567 is the amount you need to get while using a shield, ~670 AR is the amount without using shield. Its easier to hit the cap without shield with heavy armor but if your a shield user then that dosnt matter and it boils down to the perks. (there is a thread in cheat section where we tested and made the math for this) http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1289727-2419-armor-6399-damage-using-smithing-alchemy-enchanting-only-33-perks-329k-backstabs-post-4/

Light Armor has the benefit of gaining "0 armor weight and no speed penalty" and "+ 50% silent movment" quicker than heavy armor.
50% stamina or stagger is pointless both ways you wont even notice it working in-fight.
10% damage avoided by light armor means you have 1 in 10 chance of avoiding ALL incoming damage while heavy armor only hits the enemy for 10% of the inoming attack while still getting hit for ALL the incoming damage.

Light Armor wins here hands down. :intergalactic:

Here's the thing.

On Master, the game is only challenging early on.

Lategame is piss easy.

Heavy Armor gives you more protection early on when the game is actually challenging.

Later when you've got your crafting maxed it doesn't matter, because it's godmode time, heavy or light.

So heavy wins for a fighter type.

End of thread.

PS: The fact that they don't give armor diminishing returns to make effective HP scale linearly instead of exponentially like it does now is such an amateur mistake that I can't believe Bethesda is still making it.

Umm, no. The max Armor Rating is 85%. Magic Resistance is now capped at 85%, also, unlike prior games. It doesn't matter HOW you get that rating, and you would get it in different ways with different character types, of course. But the defense rating is simply capped, allowing you to strive to get it as your character type dictates.

That's exactly the problem. There is no real distinctive advantage to one or the other, except that heavy has more defense - which makes it the better choice in most cases, imo.

Then of course, posting that is constructive.

*Edit*: I'm in a full set of mixed Daedric, Dragonplate, and Ebony. All improved to Legendary, and I'm only at 488. How are you getting to 567?

Is your heavy armor skill super low and/or do you not have many perks in heavy armor?

You're missing the +25% bonus for all parts being the same type. Also there's more than one level of Legendary.

100 Smithing with perks, 100 Heavy Armour with perks. You will reach the cap around Steel Plate iirc.
With crafting synergy before that.

having all gear of the same class ( light / heavy ) gives 25% more AR - perk
having all gear of the same sort ( all dragon armor ) gives 25% more AR - perk

Lol reading through this thread makes me feel like Skyrim has turned into World of Skyrim: Min-Max-clysm. Maybe after this thread we can discuss the block cap for shields? Maybe even talk about defense cap so enemies cannot crit us.

Just play whatever you want in the game. Personally I prefer the light armour, but originally I intended to play a heavy armoured warrior. Skyrim isn't about min-maxing stats, its not like your competing with other people in a raid to see who can do the highest dps...

On another note, does anyone else think the +25% more effective perk for full set of armour useless for both heavy and light armour trees? I like to mix and match my armour to get the different bonuese from different pieces and the perk to me seems it forces you to wear the same set (not all light or heavy armour, I think the perk conveys you have to wear a full set, i.e., full nightingale armour to get the perk bonus).

Wrong, 100 smithing, 80 light armor, all light perks, full legendary glass = 640 armor, 730 with shield. No enchanting or drinking. You probably missed the fact that the armor skill affects your armor rating.

Nah, one can enjoy multiple aspects of the game at the same time.

The matching set perk is stupid yeah, it gives you an incentive to enchant your own stuff, rendering looting obsolete in the process.

Skyrim has a much...much higher Armor rating then Morrowind and Oblivion, in those 2 the highest standard armor rating you could get was 85.

I skimmed through 4 pages and didnt see where it explains HOW this is known. Closest thing I found was that someone said he tried different levels of armor and it didnt soak up any more damage when over 700 something. How do you know exactly how much damage is being soaked up? Its not like giants hit for the same amount every time is it? Im pretty sure it cant be done statistically since Skyrim doesnt have a logging function, and it isnt even showing what damage hits are afaik. Im not trying to be rude, Im just trying to see how the number is determined. Could you please point me to where this is shown or give me more of a clue how to go about it? Maybe tell me where in the thread you linked is the explanation?

Heavy also has more unarmed damage(useful for brawling!). And muffle makes heavy sneaky. Stam regen in combat is also utterly worthless so you're basically trading 50% less stagger for ... less weight I guess?

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Armour