First, suggestion regarding all perks and trees:
Cut down 10 tiers perks, that’s too much. Make 5 tiers maximum for any perk, adjust values.
Currently some trees have perks with 70 max skill requirement, some – with 150. This is bad. Even worse is the fact that most top tier perks suck balls. You need to make top tier perks in every tree interesting, powerful and desired.
So here’s my suggestion. Make skill requirement for top tier perks in all trees equal. Add to every tree one perk that requires 100 skill (this will be called Top Tier Perk or Master Perk) and one perk that requires 120 skill (this will be called Legendary Perk). Make skill progression after 100 skill level much slower, so that getting legendary perk was damn hard.
Light Weaponry
Addition of bare handed styles is cool, but overall the tree is too big and clumsy. Mainly because there are perks for literally every weapon type. Bad idea. What if you decide to change a weapon? Right, all those perk points become useless and you have to waste even more points for the new toy. For this reason its really hard to decide where to put points. What Id like to see is tying all one-handed weapons into one branch (much less perks, but make all of them more flexible), while developing further barehanded and dual-wielding branches.
Armsman – 5 ranks. 10/20/30/40/50% increased damage with one-handed weapons and unarmed attacks.
Styles are cool idea but they are disappointing atm. Monkey Trickery is the worst and just silly. Injecting poisons in your fists also sounds weird. I would delete all of them and add two core unarmed Styles: Dragon Style (stronger) and Tiger Style (faster). All unarmed perks are tied to either of these branches and you can choose only one path. You get benefits for unarmed styles only if you wear Light Armor, Robes or no armor at all.
Dragon Style branch:
Dragon Style – base perk, 5 ranks. You receive 15/30/45/60/75% damage increase with unarmed attacks.
Dragon Fist – every fifth your unarmed attack deals double damage and restores 10% health.
Dragon Strike – 3 ranks. Bare handed power attack has 10/20/30% chance to pushback target dropping it to the ground.
Dragon Breath – your unarmed attacks make enemies burn.
Tiger Style branch:
Tiger Style – base perk, 5 ranks. Your unarmed attacks are 20/40/60/80/100% faster.
Tiger Claw – every fifth your unarmed attack paralyzes target for one second.
Tiger Fury – 3 ranks. Power attack when bare handed has 10/20/30% chance to make target bleed loosing 5% health every second for 3 seconds.
Tiger Roar – each strike you deal lowers enemy’s armor value.
Dual Wielding branch:
Parry – you can now parry with Dual Welding weapons (there is mod for it, you can try to include it in SkyRe).
Double strike – 3 ranks. Hitting with two one-handed weapons at once grants 10/20/30 % chance to deal double damage.
Delete both Florentine Combat and Florentine Grandmaster perks (since you have Parry already). Instead add those two perks:
Brigand – Well timed Parry with dual-weapons grants you free strike at enemy (character very fast hits target automatically with right handed weapon).
Duelist – If you hit with right handed weapon then with left handed weapon, your second attack has 25% chance to proc on target one of these effects: stagger, disarm, bleed, paralyze, critical damage.
In middle branch combine bonuses for all weapon types in single perks. Tanto, katanas, scimitars, wakizashi, short swords, long swords and daggers should all be considered as swords. Clubs are same category as maces. Combined perks should look like this:
Soldier – 5 ranks. Swords have 5/10/15/20/25 % chance to deal critical damage, Axes 5/10/15/20/25 % chance to cause bleed, Maces 10/20/30/40/50% chance to ignore enemy armor.
Knight – 3 ranks. You deal 10/20/30% more damage with swords, axes and maces when hitting at enemy’s front (attacks at back and sides do normal damage).
Gladiator - Sword power attacks get additional 20 % crit chance, Axe power attacks cause severe bleed (3 times more damage then Warrior perk bleed), Mace power attacks have a 20% chance to stagger.
Champion – If you have 1h sword equipped, all critical attacks deal 50% additional damage. If you have 1h axe equipped, you do 30% more damage to bleeding targets. If you have 1h mace equipped, you deal 30% more damage to staggered targets.
Top tier perk: Born for Battle
Your melee attacks with one-handed, bare-handed or dual weapons get progressively stronger as long as you stay in combat. 10% dmg increase for 20 seconds, 20% for 40 seconds, 30% for 60 seconds. When you go out of combat (stop hitting faces), effect fades.
Legendary perk: Whirlwind
Your melee attacks with one-handed, bare-handed and dual weapons reach every hostile enemy in close distance. Basically 360 degree melee AOE with «friendly fire». Unique animation would be great.
Heavy Weaponry
Same problem as Light Weaponry tree – too many perks are divided among different types of weapons. No flexibility at all, hard to choose where to put. Except in Light Weaponry there were two additional branches (unarmed and dual wield) that looked fun. Here we have nothing. What I’d suggest – leave middle branch where you get stamina and damage perks for ALL 2handed weapons (add few more perks there), remove everything else. At sides add two new branches:
Barbarian - for characters that run with huge 2-hander and no armor at all (cant even wear light armor). Main focus of this branch is insane damage boost. But to make up for lack of defense there are also crowd control perks and crazy health regeneration.
Heavy Knight – for 2H warriors in Light or Heavy armor. Many of your old perks will fit in here after being combined (to work for all 2H weapon types).
Examples of perks for Barbarian tree:
Troll’s Blood – 3 ranks. You regenerate 1/2/3% of your max health every second.
No Retreat – 2 ranks. When you’re at 50% or lower health, you deal 25/50 % more damage.
Last Breath – when you receive a strike that would kill you, it will instead heal you for 20% of total health. Can not happen more then once in 3 hours.
Destroyer – every time you perform power attack, it has 100% chance to knockback the target.
Blood Rage – 3 ranks. You get more damage when there are more enemies nearby. 5/10/15% damage increase for EVERY enemy in 15 yards range.
Mighty Roar – grants new ability Mighty Roar. When used, every enemy in 15 yards range is instantly staggered for 3 seconds. 5 minutes cooldown.
Starting Barbarian perk renamed to Heavy Hitter and get 5 ranks instead of 10. 20/40/60/80/100 % damage increase. If you don’t wear any armor at all, you get twice as much bonus!
Top tier perk: Overpower
When you kill an enemy with 2H weapon, your next attack deals 300% damage. This effect can’t happen more then once in 2 minutes.
Legendary perk: Avatar
Grants new ability. When used, you transform into Avatar of Death. During this state every hit you deal with 2h weapons has 100% chance to stagger an enemy and burn him for 10% health every second for 2 seconds. Health regenerates at much higher rate, but you cant block, sprint and attacks are much slower. 2 minutes duration, 1 hour cooldown.
Marksman
Bow talents are really nice. Although Mobility gets too much speed gain when drawing shortbow. You need to balance it abit.
Im not a fan of whole crossbow branch tho. Ballistics doesn’t belong here since it’s a crafting perk. Same situation with many enhancement perks. I would overhaul the branch completely, removing old and adding new perks:
Hold the Line – increases damage of crossbow. 2 ranks. 10/20% dmg increase.
Arbalest – if you successfully hit the target, you draw next bolt 30% faster (won’t work if missed).
Unstoppable – 3 ranks. Your bolts have a chance to stagger enemy. The closer you’re to the target, the higher chance is. 5/10/15 % if target is 30+ feet away, 10/15/20 % if 20 feet away, 15/20/25% if 10 feet away.
Blood for Blood – 2 ranks. Your bolts make target bleed for 2/5 % total health per second for 3 seconds.
Heart Seeker – your bolts penetrate through any shield and armor. Basically if bolt hits a shield, enemy takes full damage.
Get over here – perk that lets you do this:
. This alone will make crossbow tree much more fun and desired.
Top tier perk: Execute (new name for Coup de Grace perk)
Make it only one rank fixed at 25%. Add crossbows to effect.
Legendary perk: Rain of Steel
When you successfully hit a target with an arrow or a bolt, you get 100% increase in drawing bow/crossbow speed for the next 5 shots. This effect can’t happen more then once every 3 minutes.
Light Armor
Make this tree less about getting armor, more about speed and agility. That’s what Light Armor for.
Agile Defender – make it 5 ranks like Jaggernaut. 10/20/30/40/50 % armor bonus (overall, not base) while wearing full Light Armor set.
Custom Fit – remove it. 2 perks that do the same is boring.
Unhindered - completely useless as Light Armor weights almost nothing anyways. Remove it.
Weak Spot - is this perk only for fighting humans in light armor? If so it’s kinda underpowered and not interesting either (those opponents are easy anyway). You have to include mages in robes here to make it semi decent.
Hide of Cheetah – new perk that gives you 10% additional running speed and 20% additional horse riding speed while wearing full Light Armor set.
Balance - add 15/30% less stamina consume while sprinting. For archers this perk is now useless, but everyone benefits from sprinting bonus.
Dragon Hide - 3 ranks. While wearing Light Armor you get 5/10/15% magic resistance and receive 2/4/6 % less physical damage.
Face to Face – 2 ranks. You take 10/20% less damage from behind and both sides. Sounds overpowered but you usually take damage in front, so it makes it more balanced.
Agile Fighter – You get attack speed bonus while wearing Light Armor. More pieces you wear, more bonus you get for up to 20% attack speed max.
One more thing Id like to see – perks for robe users. Mages get nothing to protect themselves early on and this tree is perfect to fix this. Here are 3 cool perks, just make them at lower tier, so mages could grab them right away.
Magic Skin – 4 ranks. Robe radiates magic barrier that absorbs 5/10/15/20% of damage received. Only works when you’re in process of casting spell and wear the robe.
Robe of Wonders – 3 ranks. While wearing robe all your spells cost 6/13/20 % less to cast and deal 4/8/12 % more damage.
Will of Akatosh – when you wear the robe and none of your other cloth pieces gives armor, you get ability to levitate. While in this state, you do not trigger trap plates, cannot die from falling and move 20% faster. You can turn levitate on and off in abilities menu. (levitate is not ability to fly in skies. You just hover slightly above the ground and there is no running animation).
Top tier perk: Adrenaline
When you’re hit by any weapon or spell, time is slowed and you move faster for 5 seconds. This effect can’t happen more then once per minute.
Legendary perk: Adrenaline Rush
While under effect of Adrenaline Rush you deal twice as much damage.
Heavy armor
There are too many perks that increase armor rating. Remove Harmonize. Instead add new perk:
Retaliation – 4 ranks. While you’re wearing full Heavy Armor, every time enemy strikes you in melee, he receives 5/10/15/20% of dealt damage back to him.
Stalwart Defense – Only swords and shocks? Kinda meh. How about instead making our heavy armored guy a slow walking tank? 2 ranks. Reduces all damage taken by 8/17/25% but further slows running speed by 5/10/15%.
Taunt – New perk. Every time you attack your enemy he is much more likely to turn from his current target and attack you instead. Useful if you have squishy followers and want to be their guard.
No Remorse – while wearing full Heavy Armor, blocking with shield is 20% more effective.
No Weakness – your Heavy Armor expertise makes you very efficient against Light Weaponry. Every time you’re hit by one handed weapon, there is 25% chance attack fails and you receive no damage.
Unstoppable Force – 2 ranks. When you sprint at your enemies, you have 15/30% chance to stagger them for 1 second. Only works while in full Heavy Armor and every time you stagger somebody this way, you loose a portion of your stamina.
Top tier perk: Stone Wall (unchanged)
Legendary perk: Iron Man (renamed Monolith perk with same effect)
Block
Disarming Bash – Id rather see shield bash stagger enemies then disarm. So it could be useful against mages and creatures. Make it 3 ranks with 20/40/60% chance to stagger.
Shatter – Let it be useful for light shields also. No need to spread perks among heavy and light shields. And change to disarm effect. So people weren’t afraid of loosing artifact in boss fight.
Dispel – there is already same kind of talent, no need for another one. Remove it.
Shield Mastery – 4 ranks. Adds 25/50/75/100 % armor value to heavy shield (counts only shield’s armor value) or 5/10/15/20% of magic resistance to light shield.
Reflective Shield – new perk. Well timed block allows to send hostile spell back to caster (you don’t get any damage if timed well, right before spell hits).
Shield Throw – you throw your shield at enemy knocking him back. After few seconds shield returns to you like boomerang and appears again in your left hand. 30 seconds cooldown.
Top tier perk: Shield Charge (unchanged).
Legendary perk: Walking Mountain
When you raise your shield, you become completely immune to any types of damage but consume stamina much faster.
Alchemy
Fast Metabolism – make this optional (not crucial for further branch development) perk. Many people use mods that make healing potions heal instantly for full effect (Total Realism Basic Needs for example). For those people it’s a wasted point.
Experimenter – nobody will take 3 points here. Make it 1 rank perk that reveals all effects on reagents you eat. And put it at higher tier.
Mad Scientist – new perk that lets you turn one potion into random another one (only at Alchemy Table). Like if you have too many healing potions, click one and its gone. Instead you get marksman elixir or mana potion or something else (again result is random, so it should be fun). New potion is about the same rank as clicked one, so you cant get plentiful mana potion for minor healing one.
Purity - for such high tier this perk is a joke (there aren’t much potions with strong drawbacks). Make it low tier optional perk or remove completely.
Fuse – add ability to improve traps here. Remove Advance Explosives perk (you don’t want too many enhance arrows perks in Alchemy tree) and Poison Burst (again, Fuse already will improve traps).
Flammable oil – you may craft and put oil to the ground, to lure enemies into it and flame with an arrow or fire spell.
Snake Devour – new poison branch perk, 2 ranks. When any of your poisons hits, it has a chance to deal 35/70 % of its damage to all hostile targets near victim.
Deadly Gas – high tier poison branch perk. Ability to create gas bottles that you can throw to the ground. Upon impact it will release gas cloud. Anyone who stays in it gets his health dropped fast. Followers and player suffer from it too, so have to be careful.
Top tier perk: Field Alchemist
You don’t need to use Alchemy Table to create potions, poisons, explosives and gas bottles anymore. Choose Field Alchemist in abilities list and get same screen as if you were at Alchemy Table.
Legendary perk: Master Alchemist
You can now mix up to 5 different potions or poisons into one super elixir that retrieves bonuses from every potion (poison) in the mix. With this you can mix few lesser healing potions into bigger one. Or get incredibly strong poisons for hard fights. You can also get rid of many useless potions in the bag by combining them with something useful.
Sneak
Deadly Whispers - remove it. It is completely useless and just silly. Seriously, silent shouts?
Intruder – I doubt anyone ever takes this. Sneak is mostly for dungeons.
Blindside –add 0.5-1 magnitude increase for bows and crossbows. One-handers have crazy magnitude already, while bows could surely get some more.
Tomb Rider – new 2 ranks perk. You receive 15/30 % less damage from traps. Traps are kinda easy mode in vanilla, but for people who use mods like Tougher Traps and play in Dead is Dead mode it will be VERY useful perk. Could be part of Wayfarer tree.
Assassinate – this perk feels like a joke to me considering how much skill you need for it. With dagger you kill most humanoids from sneak anyway. And why limit sneaking characters to daggers only? Remove this completely, it’s not worth taking even at lower tier.
Combine effects of Arcane Assassin and Calamity into one perk.
Ambush – make this work with any melee weapon. Don’t restrict players to only use daggers.
Night Shade – new perk. You get huge bonus to sneaking at night time.
Chameleon – high tier perk. When you do not move, you merge with surroundings and become absolutely invisible to anyone. Enemies can’t see you even at very close distance… well, until you move.
Top tier perk: Paralyzing Bite
When you perform sneak attack with any weapon or spell if you don’t kill target instantly, it is staggered for 5 seconds. You’ll have some time to finish it or plan further move.
Legendary perk: Vanish
Grants ability to make vanish powder at Alchemy Table (need some rare ingredients like Invisibility Dust, Nirnroot, etc). When powder used in the heat of battle, everything around gets cowered in smoke and enemies instantly deaggro, loosing you from their sight. You can hide or make sneak attack right away. Ninja stuff, and who doesn’t like them!?
Speechcraft
Idea to tie this tree to shouts was brilliant. Problem is everything else here is boring and underused. Honestly, how many times you have to persuade and worry about this option with high speechcraft skill? Better prices, more gold at merchants… meh. Everyone gets tons of gold eventually anyways. Solutions:
Tie Intimidation and Persuation to one perk.
Tie Master Trader, Investor and Fence to one perk.
Masquerade looks cool on paper but completely useless game wise. I doubt anyone ever takes this. But could leave it for fun purpose.
Skillful Liar – new perk that gives you a new option in dialogue when cought by guards. Instead of bribing them or going to jail, you can say something like «Hey, it wasn’t me!», «I was just passing by» and they let you go. With this perk remove Grand Façade.
Also among all perk trees there is NOTHING for improving followers. Why not? Everyone uses them now and Speechcraft is the right tree for those perks.
True Leader – 3 ranks perk that raises all damage done by any of your followers by 10/20/30% if they are at 10 yards distance from you (summoned creatures not affected. Have to level Conjuration tree).
Defender – lowers all damage your followers receive by 10/20/30% if they are in 10 yards distance from you.
Close Ties – 3 ranks. Raises beneficial distance of two above perks by 10/20/unlimited.
Prayer – grants new clickable ability Prayer that puts chosen God’s blessing on you. 8 hour duration, 24 hour cooldown.
Top tier perk: Fus Ro Dah
Your Fus Ro Dah shout turns enemy to your side making him fight for you for 10 seconds. Works only on humanoids (other creatures get usual FRD stagger). If you shout at several humanoids, one random chosen to help you.
Legendary perk: DragonBorn
When activated, transforms you into dragon-kind. While in this form you receive additional 25% magic resistance, your shouts have no cooldown and become even stronger, but you can’t use any spells or weapons.
Smithing
Never really been into crafting and didn’t test the tree. But it looks boring to me. Want to craft elven armor? Take elven perk. Want ebony armor? Ebony perk awaits. And so on. Meh…
Id like to see something interesting added, something that even non-crafters would have temptation to get. Like… Runes!
Similar to enhancements they grant new benefits to weapons and armor, and you can use them along with enhancements. But! They are crafted only by blacksmith (you need to combine malachite bars with alchemy ingredients). And they have drawbacks. For example there could be a rune that grants more armor to boots but you run slower. Or bonus bow damage to gloves with lower damage to melee weapons. Possible perks for this:
Rune crafting – 5 ranks. First rank grants ability to craft runes. Runes are 5/10/15/20/25 % more efficient.
Weapon runes mastery – 3 ranks. Lowers drawbacks for all weapon runes by 20/40/60%.
Armor runes mastery – 3 ranks. Lowers drawbacks for all armor runes by 20/40/60%.
Jewelry runes mastery - 3 ranks. Lowers drawbacks for all jewelry runes by 20/40/60%.
Fabled weaponry – 2 ranks. You can put 1/2 more runes on your weapon up to 3 total.
Top tier perk: Master Smith
Ability to craft both dragon and daedric stuff.
Legendary perk: Dwemer Automaton
You can craft unique Dwemer mechanism that will follow you and fight for you in battles. It looks like one of those things:
http://guides.gamepressure.com/theel.../585550046.jpg and has special attacks. Automaton is very sturdy - a perfect tank. But not immortal. When it dies, you have to build a new one. Requires a lot of dwemer materials to craft.
Enchanting
Looks fine to me. Few new possible perks:
It’s Sunny Day – Perk that makes all enchantments 25% stronger at daytime but 25% weaker at night.
Night bird - Perk that makes all enchantments 25% stronger at night but 25% weaker at daytime. Can choose only one of those.
Living Gems – You can now find soul gems inside corpses of creatures you’ve killed.
No Loss – you don’t loose item after disenchanting it anymore.
Useful Knowledge – 2 ranks. If enemy uses enchanted gear or weapon, it’s enchant effects are 50/100 % weaker when used against you.
Top tier perk: Everything can be broke
You can now destroy magical and enchanted items anywhere and get random rare materials and ingredients from them.
Legendary perk: Sword of the Ancients
You can summon magical ethereal sword that floats nearby and crushes anyone who dares to attack you. Basically a follower. Less powerful then Dwemer Automaton, but it can’t be killed or even hit.
Fingersmith
Perfectly fine tree.
Top tier perk: Master thief
Combined effect of Snatch + Ace’s Mark perks.
Legendary perk: Solar Strike
Grants new ability Solar Strike. When activated you strike with finger at enemy’s most vital points, paralyzing him completely. Paralyze lasts for 10 seconds and works only on humanoids and living creatures. Doesn’t work on enemies in heavy armor. Cooldown – 1 minute.
Wayfarer
Well, I never ever put any points in this tree but due to Chosen Fiend (bad name for such crucial perk. Id advice something like Legendary Hunter) it could be worth to take all those Lore talents. I didn’t find where werewolves fit in. Aren’t they in Lore section?
Make 1st rank of Chosen Fiend perk have 20 skill level requirement, so you could grab with it starting Lore perk and get benefits right away. Lower skill requirement of Lore: Humanoids and Lore: Predators to 25. No reason to keep them so high. Adjust skill requirement of other Lore perks including Dragons (lower it to about 80).
Green Thumb – doesn’t belong to Wayfarer tree. It should be in Alchemy tree at lower ranks.
Tracker - why it has 3 ranks? One is more then enough, nobody will put more points in it.
Harmony – remove it. It is just a terrible perk that removes sense of danger and fun from game. What is the reason to play if you run around and nothing attacks you?
Wild Friend – new ability to summon white wolf that fights on your side. This doesn’t require mana to cast. One of high tier perks.
Top tier perk: Wild Allies
You may easily calm wild animals and mount them. Lets you ride wolves, bears, spiders, deers and wild cats.
Legendary perk: The Beast Within
You turn into wild beast receiving huge speed bonus (+100%) and attack speed bonus (+100%). Every successful attack makes enemies bleed. The beast can jump much higher and his power attacks make weaker enemies stagger. But you can’t use your normal weapons and spells in beast form.