Heavy armour tree left hand side... Waste of time?

[Su8tle]

I can see all the benefits of the right hand side of the tree. But on the left, except for the one that makes heavy armour lighter, the others are pretty crap. Not sure if it's worth wasting two perk points on two crap perks just to get to a decent one. I could probably invest 3 perks into a lot better areas wouldn't you think?

 

[dbukalski]

I only ever do left side for the weightless armour perk which as I understand it reduces the noise you make while saving me like 100+ in weight. If thats not the case(about being more silent) then I agree its a waste

 

[Metas]

Agreed, but only because i dont use bare handed techniques. Im sure someone found these perks useful being that they are implemented into the tree

 

[Professor Skalvar]

I never did understand the logic of the Fists of Steel perk being in the Heavy Armor perk tree. If that, plus the Khajiit's 22 hand to hand damage and the Unarmored Damage enchantment were programmed into the game, shouldn't this mean Hand to Hand deserves it's own perk tree?

 

[Su8tle]

Because I find the hand to hand and falling damage reduction perks utterly pointless, it bacisally makes obtaining the heavy armour conditioning perk cost 3 perk points. That's a lot of perk points for one useable perk.

Starting to see my thinking?

 

[Professor Skalvar]

Because I find the hand to hand and falling damage reduction perks utterly pointless, it bacisally makes obtaining the heavy armour conditioning perk cost 3 perk points. That's a lot of perk points for one useable perk.

Starting to see my thinking?

I don't think anybody here has disagreed with your point.

 

[Dagmar]

I only ever do left side for the weightless armour perk which as I understand it reduces the noise you make while saving me like 100+ in weight. If thats not the case(about being more silent) then I agree its a waste

Reducing weight may not reduce noise. The UESP Skyrim Wiki main article on Heavy Armor skill strongly implies it doesn't, but one poster on the article's discussion page claims that the Steed Stone, which essentially does the same thing, has reduced his being detected while sneaking.

Agreed, but only because i dont use bare handed techniques. Im sure someone found these perks useful being that they are implemented into the tree

Just because perks are implemented into a perk tree doesn't mean they are useful. Many of them certainly are not objectively very useful.

The most damage you can do with unarmed combat and Fists of Steel is 50 damage, and that's with gauntlets custom enchanted with the strongest possible Fortify Unarmed enchantment. For pure combat that's extremely gimpy compared to what you can do with any weapon improved with smithing and fortify smithing equipment and potion, and low in general for higher level combat even without any smithing improvements to weapons. It may give you an edge in brawling but if you can't win a brawl without the perk then you probably have more serious issues to deal with in terms of your build and ability to play the game.

 

[MushroomGenius]

Fist of Steel? You should check out Robbaz's videos on YouTube. Hilarious!

 

[Norminator]

as a horder, it's totally worth it for the last perk. I was happy to spend two points to got to that one

 

[R0ckiieGaming]

Pretty much the weightless perk is the only thing useful in my opinion

 

[jam]

One of my characters is a khajiit archer with unarmed as my only melee option so I found the perk pretty useful.
I'm pretty sure I calculated that an unarmed khajiit can do 70 per hit with the right enchantments and daedric armor.

 

[Teritus]

I don't know if anyone mentioned it, but you can get the 'Gloves of the Pugilist' in the ratway which give you extra damage for unarmed combat.

 

[Kuurus]

as a horder, it's totally worth it for the last perk. I was happy to spend two points to got to that one

It's still not worth it. Save yourself 3 perks to be used elsewhere and use the Steed stone to accomplish the same thing.

 

[Dagmar]

One of my characters is a khajiit archer with unarmed as my only melee option so I found the perk pretty useful.
I'm pretty sure I calculated that an unarmed khajiit can do 70 per hit with the right enchantments and daedric armor.

The damage caps is 50 for all races except for Khajiit and Argonians, and that's with the enchantment that Teritus mentioned above placed on Daedric Gauntlets enhanced with custom made Fortify Enchanting potions when enchanted. Khajiit and Argonians do 10 points of base unarmed damage rather than the 4 base unarmed damage done by all other races. Khajiit also have a 12 point damage bonus from using their claws (notwithstanding that they couldn't possibly use their claws through the Daedric Gauntlets ). So Argonian unarmed damage caps at 56 and Khajiit damage caps at 68 for normal unarmed attacks. Like all attacks, the damage doubles for a power attack.

It's still extremely gimpy for regular melee combat compared to any Legendary Daedric or Glass melee weapon with 100 in the corresponding melee weapon skill and the 5 basic damage perks for said weapon but if you want to be a manly man like Robbaz knock yourself out!

 

[-=NG=- Raxael]

Fists of steel. Best perk in the game. Makes unarmed combat the most op combat style, hands down. Its fun killing dragons in a few its... Combine that with resto, black smithing, and enchanting, you have a beast. So, I think its a really nice branch.

 

[Dagmar]

I think the left side may well be more useful than the right simply because if you're not lazy, you use smithing/enchanting/alchemy to achieve well over 1800 armor.

You're talking about making a character build that has 100 in Enchanting, 6 perks in the Enchanting perk tree, 100 in Alchemy, 7 perks in the Alchemy perk tree and 100 in Smithing and whatever number of perks you need to reach the minimum armor to get that armor rating. So basically you're talking about spending over 13 perks to negate the benefits of 3 perks.

Talking about armor rating over 567 is largely pointless anyway since that's the number you need to cap physical damage resistance. The bottom line is that many if not most players like to level by using their skills adventuring and exploring rather than building their characters in a vacuum while grinding non-combat skills at the forge, arcane enchanter and alchemy lab, and they can get 567 armor rating simply by taking the 8 armor perks in Heavy Armor including 3 perks up the right side, leveling Smithing to 100 and putting 1 perk into the Smithing tree. They'll also do this without gimping their damage output against mobs by leveling their combat related skills rather than power leveling their non combat skills so for most players the right side of the Heavy Armor tree is quite useful and more useful than the perks on left side of the tree.

 

[Su8tle]

^ I agree, if i wanted to grind. I'd play wow. Natural leveling/skill upgrading makes for a more natural game and less OP.

 

[samgurl775]

The perk for heavy armor weighing nothing doesn't mean anything if you use the Steed Stone (which I do). I've never bothered with the left side.

 

[-=NG=- Raxael]

Actually Raxael blacksmithing improvement does not improve the hand-to-hand damage you get from Fists of Steel. The math only works off of the base value of the armor, not the total. Otherwise that would be possible, yes.

I mean that the things you get out of black smithing help. e.g I always rush daedric gauntlets, since it attributes to fists of steel so much, with the large amount of armor.

 

[Dagmar]

Combine that with resto...

Using Fortify Restoration Potions is an exploit. It's not a legitimate game mechanic and bears about as much relevance in assessing the value of the Fists of Steel perk as using console commands to make your unarmed damage 10,000.

Actually Dagmar I haven't read the new armor cap since the patch, it is 567 which is crazy, it used to be 1800!

It's been 567 since launch.