Who else has noticed that your armor rating stays intact when in VL form? Last night I was killing some mammoths with my VL's claws and I noticed that I was taking pretty minor damage from mammoth attacks. I looked at my health when one hit me and I only took like 22/23 points of damage which is like 2/3's of what you should be taking if unarmored(65). My character is level 46 and had an AR of 422. I let a mammoth hit me in human form and I received the same amount of damage.

Pre Dawnguard as a werewolf I would take tons of damage from arrows, I was expecting the same from VL but I was literally immune to arrows from guards, I can just zap them then go in for the power bite if my health is low.

Well, isn't it great? That's what people wanted with werewolves.

Awesome. Now I know that having dragon armor was a good investment.

Actually, I allowed some mammoths to attack my VL again, but this time I had trasformed without my armor equipped and I still took highly reduced damage. This leads me to believe that VL's have a natural damage reduction not tied to your armor. I did have the lord stone and necromage but 62 AR would not knock 40 point's of damage off a mammoths attack. My character is a fairly high level so maybe the VL's damage reduction is level based. Are there any low level VL's out there(closer to 10 the better) that could tell me how much damage they take from mammoth attacks for comparison?