Yeah, I won't argue that there's a lot of saturation of semi-useless junk Skyrim mods, but that's always to be expected. The good mods out there make the entire experience so worth it.
Never heard of FWE until now, wish I had to be honest, might try it out whenever I get my FO3 copy back from me cousin (...now that I think about it, he may also have been borrowing my copy of DA:O and Borderlands... bloody hope so).
What I largely want for Skyrim is a "proper" respec mod, more-so because I use this
No More Ability Perk Trees mod, and programs like the Perk Planner don't really work for it.
I also wouldn't mind a mod that removes level scaling, levelled loot and one that adds proper scaling for spells (so they scale much like weapons and armour does).
Here's a few of the mods I use that I highly recommend. Spoiler tag used so it's easier to skip my post:
[spoiler]
SkyUI - The default UI sucks, this does a damn fine job at trying to fix it.
A Quality World Map - This is a bit immersion-breaking but the ability to see all the roads on the world map is a really nice boon. You can't imagine how many times I went inefficient routes without this. The Classic Paper style is less immersion-breaking and looks fantastic, if you ask me.
Deadly Dragons - Not necessary but frankly, the default dragons suck. If you're not gimping yourself and are using even a little bit of Smithing and Enchanting then you'll eventually be able to one-shot any dragon, even on Master. This mod fixes that. It also has craftable armour in the style of World of Warcraft "Tier" gear, it's a bit "meh" if you ask me (I have ideas for better).
WARZONES - Civil Unrest - The one thing I felt whilst playing Skyrim was underwhelmed. Underwhelmed because you're told to believe that the world is suffering a major civil war alongside a war with the dragons, but do you ever see this? Hah, not really. WARZONES was in Fallout, now it's in Skyrim.
If your PC struggles with Skyrim now, don't get this.
Realistic Lighting - This mod goes great with most of the ENB mods you'll find around the net (I use Superb-ENB which is designed to work with this mod). Alters the lighting so it's more realistic (who'd have thought?). Darks actually become dark, lights become lighter.
Valdacil's Item Sorting - This is based off
Headbomb's Better Sorting, which I used to use but hated it's naming convention and how it also done spells. This one doesn't. The sorting in general makes it so much easier to find stuff.
Complete Crafting Overhaul - This mod is actually a fix and what it aims to do is fix a lot of some of the weirder smithing plans out there. Many items require more materials (so it's realistic, but Smithing is already piss-easy to level by default) and some that weren't smithable are now (like faction armour).
Honourable Mentions:
Dragon Bone Weapon Pack - There's another one of these which I use in conjunction with this one, but the custom textures on this one are just epic. I don't necessarily "recommend" this, but only if you already have heaps of weapon mods (they'll end up conflicting due to how objects work in Skyrim).[/spoiler]
I use a bunch of other mods, but most are just quality-of-life things like a few
fixes, a mod that adds
laterns to cities
Oh, and
Wyre Bash and
BOSS are
absolutely must-haves.
"You either die a lurker, or you live long enough to see yourself become a troll."