War Table Perks

I don't mind having to unlock the perks.
Not all mages are scholars interested in the ins and outs of the Fade. Magic is a talent, not a personality trait after all. Maybe your mage was the jock type, preferring to just feel out how to effectively aim a fireball, instead of reading about it.
Not all nobles are interested in the noble lifestyle. If you want to play that bratty noble, who would run away from etiquette classes to hang out with the commoners and is now paying the prize, you can. Maybe their families did not educate them purposefully, since they were to be given to the Chantry in the future.
Not all Carta dwarves are business dwarves. Some are just plain brutes, muscles sent on missions to punch things, not ask questions. In their war table quest I think it's insinuated that the ones that sent them there knew that things would most likely go sour and thus you might want to play a dwarf that was sent there because they didn't have the connections to say no, or that some one in the family was getting rid of a less useful asset.

So I feel being able to select exactly what dialog perks my character has is just another asset in role playing that character.
And besides, all of these characters do get occasional "freebies" connected to their origins.For example, I think all Cadashes can recruit Tanner, even if they have no dialog perks. I think seizing Sarnia is open to all non mage Trevelyans, no matter what perks they have. And I'm pretty sure there are a couple of magey options mages can pick without having the arcane perk.

That being said, I wouldn't mind having one dialog perk for free at the beginning. So if you preferred your noble to have knowledge of the court at the start you could, or you might give them underworld ties or increased interest in magic. But that would probably require more perks. Which would be nice, like in Shadowrun, where your charisma can give you connections with one or two factions. So maybe ties to the orlesian, ferelden or kirkwall nobility, or connection with the crows, carta or mercenary gangs. 

But you can't! That's another pet peeve. On a blind run, or even your 2nd or 3rd run without memorizing the Wikia quest walkthroughs, there's absolutely no way to judge the relative merits of "Nobility Knowledge" and 12 healing potions. I can't enhance my roleplaying, because I have no clue what the payoff is going to be ahead of time.

If they had adopted the slightly/significantly weighting language they came up with after Trespasser, and told you that "Nobility Knowledge significantly enhances your dialogue options when attending either the Fereldan or Orlesian Court", or something like that, then it would be a choice worth considering. They don't even have to mention WEWH, just the circumstances that a player would readily recognize.

I felt the perk descriptions were pretty clear: 
Detailed study of politics, rhetoric, and those who wield them to best effect. Opens up new dialogue options related to nobles and politics.
So you'd assume the payoff would come in new dialog options later on when talking to the nobility. Of course you can't calculate when that will be or how much it will benefit you, but I prefer that, since it's like a little surprise gift. Like hey! Here's a new option you can have because you picked this!

And I feel like the question whether you need more healing potions or not is pretty simple, how many healing potions are you using currently and do you feel one or two more might have turned the tide in a hard battle? 
As if for the question, which should you pick, I kind of feel like it depends on the player. Which is more important to you, the potential of skipping a fight with diplomacy or that extra edge in the combat later on. 

But that's just my opinion. I felt the game was pretty clear with what you were getting, but I can see how you might feel otherwise. 
(Old post in spoiler, hopefully this one is a bit less bitchy.)

Never had the perk thing happen to me. Can't even remember when the perk actually gave that worthwhile of a reward. I do generally get the dialog perks first, since I enjoy more dialog and am willing to suffer a bit combat wise in return. So probably different values on gameplay for me. 

I get not wanting to choose between dialog content and edge in combat, but I never felt Inquisition was very penalizing in that regard. Influence is fairly easy to come by and the combat perks don't give you that much of an edge. 
So I get what the problem is, I'm just not terribly bothered by it. Hopefully the next game has a system that works better.
And it's good the old post didn't come off as jerkish as I thought. Did edit this one to make it shorter and less rambly.

I did a playthrough not getting any of the perks. From what I remember, there wasn't much of a difference than if I had got a few perks.

I suppose it is just a matter of differing opinions

As for the chef analogy, I'd see it more as if an educated chef from Iceland were to apply for a job in a restaurant in Japan, they would still have to go through the three years of training if they wanted to serve Fugu, even if they had worked for quite a while in an Icelandic sushi place. They can cook a lot of fish dishes and cook them really well, but some meals just need more training, especially when dealing with new ingredients.

I forgot about Alexius trial and can understand why people might get miffed over not getting him (because he's something..._{and I suppose Dorian approves as well}). But still, I felt the payoff for getting him was too lackluster to get worked up about it. But that's a good point on how the perk system might mess with peoples roleplaying. 

Not getting it automatically because the player is a mage doesn't really bother me, but that's more on how the Circle/mage training works in my mind. I can see how it can annoy others. 

As for the underworld. Smugglers are a part of the underworld, not the underworld as a whole. That space is shared by slavers, assassins, thieves, mercenaries and more. And Cadash gets all the lyrium connected underworld options for free, showing they have connections in the lyrium business, but need to put effort into having more sway in other parts of the Underworld. Which sounds fair to me.

As for the healing potions. I found 8 to work just fine and 12 to be plenty. It caused you to learn the guard/barrier system instead, which I found far more enjoyable than just cooking up 258 potions and just chugging them during fights. As for difficulty increasing not giving more potions. That's kind of the point in my eyes, making the game harder. Wouldn't haven been suprised if it gave you less potions on higher difficulty, properly forcing you to learn to use defensive skills or dodging. 
I also loved getting free refills, rather than spending gold on elf root and distilling agents. 
And kind of preferred not having healing spells. Then I didn't feel like I was being punished for not wanting to have Anders or Wynne in the party. The latter one was a bit more fair, since at least you could waste some talent points in healing for Morrigan. Same with Perk system. Preferred spending four points to increase the skill of all rogues in the party, rather than spending 4 points on each rogue. It meant that if I suddenly wanted to bring Cole with me, I could use the skill points he had to increase his combat skills, rather than worrying if I'd be missing out on 10 chests because his lockpicking was too low. Also if the attribute points had still been a thing, it would have given more freedom to play with the party rogues skill points instead of being pushed to have all the rogues with 40 cunning. 
On the other hand. The only locked things in Inquisition were doors. So the perk benefit has the least affect here. So it is kind of dumb when you look at it that way. Damn...
Anyways for me, it's just a matter of opinions. I found the War Table quite nice as it was, but it could definitely have been done better.  
But I suppose these arguments (even if fun to read and very civil ) won't be changing any minds. So I do hope you can cook up some improvements for the war table that will catch the eyes of a lurking Bioware employee and be used to increase the quality of the next game.

Hmmm...

Being able to add more options that I haven't seen before is a really big bonus for me. Currently I am playing a qunari mage so this is the first time I have unlocked the mage-extra-bits. And I don't really agree that nobility absolutely have to know all the extra things, you might not be as interested in the power games and intrigues as the others.

I love nothing better than knowing that there are a few things hidden in the game that I might see for the first time in my current PT. It is what makes each new Inquisitor fun to play even when you have seen all the major things, all the extra little tidbits. A future Quizzy, female dwarf will be the first one to get "knowing everything about the underworld"-option.

For me, being able to chose myself if my Quizzy should have extra insight is a real bonus I always try to leave some little thing for the next PT, take great care not to unlock everything at once.