right, but I don't think there are any HA versions. Which makes sense, because it is heavy armor after all.. I just didn't think about how cool he'd look down the road I guess. Now he is in steel plate which looks ok I guess..

light armour all tehe way even when i make a character for heavy armour i still end up useing light armour due to lack of carrying capacity ....

Which really doesn't matter, since there's not that big a difference between them unless you engage in extreme smithing; at that point you can one-shot everything anyway, no matter what weapons you use, so you're not actually gaining anything by using Daedric or Ebony instead of Glass or Elven.

They could have given Heavy Armor a significant boost by cutting the coefficient used in the AR equation in half (from 0.12 to 0.06); this has the effect of raising the amount of displayed AR necessary to hit the cap from 567 to 1233, assuming four pieces are being worn. This is a value Light Armor has considerable difficulty attaining (Dragonscale can do it with perks and extreme smithing, not sure about Glass or Elven) but that is well within the reach of the better types of Heavy Armor.

Of course, that's only a start; certain perks would need to be reworked as well, so that Heavy Armor's stealth penalties cannot be erased, and Light Armor would need some sort of added benefit to counterbalance the fact the wearer can no longer take a hit until/unless highly improved. Things like these would go a long way toward making the choice of which one to wear actually mean something other than how good/bad your character looks while splitting heads.

Light armor means light on your feet.


























Smart!

Daedric weapons aren't that much better than Glass (or even Skyforge Steel, which are available quite early on), and you can save even more perks by choosing Light Armor without investing much, if anything, in that tree. I certainly wouldn't want to wear heavy armor without investing quite a bit to get the weightless-when-worn perk, though (or use the Steed Stone I guess, forgoing all the other options). The one exception I can think of would be to wear the Wolf Armor, which - if I remember correctly - has weight that's more comparable to light armor, and it looks pretty decent to boot.

I find it rather annoying that light armor can - without even investing many/any perks in its tree - reach the cap and be just as good as heavy armor, but Alteration's defensive spells aren't nearly as good, despite having fairly poor duration and high magicka cost.

One of the stark differences noone is mentioning is wear.

In MW & OB light armor degraded significantly faster than heavy. Because our gear remains magically at 100% we have lost that part of the gameplay.

i'm with you. it becomes cosmetic.

what i'm now promoting with help from others is the fact that powerleveling in superez in skyrim. too many perks add nothing of consequence to the overall power of your characters.

the mantra on this board has been that you must specialize, lol. that is absolutely NOT true.

like i've said: skyrim is a game that forces you to roleplay. it's specialty is it's rp value.

I love light armor, as it allows you to sprint in and out of combat using less stamina, leaving you more for power attacks, giving you a higher damage output.
And you can always exploit enchanting later and give your favourite set of light armor have as much protection as legendary daedric armor.

with the correctly thought-out hybrid you not only need less stamina rejuvination, but your total stamina value is high enough (no increases in magicka EVER) that your only deficit would be if you want to sprint out of combat for a bit longer.

Excellent point. I'm still confused why armor/weapon degradation was taken out of the game. There's no reason it couldn't have been part of the Smithing skill, and it could have thrown a little variety into the frighteningly dull Smithing perk tree.

Also, creating a perk that completely eliminates the weight of heavy armor is arguably the stupidest decision Bethesda has ever made. It really does bring it down to a matter of cosmetics, which is a shame.

the elimination of degradation is one of gamesas's WORST decisions, in skyrim.

inexcusable.

IIRC, it was taken out because it was a real hassle to deal with due to the rate at which said wear occurred. While I don't particularly miss it I do agree that an improved version could have been worked into the Smithing skill, however that runs the risk of making Smithing a bit too important, much like how Armorer was in previous games (that it was also tied to Endurance, which was vital to raise early on, didn't help either).

Yeah, I can't figure out how they thought that was a good move either, as anyone with more than three functional brain cells would realize that no matter how skilled you are at moving around in it, a set of plate mail still has a significant amount of weight and it's still going to hinder you a bit when you do so. The perk's effects do make sense, as part of RL plate armor design theory holds that the wearer has to be able to move well on the battlefield (this theory is part of modern ballistic vest designs, by the way), however the perk itself should have been left out as part of the Heavy/Light dichotomy.

Steel armor looks amazing, guess someone's just going for the best stuff instead of what looks good. Leather and steel all the way.

In Oblivion you could get the same armor rating with light or heavy armor and both had a weightless perk (although you got it sooner in light than heavy). I think light armor should get a weightless perk and heavy armor should get a "weighs half as much" perk but not a weightless perk to differentiate the two while at the same time allow experienced heavy armor wearers to move more quickly than those donning a suit for the first time. Increasing the AR cap as you suggested would also help to differentiate the two.

Unfortunately, instead of moving that direction, it seems like Bethesda is moving more towards a system where more and more of the "differences" between characters (at least those that affect appearance, like armor and race) are merely aesthetic, with little or no gameplay consequence.

No way - item degradation in Oblivion was horrendously tedious. Hearing that "crunch" of repair hammers breaking several times in a row left me wanting to kick a puppy, and since I got tired of taking enormous damage after a few battles (because my armor was so worn down that it was borderline useless), I said the heck with it and just started enchanting clothing with various Elemental Shield effects from Sigil Stones. Eliminating item degradation was one of the best design decisions they made for Skyrim. I wouldn't be opposed to some kind of degradation system, but the implementation in Oblivion was really awful, and Skyrim is leaps and bounds better in that regard.

Strange. I see no reason not to go heavy. I can do anything in heavy I can do in light, and once perked out it's weightless. And to me, it's the light armors that's hideous. Elven doesn't look horrible if you don't mind looking like a Thalmor soldier, but glass is obnoxious, and most of the other light armors don't even have pants. Don't like the guild specific armors (thief and brotherhood) because I don't like the guilds. The other decent light armors aren't available for most of my character's career (I don't craft, so I can't wear 'em until I start finding them).

The heavy armors have decent options from level one.

looks like someone's going rp, instead, of all powerful.

i'm fine with your choice. my choice is screwed up by poor development.

True, elven armor does not look horrible, but both elven and glass look rather effeminate, which is why none of my (male) characters will wear them. Pure sneak characters stick with leather/hide/fur (maybe scale if they need more protection) and all my other characters (including my Dunmer nightblade) go with heavy, except robed mages. But I got bored of my robed mage pretty quickly due to lack of variety in spells, and I have not played him in months.

I didn't like the look of Green Glass Armor in Morrowind so that drove 90% of my choices for my characters.
[img]http://arcimaestroantares.webs.com/Miei%20Mods/Living%20Armor.jpg[/img]

I never liked the look of fur. I really liked the Tribunal Medium/Heavy
[img]http://www.spielemagazin.de/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/morrowind-1.jpg[/img][img]http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmyeavaOzS1qdjg0ko1_500.jpg[/img]

morrowind is a game that offered newness,variety, and creativity.

skyrim had all the lore and game entrees.

they chose to advance nothing: level what you use is not game advancement.

Wait, are you implying that since Morrowind, TES games have gotten easier and more casual Do tell

if this forum had the like function i would definitely add you.

mainstream and dumbed is fact. i'm tired of debating it.

Almost everything in Oblivion was tedious and unrewarding so I have to agree with you on item degradation.

Somehow I remember in Morrowind it being more balanced?

Morrowind Tribunal ranks as my all time Favorite single player non party based RPG content. It's like Tribunal fixed 90% of what was wrong with Morrowind, and added in all these nice balanced quests and cool rewards. I though Oblivion was going to expand on that.... ROFL

i absolutely agree. nope, we got jobbed.

instead, we get regression and an axe to all skill,perks, attributes, races, weapons, abilities, etc.