Hey everyone... is Enhanced Articulation worth ANYTHING? I understand it gives +1 die to physical skills using physical attributes, but what about any hand to hand combat? I mean does Hand to hand NOT count as a physical skill using physical attributes?

Physical skill is major category of skills. Hand to hand, or unarmed combat, is a skill under the combat skill category and does not get the benefit.

Combat SKill apllicability aside (as in not available for such), I find that Enhanced Articulation is not a bad system for some characters.

Climbing, Infiltration, Running, Swimming, Escape Artist, just a few off the top of my head. Very useful 'ware.

If those are skills you use, it's a good return for the essence and nuyen, I'd say.

Gymnastics, Palming, Parachuting, Diving

And Riding too i would think, even if the rest of the Animal Husbandry skill group logically go under Technical skills.
And yes i do have a character that has that skill.

Running, jumping, climbing trees...putting on make-up while you're up there...

More seriously, the reason Enhanced Articulation seems somewhat "useless" in SR4 might be because of its comparison to SR1-SR3's version...which was flat-out broken. If you've got a piece of cyber or bioware that's only gives a mechanical bonus to skills that every single combat-based mage, shaman, or adept will take a point of magic loss to get - especially when there are spells or powers that will reproduce the effects (unlike stuff like datajacks or SR1-3 smartlinks) - you know there's something a wee bit overpowered.

Disguise is intuition.

<Insert picture of Anti-Joke Chicken>

Next to the Smartlink II, it's probably the most powerful piece of ware for its price in all of Man & Machine.

It's potency is related to how many of the skills it affects that you have ranks in or plan to default on.

Which again is still better than its previous incarnations. In SR3, if your character isn't a stay-at-home decker, stay-in-the-car rigger, or pure face, you're getting Enhanced Articulation. Period. An extra die for Stealth and Athletics is pretty good and all, but FFS it was an extra die to every combat skill as well. That alone was worth the cost of the magic attribute loss.

I assume that by better you mean that it more balanced.

Losing access to combat skills with it would make it worse.

A very wise man once said that game balance is a myth, and anyone who convinces you otherwise is a pornomancer!

Of course. Every good game will have bad choices to make.