I'm fairly new to Oblivion (picked it up after Skyrim) and I'm on my second playthrough, starting as a mage. By luck, my first sigil stone gave me a fire shield enchant and after getting access to the Arcane University I was able to add a few shield enchanted rings and shirts to my character. I realized that my armour rating at fairly low level was very quickly significantly better than my previous heavy armour warrior playthrough. It strikes me that permanent shield enchants on clothing is actually far superior to armour; a 13 point elemental shield enchant on shirt, pants, rings and necklace very quickly gets me to a armour rating of 65, much higher than I could get with light or heavy armour until much later in the game, far less encumbrance, and no worries about armour degrading. Am I missing something, or are shield enchants really more beneficial than armour?

They really are.

Obviously that's not entirely true. One needs to consider that armor can also be enchanted, so it's possible to get that rating even higher. It's also possible, with enchanted armor, to have the benefit of armor rating plus some other useful enchantment.

But, yes, for many characters, the enchanted clothing is a better option.

Just some rambling thoughts on the subject. . .

Pros and cons to both, but they are close and the diffs become pretty limited to durability and spellcasting efficiency at higher levels. Either can be used to provide the max (85) armor rating by higher character levels. The beauty of that is you can truly go for the most important thing of all in selecting apparel: How it looks! Seriously, that is the only criteria I use for apparel.

As glargg says, with armor, you can exploit the fact that (at higher levels) your armor provides a great deal of inherent protection. That frees you to enchant it with things other that shield type enchantments. Repairing armor at high levels is easy since it has high durability and a single hammer will last forever. You can also repair it to 125% which increases its protection and durability even further. If your character gets hit a lot, the extra durability found in heavy armor (over light) is very convenient - that's why many melee type characters opt for heavy.

Clothing avoids any spell casting penalty (the best spell casting even a master of their armor can achieve wearing any armor is 95%). You're right that clothing needs no repair.

You may be right that clothing might have an edge at lower levels, but only after you can enchant your own gear. Enchanted armor requires some higher repair skills whereas, again, enchanted clothing does not. Might be worth remembering though that if you use any type of weapon, you will want the ability to repair enchanted gear anyway, if only for your weapon.

At lower levels, that fact that clothing weighs less than armor can help you carry more loot which translates to money.

Most of my characters favor Morag Tong armor; it is light weight and has multiple enchantments. You have to have DLC Mehrunes Razor though in order to get it.

Thanks, everyone. Interesting points. So far I'm still pretty low level with this mage build (11) so I'm really finding the high armour rating from enchanted clothes a huge benefit at this stage, especially in encounters where I can't avoid the melee swarm. It sounds as though the benefits of enchanted clothing over armour may have a bit of a shelf life at higher levels, as has been noted the armour repair becomes less of an issue and you can throw on other useful enchants other than shield.

The one type of magic where armor is a definite liability is Illusion. At high level, you need 100% effectiveness (no armor at all) for spells like Command and Frenzy to function on enemies who are scaled to your level.