How does one determine which is better?

If heavy armor offers better protection even without any passives, when are light or medium armor better with their passives? Is the difference between light/medium/heavy armor protection equally small as passives you receive from armor points allocation?

I was thinking along these lines also. I have heard so much talk on these forums about a certain armor type being useless or that it's only viable to go 'full medium' for stamina builds or 'full light' for just about anything etc etc but these are only the case if you actually TAKE the passives from that skill line.

So at least in the early levels when you're still filling up your skill bar, I don't see that it matters at all. I will personally go for the higher armor protection whilst still wearing a few pieces of armor from line I intend to specialise in later to ensure that it skills up.

But even when you start taking passives, you have to look at what the passive is giving you. If you take one that gives you a higher max magicka but you are already at the soft cap from attributes or gear, then it's not providing very much benefit. And that's a strategy to take into consideration - you can modify your armor hugely with enchants. You could wear heavy armor and enchant it all with max magicka and magicka regen instead of taking light armor for the passives.

If this is true, then there is hardly any incentive to wear anything but heavy armor.

Well no because eventually you WILL be putting points into those passives, just probably not in the early levels. And the point is - you have choices. If you have a build where you never intend to get hit (eg kiting from ranged) then armor is kinda pointless anyway so you would probably dump all of your points into skills that gave you magicka / stamina and for that you'd want light or medium depending on your build.

Not if you can hit the softcap without having to use the passives. They become superfluous, because now I not only have my stam/magicka maxed out, but also am able to have the added protection of heavy armor. This is only true though for those who are solely focusing on those stats. There are other passives in the Med, and Light trees that some may want, but for those going for the most efficient way to max those stats out, this could be the easiest way.

Why would anyone want to put points into a stamina/magicka passive when the max could be achieved without them? This is exactly what you said in your first reply, "You could wear heavy armor and enchant it all with max magicka and magicka regen instead of taking light armor for the passives."

That is quite an investment though in either crafting or cash to buy the enchants / armor every couple of levels to keep yourself geared in that way. I think this game is all about choices. You have attributes, the armor itself, the enchants on that armor, passives from both armor skill lines and some other skills dotted around. You can achieve your stat goals by all sorts of combinations of those things.

I do think though that in the very early levels, the additional armor from heavy is handy when you've only got a handful of skills but as you progress in the game and your choices open up then you have a lot more options open.

I worried about this, too. Does having a little extra magicka or stamina counter-balance the lower armor ratings? I had a templar with nearly-full heavy armor and I was perpetually out of magicka (and often stamina, since it's used for blocking/interrupt, running, sneaking, etc)... so the extra armor was nice, but since I had no resources to DO anything, I had a tough time. Granted, this was at lower levels and at higher levels I could have gotten passives and such to help resource management...

I don't generally care for the look of heavy armors, but it's hard to argue with that big high-armor value when comparing two pieces. In the last beta, I was surprised to see I was "overcharged" (or whatever it said) for magicka regeneration. Not sure HOW that's possible, but it was in orange text, warning me I might want to re-allocate stuff... nice feature, that.

At least Heavy armor belts and helms (which can be hidden) aren't too obvious, and that leaves five armor slots for light or medium that, cosmetically, I prefer.

Agreed. It all depends on what you want for your endgame build.