In my opinion I don't actually consider anything to be pointless on watches (apart from perhaps the day/night watch!). For me a lot of the enjoyment of timepieces comes from the craftmanship of what goes into it, not from whether or not I'd actually use the function or not.
For example, a high water resistance is pointless unless you're a saturation diver...... but for me I think of the engineering that goes into making a watch super water resistant.
Same goes for a helium release valve. Apparently it DOES work if you're a saturation diver, but how many on here are?
A 7 or 10 day power reserve on an automatic watch is fairly pointless if you regularly wear it...... but again it's the workmanship and engineering skill that attracts me to it.
Take even the fairly humble standard chronograph. On various threads on here, most people use their chronograph once in a blue moon and mostly it seems just while cooking steaks! Do we NEED it? No....., but it's still an interesting thing to have.
Distilling this "is it actually needed" train of thought to it's ultimate end, you can even start to question the point of having a mechanical watch at all in these days of mobile phones with clock functions and computers with the time in the bottom corner.
For me, a watch is more than just something that tells the time and/or has whatever other functions it may have : it's a miniature engineering marvel to my mind, and if it has some cool complications and/or technical abilities then that just increases my enjoyment of it further.
Even the unwearable Titanic watch by RJ. In my opinion that is a watch that has become a piece of art. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. Enjoyment of things can take many forms, and this is one that you look at but can't wear. No different to something like owning a robe worn by Henry VIII - you'd never wear it, but it'd still be a great thing to own : something that should be functional, but is now a piece of art.
Yes we may not NEED a whole lot of the functions watches come with, but they're still damn cool, and I for one wouldn't want to be without them!
just joking...