Best Skills Tier List for Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion Remastered

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion sort of fixes the original game’s leveling system, so there really is not much of a reason to put them into “tiers”, since leveling anything up will contribute to your overall level anyway. However, some are probably still better in terms of leveling your character up quickly, and there is still the matter of individual perks that you get for reaching milestones in each.

With all of that in mind, let us put them into separate tiers anyway based on various opinions from the game’s playerbase. We do not do min-maxing calculations, so this is coming more from the perspective of casual players.

Best Skills Tier List for Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion Remastered

The remastered version of Oblivion changes a few things around when it comes to leveling up your character, and there are also some changed perks in certain skills.

The wiki has a very comprehensive list of all the changes, as well as a list of all the things that they changed with the modern remaster. A lot of this is still going to be purely subjective and entirely dependent on how you play.

Think, for example, that if you are a player who loves using Conjuration magic, then obviously that would take the spot at the top tier. On the other hand, somebody who is a stealth archer would have little use for it as the entire goal of that playstyle is to one shot everything without getting detected.

So, with that said, this tier list tries to strike a balance between people who just want to chill and roleplay in this old RPG game and those who want to play the highest difficulty. Again, this is purely subjective and should not dictate how you approach the game.

S Tier

In the S Tier, we have a few skills that are made better in the remastered version or just benefit those who play on higher difficulties. These are great no matter what your goal is, as they either help a lot in terms of convenience or also make tough fights more bearable.

• Armorer – Now that an apprentice armorer can repair magic items, this skill has become much better at a lower level. They essentially swapped this and the journeyman perk, which is a pretty decent trade off considering how much more important the former is.
• Alchemy – They added additional perks that make alchemy so much more satisfying in this version of the game. At higher levels, you can have potions that have a ton of effects, and it can lead to hilariously powerful results.
• Conjuration – Conjuration is just a really strong school of magic in any difficulty level, but this is especially the case in higher tiers. This is because minions can help you tank and deal so much damage, which is a major pain point in high difficulty levels.
• Restoration – This school of magic is just hilariously good at everything it tries to achieve. With the ability to cure ailments, restore various things, or fortify other skills, it is such a versatile skill. Need to convince somebody? Fortify your speechcraft for a second. On the road to developing vampirism? Nope, cure disease.
• Sneak – Sneak is a favorite of many, and with the massive buff to dagger sneak attacks, this one can sit at the top tier mainly due to an exploit that you can take advantage of. Basically, if you fire an arrow with your bow and immediately swap to any dagger, your arrow will use the dagger’s multiplier for sneak attacks instead.
• Destruction – Destruction has always been powerful, and it continues to be this way in the remaster. There is not really much else to note here. Everybody knows what you can do with destruction magic. Check out our guide on how to play as a spellsword for a build you can try.

A Tier

In the A Tier are skills that are also pretty good, just not generally considered by many to be as good as those above. There is barely much difference with these and the ones in S in terms of usefulness if we are being honest, as these picks are based more on personal preferences in combat.

• Blade – Once you unlock higher mastery perks, this weapon type becomes so much more powerful in terms of raw damage. However, those who have played the original version might notice that certain effects with power attacks have been completely replaced.
• Blunt – This skill is on the same boat as Blade in that higher masteries slightly boost your damage. The main difference is that it is more centered around a defensive playstyle, as the perks give you bonus shield after a power attack.
• Marksman – Because of how they added the ability to sprint in the remastered version of the game, marksman can actually be comically good if you just want to kite enemies around. It also goes alongside sneak most of the time, and the only reason it is not up there is due to how it really only becomes broken due to other skills. On its own, it is just fine.
• Block – With its perks in this version of the game, this skill has become much more valuable than before. As you approach the high end of levels, you hardly lose fatigue while blocking, and your shield bash becomes so much more potent.

B Tier

In B Tier are skills that are pretty useful, but hardly worth going out of your way to grind actively. A lot of these provide great utility, but they are also stuff that you just kind of passively train as you play normally.

• Alteration – Alteration provides a lot of useful utilities, including feather, water walking or breathing, and open locks. These are particularly great whenever needed, especially feather, but it definitely is not something you need to be grinding too hard for.
• Heavy Armor – Heavy armor is still the same as in the original game, and there really is not much to note here. It has some decent perks that are mainly just quality of life upgrades, but that is pretty much it for the most part.
• Light Armor – It has the same problems that its heavier counterpart has, but with the downside of being weaker in terms of protection until you reach the maximum level mastery perk.
• Athletics – With the ability to sprint in this remastered version, athletics is not only something that you can train quickly without thinking about it, but it also helps you speed through content if you like playing that way. At max mastery, you just never lose fatigue while sprinting too.
• Acrobatics – Acrobatics, despite being just tied to jumping for the most part, does have some pretty handy use cases. For example, a higher acrobatics level will let you scale mountains by simply hopping around. It also works great alongside Marksman due to how you can easily reach vantage points with it.
• Illusion – Illusion magic is actually pretty strong in certain use cases, such as if you like using chameleon or invisibility. Paralyze can be a huge tide turner in combat too, or just an amusing spell to use on random people.

C Tier

Some of the skills here in C Tier have their uses, but they are far from essential and may even be way too niche for most people. The others, such as security, are just pretty useless in general once you learn how to handle the game’s mechanics

• Security – Again, security is just a useless skill to actively “train” since you can just unlock anything with ease once you learn how to properly do the lockpicking mechanic. You can pick even the hardest locks without much issue when you figure out the basics.
• Mercantile – This one actually does have its uses, as the new perks make it so that you can potentially get really good gear way too early in the game. However, this is still a pretty niche pick since you can always just grind other skills and loot the same stuff from enemies.
• Speechcraft – Well… it is just speechcraft. The entire skill is negated by the fact that you can just easily raise disposition with the persuasion mechanic, which is far from difficult. In fact, even illusion can achieve the same things this does, but with much little effort.
• Hand-to-Hand – This seems to really benefit NPCs more than the player, since barely anyone would bother using this combat style anyway. On the flip side, NPCs who use it can absolutely destroy you if you underestimate them. There is also a very niche use case in that you can disarm summoned creatures and keep their weapon, if you want to be silly like that.
• Mysticism – This school of magic is way too niche for how most people play, and it is likely that you are only using soul trap out of the other spells that fall into this category.

And those are all of the skills in the remastered version of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. While you are here, maybe you are on the verge of creating a new character to experiment with alternative starts or just completely change your major and minor skill choices. Here is a guide on which birthsigns are the best that might help with your picks.