Hello!
I don't know if I was supposed to make this thread in the "Bugs" section, but since this is for discussing game mechanics, I suppose it's ok to post here. If not, I kindly ask for a Moderator to move it.

OK. I wonder if the Mage Armor perks are working correctly. I mean the perks in the Alteration tree, the ones that give a x3(maximum) increase to the ___flesh spells.

I did some tests. Done on Adept difficulty.

I have Ebonyflesh with Mage Armor x3. This gives me (in the items screen) an Armor Rating of 300. I assume the Active Effects is bugged, since the display there shows only 100. No, I don't wear any other armor that might influence Ebonyflesh.

Right, with EF giving a 300 AR, I cornered a big Mudcrab and let him hit me. On his single attack he ALWAYS hits for 6 hp.

With no armor AT ALL, his attacks hit for 25 hp.

Then I wanted to test how the normal Armor is working (meaning by wearing pieces of armor). I added some Daedric Armor and increased my skill just enough to get 300 AR from that.
Now, with the Daedric giving me 300 AR, I went to the Mudcrab again, and this time he ALWAYS hits me for 2-3 hp....

Okaayy! So what is going on? Maybe I don't understand the armor rating, maybe Mage armor 300 AR works differently than Normal Armor 300 AR...

This might not seem much, but if we talk in percentages, the normal AR gives a 50% better resistance than Mage AR. On a mudcrab that might seem like nothing, BUT if you get hit by something that does 150 damage with Normal AR, you could get hit with 300 damage with mage AR....

Like I said, maybe I don't understand the way Armor works...
This might seem silly, but I find it useful for someone who wants to play a mage with just cloth.

So, is it broken or working as intended?

Hmm...Did you have the perk that gives you a bonus if you wear matching armor? I hear its a hidden +100,so you actually would have had 400 armor.

It's not hidden. Those armor perks are calculated into your rating on the Items screen directly.

Example: That's why you can be wearing everything but a helmet with 200 total rating, then add the matching helmet(with an armor rating of 20) and see your total armor go to around 430, depending on the armor set.

Special sets like the Nightingale armor have an extra bonus for wearing the whole set which appears in the active effects page.

really? Sounds like that might be bugged then O.o

which would be awful since that is the ONLY saving grace for rollin in cloth.

That hidden +100 is there regardless of perks, and has nothing to do with whether your armor is matching or not (it's actually +25 per piece of armor worn.) But the end result is the same, if you're wearing all daedric and your displayed AR is 300, its actually 400, while with the mage armor it really is only 300.

ninja'd by Imp!

what hidden +100 is this from?

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Armor linky to the wiki that explains the "hidden armor" under the "Armor Rating" category.

It's just a weird thing about armor, you can read about it on the wikis. I don't think there is any proper explanation for why exactly it works that way.

There's no real explanation why that I'm aware of, its just the way the game determines your damage resistance (the equations are listed on http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Armor.) The armor rating you see in the inventory menu is calculated based on the base armor rating of the equipment worn, multiplied by skill and perk effects. The game then adds in another 25 points per piece of armor worn, then multiplies that result by 0.12 to get damage resistance.

So Ebonyflesh with x3 Mage Armor Perk only has 36% DR...not a lot...but then again we are squishy mages....

I'm playing a cloth + mage armor dual wielder at the moment I'm cheating a little though - I'm using a mod called Balanced Magic that bumps the armor spell duration a bit. I was thinking that once the CK came out I'd rework the armor spells so that you activate them once, and they stay on permanently but reduce your magicka pool by a fixed amount until you deactivate them, but I'm actually kind of liking the way it is in now.

I've heard of that hidden +100 for armor before, and I have to ask, is that supposed to be by design, or is that just a bug that never got fixed? My suspicion is that it's there because, as they were developing the game, they found from tester feedback that armor was viewed by players as entirely too useless early in the game - even when you had a matched set of smithed (fine) armor, you didn't see any meaningful difference from when you weren't wearing armor, so they decided to boost it a little bit so that early in the game, you would still have some noticeable benefit from wearing a full set of armor. The unfortunate thing about this "hidden" bonus.

I mean, think about it - when you first arrive in Riverwood, without that 100 bonus, and with your skill at like level 25 with no perks, or one perk, you probably wouldn't actually see any difference between wearing armor and not wearing armor if you only have 55 or 65 armor from that Imperial, Steel, or Leather armor you're wearing. That was sort of true in Morrowind, I remember, but you wore armor anyhow just to get your skill up, and after a few levels, you could start to see a difference.

^Dragonhide still gives you 80% (which is max)... it just has a long cast time, high mana cost, and short duration to keep it from being over-used (eg; if you're getting 1-shotted by a boss, next time cast Dragonhide first instead of EbonyFlesh)

The other thing about mages is that, played right, you should almost never be taking any melee attacks - you get ranged attacks with stagger, AoE attacks that kills most enemies quickly, conjured daedra that can tank for you, illusions spells and poisons that can paralyze or confuse your enemy, so played right, you shouldn't need a lot of armor because you shouldn't be taking much damage (well, later in the game; it can be kinda dodgy early-mid game).

if this is true this just feels like herp derp to me...

why not just raise EVERYTHINGS armor rating then?

I mean FFS I have mage-armor and stoneflesh giving me 120 armor....

so my fairly significant investment into alteration for armor is about equal to wearing...

20 pts of armor?????????????

wtf?!?

I'm seriously thinking about getting that mod. I somehow managed to play a pure mage (focusing on Destruction) on Expert thus far, but gosh it's kinda hard!

Yeah, I wish that one lasted longer! For Gods' sake, it lasts as long as it takes to cast!


Yes, you're totally right! But the game doesn't offer too much in Dodging, Evading, agility, so it can be pretty hard. Especially when you're surrounded by 3 Deathlords...

The way it seems like it should work is that you should be trading max damage resistance for various benefits. Heavy has the highest damage resistance, but has speed, stealth, and stamina penalties. Light has lower damage resistance but smaller penalties. Cloth+armor spell has the least damage resistance and no penalties. But it doesn't really work out that way - light armor can hit the same 80% armor cap that heavy can, plus it has a perk that will actually increase stamina regen rate, and both have perks that reduce worn armor weight and speed/stealth penalties. So there really ends up being no incentive to go without armor.

What I'd like to see is a bonus to all enchantments if you are wearing all cloth, like +25% enchantment strength, plus destruction damage fortifying enchantments similar to the melee and archery ones, that way you could create a real glass cannon character that had max damage but minimum damage resistance. That would make the armor spell's 36% max damage resistance a lot more balanced (though I think light armor should have a lower DR cap than heavy, like 60% or so, and the zero worn armor weight perks should be reworked to be less overpowered.)

*Edit -




It's a pretty good mod, the magicka regen rate adjustment is another really good change it makes (though it's hampered by the fact that you won't regen magicka while casting, so chain casting spells still makes it so that your magicka regen rate is effectively zero.) One thing I don't really like about it though is that you get the bonuses from the mage armor perks by default - instead those perks give you a spell cost reduction (all spells from all schools.)

Once the CK is out I'm thinking about making my own rebalance tweaks and getting rid of balanced magic, though I'm not sure if I'm going to release it.

Mage Armor perks are useless later in the game when you get the Master Alteration spell Dragonhide. This spell does not need any of the Mage Armor perks, and cancels any of the armor boosting spells svck as Stoneflesh ect. Dragonhide gives you 80% dam resistance which is the maximum dam resistance in the game =)

Dont get Mage Armor~

except that Dragon hide's duration is short, and you can't cast it (cheaply enough for combat) until 100 alteration.

EbonyFlesh provides 36% DR... a far cry from cap, but also a far cry better than nothing. Furthermore you can cast it and it will stay up for 3 minutes... not 30 seconds!

Dragonhide is your (well crap, I'm getting one-shot even with EbonyFlesh up) spell.... EbonyFlesh is enough to protect you from getting oneshot from some random archer or your avg melee enemy without having to recast CONSTANTLY

Seems to me the easiest way to fix mage armor is to make it +1x, +2x, +3x instead of +1x, +1.5x, +2x

This would result in 400 armor for EbonyFlesh

Which would make it = to 300 armor with 4 pieces of armor equipped.

Sooo with this hidden armor rating do you only need 467 displayed armor rating?, because the hidden armor bonus will take it up to cap at 567?, because if that's the case I could get some of the low tier armor up to cap with less perks invested in armor trees.

No, the 567 is what your displayed armor rating needs to be when wearing 4 pieces of armor, so you really need 667 (667 x 0.12 = 80.04).

Argh damnit, least that means I haven't wasted perks in armor like I have in other areas. Btw do you know how people found out about this hidden rating?, was it through PC users fiddling with the console?.