So thanks to all the feedback stemming from last weeks similar article - The 10 Best Perks Skyrim's New Leveling System Has To Offer, I've come up with a polar opposite addition - The 10 WORST Perks Skyrim's New Leveling System Has To Offer. Enjoy!
Rune Master (40 Destruction) - Comparatively speaking, for a perk this low down the skill tree, it has almost nothing to offer. Runes are only useful and mana efficient when not cast during combat, IE. used to set up and trap an area before engaging enemies. This perk lets you cast runes five times further away - that's awfully useless since I could just walk there and trap the area, and spend the perk-point elsewhere and actually have an impact early-on, instead of wasting a point for this 'time saving' perk.
Disintegrate (70 Destruction) - Your lightning based spells turn low-health enemies into dust when it kills them. Cool, so not only are they dead, but I can't animate their corpses. This doesn't do any damage, it's a strictly aesthetic effect. Sure, its great eye candy, but it ultimately doesn't do anything except deny you a summoned companion, if that's your thing.
Illusion (The entire tree except for Quiet Casting) - I can't keep droning on about how easy the game is, and how ultimately worthless crowd control is in the game. Most enemies die quickly, and it isn't worth casting (fear) on them when you could just as easily kill them outright. Also, bosses can't get feared. Just kill them, whats the point?
Wax Key (50 Lockpicking) - If you successfully pick a lock, you get a copy of that lock's key - if possible. So in a random dungeon you can save yourself the five seconds to pick a lock and open it instantly. Opening a lock with the wax key also denies you the chance to raise your lockpicking skill. Oh, and most locks don't have keys; something like 70% of them, from what I've read.
Golden Touch (60 Lockpicking) - Gold is more or less infinite in this game, especially if you invest any points into the speech tree. Even if this doubles the amount of gold found in chests, its still not worth it - almost all your income stems from dragon slaying, grinding out your enchanting or smithing skills, or just selling random loot.
Deflect Arrows (30 Block) - This skill isn't TOTALLY useless, as it's required to get further up the Block skill tree, for Elemental protection (which gives you 50% elemental resists when blocking). However, the actual benefit of this skill really makes me question why they even tried to implement this mechanic into Skyrim. So, with this perk, if you manage to block an arrow with your shield, it'll do no damage. Aside from a few VERY high level bosses, I can't remember when I was even concerned about an enemy wielding a bow, let alone threatened by them enough to try and block arrows instead of just walking up to them and owning face. It's also pretty gimmicky at best, even at point blank range - being able to consistently block arrows with your shield isn't very reliable.
Ward Absorb (60 Restoration) - Wards in and of themselves are 100% useless. I quote myself from my Skyrim review article; "They put wards into this game too. Spells that take up a hand and let you block other spells. Every character comes with two wards, the A and D buttons, which safely let you dodge every spell in the game except lightning-based ones, which don't hamper physical damage dealers in any way, and are really just invitations to smear the caster's face on the ground with a hammer."
Poisoned (40 Pickpocket) - This gem lets you place poisons onto enemies after you sneak within inches of them. This poison then hurts them. I'm dumbfounded at anyone who even considers this perk. Poisons are mediocre sources of damage at any level. Also, you can quite easily raise Sneak (enough to even allow you to get close enough for a poison attempt in the first place) and just backstab them for a 15x multiplier, often two to three times consecutively, instantly eliminating the threat and the need to stand right next to them and risk detection while you try to plant a poison in their inventory.
Bribery (30 Speech) - Why would I want to bribe a guard? At level 25, my latest character has over 17,000 gold. I have nothing to buy, and am carrying around at least another 20k worth of gold in equipment. Also, I don't commit crimes because there's generally no reason to. If I feel like going on a rampage and leveling an entire city, I save the game before hand and get it out of my system. Since the random crashes force me to quick save at least twice a minute while adventuring, I always have a fallback in case I mistakenly shoot a guard in the throat. Pointless.
