bow.

I call her a mystic archer.

This is my second character the first made it to level 40 then I got stuck in a dwemer ruin and couldn't find my way out , I was way off on the fundamentals anyway so that gave me a hood excuse to start over.

This character is a battle-mage I just cleared level 50 and grinded my smithing, alchemy,heavy armor to 100 while resto is 80 something now I switched to dual enchanted glass armor and im now focusing on levelIng majicka destruction and ward.