Yep. Assassins Blade gives 15x Sneak Damage while the Shrouded Gloves doubles all backstab damage.
15x damage is only with daggers, though, so have to keep that in mind.
I play a dual wielding thief, and with maxed enchanting/blacksmithing, you can pretty easily make equips that absolutely decimate everything. There's also a pretty huge exploit you can do involving fortify restoration that lets you buff certain enchants to a few thousand percent, and let's you make what are essentially god weapons. As for alchemy, I honestly think it's mostly just a fluff skill at this point. They throw so many potions and poisons at you that I honestly have a harder time finding a place to sell them all than to use them.
That said, if you plan on going stealth melee, I recommend picking up the 15x damage. I honestly tried to play without it for a long time, but I got to the last major mission for the Thieves guild and was just getting absolutely wrecked because my sneak attacks were pretty much just tickling the enemies a bit.
As for archery, I honestly think that they've nearly ruined it in Skyrim vs. Oblivion. Arrows automatically adjust to hit the target you're pointing at now, so it's much easier to hit stationary targets, but since the arc isn't relative to gravity, it's a huge pain hitting moving targets now.
But if you ever want to play a mage again, you can disenchant some 25% reduction for a school of magic clothing, and enchant your own clothing with 25% reduction on two different schools on one piece of clothing. Throw 4 different pieces on and you can cast any spell for from those schools for free, essentially.