I think that almost everyone can agree that light armor is best for an archer. I was using a full set of Dragonscale armor, until I found did the Thalmor Embassy MQ. After escaping, you pop out near the edge of the map. I saw a stone marker, and went over to it. After killing my horse by falling off of a small drop, I found the steed stone. This stone increases your carry weight by 20 and makes armor give you no movement penalty. This means that you'll be able to wear heavy armor as an archer, and still be able to move around quickly. While you are wearing it, you can let your heavy armor skill go up to 70 until you can get the perk that makes heavy armor weigh nothing. Now, during this time, you'll be sacrificing some sneak because of the noise, but the ebony mail chestpiece can make you much better at sneaking.

I love comments! The good, the bad, and the ugly!

Skyrim lets you do things like this and puts a whole new meaning to "hybrid," but I'm at a tossup about whether or not I like it. I like the freedom to create any playstyle. I hate the lack of structure, if that makes any sense.

this sums up pretty much every "skyrim vs any other TES game" argument we had on this forum
the answer is...depends on what the player likes the most.

Heavy armor eventually becomes weightless and light armor eventually reaches the armor cap. So they're ultimately identical.. pick which one you like the look of.

Not to mention a Muffle enchant slapped on the heavy boots makes heavy armor just as sneaky.

Steed increased my carry by 100 but i have a lot f stamina. Definitely worth it

For weightless, capped armor: Elven takes 5 perks and Steel takes 6. And since Unhindered is virtually useless, it's more like 4 for Elven. So if perks are tight, Light Armor has a slight quantifiable advantage.

Yeah, I went that route too, now I have to go around dressed like an elf

I have a heavy armor wearing Khajiit archer who runs with the Steed stone, for just this reason. He's still low level, so the high-tier heavy armor perks are a long way off. This allows him to run & gun a little better (though I didn't notice a *huge* difference tbh), and lets him do a bit of footwork for when the claws come out in melee.

People complain about the stone & perk being redundant, but each one is a choice - spend a perk point, or forego other stone powers.

But yeah, heavy armor is good when you're playing a mostly non-sneaky archer and hand-to-hand fighter.

You are aware your playing an Elder Scrolls Game? A common motto for the Elder Scrolls is "do what you want, be who you want". In my opinion there is no argument for a heavy armor archer, because you can play how you want to play . I've made up some crazy characters myself but they still work, just not as efficiently, but back to your point, is is a good use for the steed stone I have to say

I have a heavy armor wearing Dunmer nightblade that picked heavy armor because he looks good in it and he just could not bring himself to wear any of that pansy high elf armor. My Dunmer kills high elves on sight, bashing them in the face with his shield and then running them through with a bound sword.

You can hit the armor cap with either light or heavy armor. It is easy enough to make either light or heavy weightless early on as the OP did, and they both have perks for it when you pick up a little skill. You can move quietly in either with muffle (either spell or enchantment).

The main difference I see apart from aesthetics, is that light armor gives you perks for increased stamina regen and heavy armor lets you fall twice as far and be staggered half as much.

Also the Wind Walker perk in the Light Armour tree outdoes any of the Heavy Armor perks (apart from the lv100 one obviously). The falling damage and stagger reductions hardly ever come into play and don't really help much anyway, and the Fists of Steel perk is only useful for a very specific playstyle since brawls are so easy in the game.

This is only if you're really being very careful with every perk chosen.... Heavy Armor perks are still fun to get if you're playing the game more casually or RPing.

^ Tower of Strength is actually completely broken... so dumb.

Arrg! Just checked the UESP and you are right. That is yet another bugged perk. So far there is Tower of Strength, Deflect Arrows, Atronach, Shadow Warrior, Elemental Potency, Shield Charge and how many other perks with serious bugs? I really hope these get fixed.

Of course a Heavy Armor Archer is viable. I'm currently playing a Redguard Sellsword in full Ebony Plate/Dual Ebony Swords and Bow + Steed Stone. So much fun.

Somewhat ironically, a Heavy Armor archer who fights in the open would be better served with a Light material bow. They fire faster than Heavy material ones while not doing that much less damage, which provides more opportunities to trigger the Paralyze and/or Stagger perks as well as to deliver any enchantment(s) on the bow. You'd also want the Quick Draw perk; it greatly reduces draw time, which translates to a significantly increased rate of fire.

If you go for the stealthy approach, however, you're much better served wearing Light armor, as you start out 'quieter' than in Heavy, which is essential for low-level sneaking since you don't have the 'less/no noise' perks yet. You probably want a Heavy bow, though; they hit harder per shot, and you're not concerned with rate of fire when each shot is a kill.

This is true- till you see that light armor costs less perks (can skip matching set) and has better perks (stamina regen) and (dodge 1/10)
When at cap armor: Light armor > heavy armor

Which is a problem and needs to be patched. Heavy armor should be clearly a choice for "tank" oriented melee/magic characters and light for everyone else.

My highest skill atm is One Handed. Following that are Heavy Armor, Archery, and Sneak. I took the Steed stone as well, and I'm liking it. Currently, my Glass Bow and my Dwarven Bow of Thunderbolts are 2 of my best weapons. If I get my enchanting skill up some, I can put a nice, powerful absorb health spell on my Ebony Sword. I also want to get it higher before putting anything on that Glass Bow.

Light Armor tree has the superior perks compared to heavy armor. Personally I took heavy purely for Sauron's armor.

My archer uses heavy armour because that's what he's found in his travels, I've found eminent archery things for heavy archery but I've only found Major archery items for light armour. Will I eventually find helmets that have peerless archery on them?, I've only found that with circlets at present.

Heavy armour works out well, I have 200 magic, 250 stamina and those are capped now, everything goes into health now. I use muffle spell and bound bows, think I do over 150 damage a shot now so no real reason to start enchanting things to get maximum fort archery.

I would like the weightless perk but I don't think I will reach 70 in heavy armour, I'm only at 36 because I hardly ever get hit as an archer and I'm not power levelling this character.

Well I say I'm not power levelling, I started a rule where I would craft a zillion Iron Daggers with this character and only use materials that I found in the wild, well with all the horse hides and bear, wolf etc hides that I picked up while exploring it still levelled up super quick. Same with enchanting, only enchant stuff I found, well I came out of one Dwemer ruin with so many soul gems it was unreal, enchanting stuff with them got me up tons of levels.

You can always disenchant a Heavy item and put the enchantment on a Light one, often to a higher degree than the original if your Enchantment skill is high enough. The amount of enchantment already on the item doesn't matter, since it's the effect itself you're after for this purpose.

That said, you can find both Light and Heavy helmets with +Archery enchantments on them of all degrees, so if you decide to not craft your own stuff you can go either way with no loss in performance.

A heavy armor character needs some kine of ranged attack so it is either bows or magic.

I spet a lot of time thinking about what armor my archer should wear. And then one day I realized he very rarely ever gets hit.

Mage robes for me. So there.