Smithing past Daedric is actually useful and I'm tired of defending it

[TamrielTactician]

I know the recent thread said it's pointless but I genuinely think people sleep on the late-game smithing branches. Yeah, Daedric is where most builds cap out, but if you're running heavy armor on Legendary or higher difficulty, the jump from Daedric to higher tiers actually matters way more than people admit.

I'm on my 4th playthrough right now, level 52, full Daedric heavy with a greatsword, and I went back and grabbed the perks for the next tier up just to see. The armor rating difference is legit noticeable when you're getting swarmed by Draugr Deathlords. It's not gamebreaking, but it's not nothing either.

The real issue is that most people hit Daedric, feel powerful, and just stop leveling smithing. Which is fair - by that point you've already won. But if you're actually trying to push difficulty or you just like the crafting loop, there's still a reason to keep going. Plus if you're running a build where you swap gear a lot (like a stealth archer who switches to heavy for dragon fights), having access to everything just feels cleaner.

What difficulty are you all actually playing on? I feel like this whole "smithing past X is useless" thing assumes you're already overkilled, which honestly most people are by level 40.

 

[WhiterunModder]

I think you're right that it matters more on higher difficulties, but I'd push back a little - the real bottleneck isn't the armor rating, it's that by the time you're smithing Daedric you've usually already solved your survivability problem through other means. Perks, enchantments, restoration loop abuse, whatever.

On Legendary I'm running around in Ebony and it's fine because I'm not getting hit in the first place. The smithing tiers are more of a "nice to have" than a "need to have" past a certain point. That said, if you're genuinely playing a tanky build where you want to facetank stuff, yeah, squeezing out another 10-15 armor rating per piece probably does feel different when you're at the thick of it.

The swap-gear angle is way more compelling to me though. If you're actually maintaining multiple sets - one for stealth, one for combat, maybe something for utility - then yeah, finishing out the smithing tree just makes sense. You're already invested in the skill. I've definitely done that on my current run.

What difficulty are you actually on? Because I think a lot of the "smithing is useless past Daedric" crowd is playing on Adept or lower where you're already unkillable by mid-game anyway. The conversation changes pretty hard once you're on Legendary or running something like Requiem where armor actually scales differently.