I made an earlier post about a dual wield char and got some great responses. I was now wondering about sword and board. Which armor would be better with sword and board, heavy or light? I know you're quicker with light, but mitigate more with heavy. Now, with the shield, is it a huge difference in mitigation or no? I'd imagine heavy is way better but I figured I'd ask. Thanks in advance.

Heavy armours are heavier than light, yes they provide extra protection. But would you rather be slowed down with this or light armours with speed and mobility? Having heavy armour will drain down your stamina like crazy if you tried to run, less for light armours.

Shield have low mitigation until you start to place skill points into it.

For maximum mitigation you go heavy armor.
If you are EXTREMLY focused on your shield block, and always block first then pop in with counter attacks, then I would consider light armor for the 50% stamina regeneration perk.

It does not matter if you are naked or wear armor when your shield is maxed out with perks.

I feel that for 2h or dual wield heavy armor is the way to go, you just need to invest heavily into stamina before dipping into health. Cause you need that mitigation in order to survive.
A highly focused block and one handed melee character, as per above, can consider light armor.
I would personally still go for heavy armor, to ensure that the hits that do go through, dont.
But, shield bashes costs alot of stamina and is an essential tool for overcoming enemies with that tactic, and as such,light armor should not be disregarded, but ONLY due to one perk, +50% stamina reg,

Last but not least: The later heavy armor versions looks incredibly better then the light armor versions of Elven and Glass. Orkish, Ebony and Daedric armor looks kick [censored].
But to finish that off: You can wear dragon armor as both light AND heavy, there is a version of both, and I believe they look identical. So as for looks, since you will eventually wear dragon armor anyway, IF you are a smith, which you always should be with a melee character, it does not matter what type you take.

Dont for forget magic protection, those bandits or necromancers can run fast and pop you good. Having heavy or light armours does not protect you from magic attacks, heavy/light only aborbs physical damage that all.

Double damage when sprint attacking perk....................
Trust me, casters that runs away from my orc just dies faster:-)
But you are right.

There is nothing like being slowed by frost in heavy armor and watching the nimble mage run away from you.
But thats when some shouts come into use to shorten distance dramatically:-)

I have been playing a light armor focused sword and board character for the last few days. I'm not purely sword and board, have a decent amount in both stealth and archery. The idea is kind of to be a skirmisher. Its been a pretty mixed bag up to level 20 so far. The stamina cost of bash is very very prohibitive to long fights and 1h is pretty weak outside of sneak modifiers and power attacks. So essentially, at least early, you can play pretty technically sound within your build but will still have some problems verse the boss level guys in dungeons. I've gotten around this a bit by what i've come to call "boxing" in other games. Jousting is also kind of fitting for it. Basically you run in range, they start to swing, you back out and run it after they miss and get a few swings before dancing back out. This will give you some time to recover your stamina for bashing. Given that i still feel like it plays how i envisioned a skirmisher type build to play.

My other build was a 2h warrior with a pretty good investment in blocking with heavy armor. Its the same general problem but your damage is good enough that can you focus more on bashing than power attacking for damage. Honestly i wouldn't go a sword and board heavy armor build without also abusing smithing and enchanting to some extent.

I planned on using the shield perks to get the magic resists. They seem too good to pass up. I'm still confused as to which armor to wear though. It sounds like heavy will be the better choice for a more meat shield type character, but light will let me attack and bash a lot more. For fighting tougher enemies, which would work better? Or is it just a matter of play style?

Good advice too Karras thank you.

Hmm i never really considered going light for this build. Currently my char is level 32 with nearly all shield, 1H and heavy armor perks, wearing legendary dragon armor. I can take on about 4 melee enemies at a time, only casters give me a bit of trouble. The 50% stam regen from light sounds good, but ive invested too far into heavy at this point to change. I do use a necklace that gives 30% stam regen though and will probably enchant some other gear to help out

I prefer light armor simply because it allows me for faster movement (at least until I take the no weight perk, if I take it at all) to move in and out for quick strikes, aswell as the stamina regen perk of light armor, I am a block junkie so the loss in armor isnt that much of a problem, especially considering even with heavy armor, moving in and out was still needed in some cases, so why not get the added speed and stamina imo.

as for them itigation difference well, when you block, you dont notice much difrence at all, but when you DONT... ouch.. its pretty noticeable
MY gameplay is usually one that keeps circling/flanking my oponent while moving in and out for quick swings, light armor favours this alot, but if you prefer to take hits and counter attack, stick to heavy armor.


elemental shield perk (or whatever the name is) and shield charge rocks agaisnt casters, but I also use a piece or two with +magic resistance
but yeah light armor is better for that, drains less stamina and has stamina regen on top of it

Light armor allows you to avoid all damage, some of the time, while heavy will reflect some damage, all of the time.

Sems to me that Light is best for a 1H/shield user, while Heavy is best for a 2H user.

Any more opinions? Starting my character in a little bit.

Eh, if I wouldn't even focus on light or heavy perks. Invest heavily in smithing early on and make whatever armor you want to wear to improve your armor and weapons all the way to legendary. There's only 2 good perks, imo for light and heavy and they are not worth wasting so many perks to get them and that's the perk that makes heavy armor weightless and not slow you down and the 50% stamina regeneration with light.

Smithing > Heavy Armor or Light Armor perks.

This way you can be like me and wear whatever you want, whenever you want.

I would go with heavy.

I am just about finishing my first playthrough with a Sword and board/Restoration/Heavy Armor character

I really enjoy heavy armor...if you stick with it for most the game you can get the perk where you wont be slowed down anymore while waring HA (but it does take a while unless you find a group of wolves and let them beat on you).

I will probably remake my same character but with a class with build in resists or high elf for mana (i was imperial), plus I may completly avoid block tree and go 2 hander and 1 handers instead. 2 hander to beat on people or resto in one hand and a 1 hander for other situations.

If anything in the future ill put one point into block and leave it alone after that.

Light armor requires more blocking, but the extra stamina means more shield bashes, blocks, and power attacks.

The shield also offsets Light Armor's low damage mitigation.

Go naked.

Honestly I would say light.

1 on 1 light armor is fine, but when fighting crowds its hard to block every strike.
Heavy armor helps here.

Sword and Board with Heavy armor is beast.
I also have no need to sprint, most of the time I don't even power attack;
I save my stamina for bashing...
the perk where it slows time if you block during an enemies power attack is vital for me.

I was impressed at how this character still had 90% of his HP left after fighting the snow troll everyone
was having problems with.