What? It's a cap. That means that's where it stops being effective.

One argument for going with Heavy Armour is that you'll be able to reach the cap more easily. While requiring less feats spent on Heavy armour and requiring less enchantments, you'll still be able to max out your effective damage mitigation and yet be able to spend perks elsewhere. Light armour, offering less protection per piece would require more work in order to max it out, detracting from the potential strength you could accumulate in other areas.

Same for both? Ah. Well, then I suppose the thing to say is what somebody previously said: that it's unlikely anybody's gonna get light armor to that level anyway, until they've hit Level Three Zillion or something. Let's put it this way: at any given level and skill level in smithing, you'll have a higher armor rating with heavy armor than with light - right up until you've hit the cap on armor level, waaaaaaaaaaaaay in the future. With heavy armor you hit that cap in like 5,000 hours of playing, with light armor you hit it after 8,000 hours of playing. Either way your character will be collecting Social Security by the point it becomes a concern.

Its not hard to hit the cap, people are already at 1300 armor

No, you can get it to show higher, but the 567 cap still applies.

Next time be more constructive.

Oy. What are people doing, just staying at the Forge until they hit the cap? Granted I'm only Level 18, but I'm not anywhere near that kind of armor rating.

huh didn't know about the armor cap, are weapons capped as well? Also where did people learn the cap at?

As others have already said, heavy armour looks damn fine. I know my warrior looks pretty awesome in her full Daedric suit.

Plus, with the right perks you can use just about any type of heavy armour you like and still have insane protection ratings.

So in other words, heavy armor svcks compared to light armor, and the only good thing with heavy armor is the looks?

Without the use of one of the stone effects..
If you abuse the synergy with the crafting skills it comes down to stamina regen or stagger reduction. You will hit the cap in anything but the very basic armour.
If you don't abuse the crafting synergy the armour matters as light armour will never reach the cap (close with smithing perks but not quite - and without smithing perks not even close).
It also affects the spending of perks, without smithing perks I'm not sure if, or how close, you come to the cap even with Heavy armour.

So it's largely down to your playstyle, and the choices in perk distribution.
So no not useless.

Since when did TES games become about min-maxing rather than doing whatever the hell you want and not caring what works best or what everyone else does?

(Light Armour, always! Except for Morrowind, then it was Medium Armour!)

Even if heavy armor does cap at "only" 567, it's still the best defense. Better than light armor and no armor, and way better than any of the protective spells.

Which, as far as I know, you cannot reach with light armor unless you exploit the crafting.

Only if you look at from the perspective of stats and if that is the case, why are people playing an RPG?

Sneaking is perfectly viable with heavy as well.


There's really no difference late game with heavy vs light.

That 10% chance to reflect damage with heavy armor is much better than the 10% chance to avoid damage with light armor.

Also, in combat, you regenerate stamina slower (I think 1/3 of the normal rate) so how helpful is that 50% faster regen with light armor going to be if it's 50% of that 1/3 in combat? That's still very slow.

Take heavy armor and the Steed stone.

im just going out on alimb because i think im i the minority that plays a "warrior" with light armor. I actually love the way light armor looks and once u get past steel in heavy none of the armor looks like it "belongs' in the game anyways. But thats from a RP perspective, plus with all the talk abouyt about armor caps it looks like ill still have a bit of a challenge in upper levels versuses easy mode =]

Useless? LOL

After 85 hours of axe swinging I am lvl 61 with both 1H and Heavy Armor at 100, fully perked. After standing toe to toe with the toughest the game has to offer and laughing at their pathetic attempts to harm me I decided that I had to change the difficulty or take the heavy armor off. Trolls......please. Dragons(ancient)........blaaaaa. Deathlords........lol. The game was too easy.

I decided to strap on light armor at lvl 55 and boy did that change the game. I could no longer stand toe to toe and actually had to use tactics, not just run up to everything and whack it to death. As much fun as I had I will not play a warrior with 1H, heavy armor, and restoration again. High restoration on a warrior is mean, especially with the perk that heals stamina at the same time. Way too OP.

What makes you think cap is 567? Not saying that is wrong, but how would you know that? People keep stating it but no one ever says how it can be checked.

Well then, I say this calls for the Creation Kit, to remove the cap and see how high we can legitimately get without the game restricting us, sounds silly if the the last few armors cant use their maximum potential.

You win the thread.

Unless you exploit the interplay between alchemy, enchanting, and smithing, you're not going to hit the 567 point with any armor, heavy or light. I only get, what, around 530 in a full set of Legendary Daedric armor? That's the best of the best you can get without exploiting the crafting professions. Some of the heavy armors might hit the cap with all of the heavy armor perks, I don't know. But light certainly won't.

in Legendary Dragon armor(heavy) my character has 926 Defense, with heavy armor perks, I can walk through traps unscathed, and pretty much go afk while bandits beat me down, don't forget even if you have smithing at 100 those enchanted pieces that increase the % of refinement still boost defense when upgrading armor

Since everyone seems to be ignoring this post i'll just repeat it:

Can we get a source or link for that cap info please?

I'd like to know where people get this info from.