Its been a long time since I could play anything close to vanilla skyrim. Not that it's a bad game: but the content added by modders simply flesh out the world and give the player options.
Sure; everyone always ends up as a stealth archer, but 20 different bows is better than 10.
Truthfully... other than missives, and forgotten dungeons: I mostly run weapon, armour and a couple of visual mods (like animated enchantments.). Just a layer of polish on what's already there.