The pro of light armor: My character wants to wear it.
The con of heavy armor: My character does not want to wear it.

I don't see how there could be any misunderstanding here?

In fact my character does carry a heavy shield - well, who wouldn't? Why? Because they want to. In an earlier game my characters preferred light armor too but mixed it up with, for example, the Masque of Clavicus Vile (heavy), heavy left pauldron, light right pauldron, medium left gauntlet, cloth right glove all topped bottomed off with a nice pair of comfortable shoes chosen to match their Telvanni robe.

You can never have too much choice!

I run around with 350 mana, 320 health, 700 stamina on my guy because I got sick of running out of breath when running. My guy with 180 hours play time has 120lbs just worth of quest items that cannot be dropped and 50 lbs of weapons/secondary armor. But I literally hold alt down at all times while moving, even in combat lol. Just close in shield bash power attack gg. I took alduin down in 3 power attacks with one hand and shield. The animation is really quick with a sword too.

A more general statement on "useless".

Saying that something is "best at the end" doesn't mean all that much.

1) Not everyone is looking for "best". "Good enough" is frequently.... well, good enough. :tongue:

2) To get to "the end", you need to play through the beginning and middle. Just because something is best/good "at the end" doesn't change that it might be not what you want in the parts that come before.


...and that's ignoring the whole part where people judge items by varying standards. Some value aesthetics more. Some value weight more. Some value armor rating more. For many, it's a combination of these factors.
(FO:New Vegas, for example - I tried to wear Reinforced Leather as long as I could, even though I had access to better armors. Why? Because it looked great. Eventually, though, I had to upgrade, because with the DT armor system, it just got to be too weak compared to the enemies I was fighting. But I've never worn Power Armor on any character in either FO3 or FO:NV. It's just too ugly. )

Let's see. It will be probably along the lines of: "Having armor was just overly complex way of increasing the amount of blows you can take, so we streamlined it and you'll only have the HP attribute from now on."

But seriously. I'm not using any armor at all, just various cloths for the look of it. I didn't expect it to be a viable option, but surprisingly enough it is. I'm playing level 40ish rogue character on the Adept difficulty.

Edit: I miss the Unarmored skill. Could anyone tell if you get any benefit from Light armor perks even if you don't wear any armor at all?

battlemage = heavy armor ?

im new and im using mage cloaks and Oak alternation spells


what should i use?

Elven armour is sixier.

^ i think hes right

Latest at the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Armor says there is a hard cap to AC effectiveness at 585. Beyond that AC serves no purpose and 20% of damage will still leak through. With 100 skill in Light Armor and all the set perks and 100 skill in Smithing (with the perk in Smiithing to make that type of armor) you cannot quite get to 585 even with Legendary Dragon Scale. With a few simple smithing skill boosting items you can reach 585 with Dragonscale and Glass and (if you can boost smithing to 154) even with Elven. By comparison you can get to 585 with Steel Plate at 100 smithing skill and plain Steel Armor with 135 skill.

Theoretically you could get to 585 even with fur and hide armor but, since they don't have a Smithing perk to make them this would call for an insanely boosted Smithing skill.

With smithing/enchanting/alchemy and light armor perks you can hit the armor cap in light just as heavy.

What this in reality means is that HEAVY armor is pointless/useless because you can also get the 50% stamina regen perk for light - there is no such thing in heavy. Also 10% avoiding damage > 10% reflected damage (because not being hit > being hit).

So the only strengths that HEAVY bring are:

1. easier to hit cap
2. if you like boxing

Light does everything else just as well or better.

With The Steed stone you don't have to worry about weight anymore :wink_smile:

From a straight stats standpoint if you're going melee the increased stamina that light gives at lower skill levels is way better than anything heavy offers. If you're going sword and board your armor goes up at a pitifully low rate as it is. Not to mention the ability to carry multiple sets of armor for specific situations without much encumbrance is awesome. Add in that in heavy armor you're too slow for most of the game to run away from anything and light seems a no brainer. Again, that's just a min/max standpoint. I wear light armor because I think it looks better and fits my character better. For some reason my Nord barbarianess just wouldn't look right in full platemail. It's the same reason I don't wear helmets. Purely from an RP standpoint. It also gives me an excuse to use circlets which I've never bothered with before.