I wanna know something about how stagger works and discuss on it. (correct me if I say something wrong) Stagger is a short stun that interrupts your action. This can be really powerfull when used against wizards who charge their spells for more powerfull effect and fighters with 2 handed weapons, since you can interrupt their action just before they finish it.

You can't get knocked down from being staggered since there is no agility, but now more classes have the ability to stagger.(Does it affect movement speed like slow you down when you get hit?)

Archers, Destruction mages have 50% chance to stagger you each time they hit you, 2H warriors also have a high chance (don't know the %), warriors with shield can Power Bash you and stagger you whenever they want to and dual wielders attack so fast they can stagger you too a lot.

Now when it comes to choice of armor type in Skyrim the main difference between heavy and light armor is that light armor gives more stamina regeneration and heavy reduces all stagger by 50% and more protection.

So what do you think that will be the best armor for a each type of warrior (dual wielding, 2 handed and a shield warrior) ? The combat didn't change a lot so you can speculate if you played a warrior in Oblivion, though I didn't so I'm asking you.

Edit : The heavy variant is about ~14.7% more armor with the shields included. If you aren't using a shield, dragonplate is about ~16.8% more armor than dragonscale.