The unofficial patches does alter some numbers of items for them to be more consistent with other items of similar rank.
Yes, all the Unofficial Patches are not just highly recommended, I'd say they were essential to prevent annoying, broken game play.
The USKP Team have very strict criteria about what constitutes a bug and what they change.
I do not speak for them, as I am not part of their team, but I have noticed that they have these basic rules (amongst others):
1. it HAS to be an actual bug, which occurs in Vanilla, unmodded Skyrim, and has to be reproducible
2. it cannot be a subjective opinion thing which could be changed in a number of ways; it has to be an Objective, reproducible bug
3. it can be anything from broken quests, broken script loops, events not firing to obviously inconsistent values where everything else fits a progression except for the odd aberrant value.
There are mods that "Fix" weapons and Armour values, for example, but they are not bug fixes as they go much further than USKP into the realm of Opinions and "What I'd like the game to be like", rather than "What the game was intended to be like".
But most good mods are built on top of the USKP series of bug fixes.
I would also VERY highly recommend
The Parthurnax Dilemma
Run For Your Lives
When Vampires Attack
These are really bug fixes to my mind, but they fix plot holes and really, really stupid oversights by the game designers that should never have got into the game. They are by the same guy involved in the Unofficial Patches.
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