Do you wear heavy armor for any other reason than looks?

fyendiarb16_ESO

Looks and survivability is why I went heavy armor at first. However pre-VR the looks have now been, well... not improved to say the least. Besides the looks though, I see no reason to wear heavy armor anymore. I feel like I am gimping my character if I am not wearing light armor on my DK (not tanking dungeons, just solo pve and group/zerg pvp). Even in dungeons I don't know whether or not heavy armor is of any use for even a tank anymore.

So why do you still wear heavy armor?

The only reason I still do is because 1. I lack the points to put in light armor passives atm and 2. lack the gold for a respec.

Worstluck

I don't wear heavy armor on either of my main characters. 5M/2L or 5L/2M on both. The passives for heavy armor are poor, especially when compared to light armor. I can always spam immovable if need be. Working as intended!

Aaklor

I wear heavy because I have so much gd time invested into crafting heavy and I really don't want to start over. I have started lvling up light armor though

Drasn

fyendiarb16_ESO wrote: »

Looks and survivability is why I went heavy armor at first. However pre-VR the looks have now been, well... not improved to say the least. Besides the looks though, I see no reason to wear heavy armor anymore. I feel like I am gimping my character if I am not wearing light armor on my DK (not tanking dungeons, just solo pve and group/zerg pvp). Even in dungeons I don't know whether or not heavy armor is of any use for even a tank anymore.

So why do you still wear heavy armor?

The only reason I still do is because 1. I lack the points to put in light armor passives atm and 2. lack the gold for a respec.

Heavy armor is pretty much useless. I reach armor softcap for templar tanking in 7 pieces of light without using any buffs.

There is just no reason to use heavy other than "looks" or roleplaying.

jonpaul

Aaklor wrote: »

I wear heavy because I have so much gd time invested into crafting heavy and I really don't want to start over. I have started lvling up light armor though

This nearly sums it up for me. I keep thinking I need to lose the 5H/2L but I've invested so much into heavy with crafting. It's very disappointing that heavy armor has so much downside but I'll keep chugging along for now.

UrQuan

If you don't overly care about the passives in the skill lines then heavy armour will always get you a higher armour value - even with the soft cap. Now if there was a hard cap, that would be a different story.

aeroch

+1 for the looks and crafting investment. The Reddit AMA mentioned something about increasing Ultimate gain for Heavy Armor, which could be interesting. But if I had to do it again I'd focus on Light Armor

fyendiarb16_ESO

I wonder if they are planning to change how gear works in this regard to even the playing field between the 3 types of armor. As it stands now there is a use for medium armor for stealth melee/archers and excellent use for everyone else. For heavy armor I just can't find any use as it is now. Such a shame really. I really want to wear heavy armor on my DK.

Blackwolfe5

I wear heavy armor chest and legs on my bow dk for no other reason than looks. Rest is medium.

fyendiarb16_ESO

Ur-Quan wrote: »

If you don't overly care about the passives in the skill lines then heavy armour will always get you a higher armour value - even with the soft cap. Now if there was a hard cap, that would be a different story.

Thing is though that the passives of light armor are so massively superior because all class skills use and scale with magicka. The small effect of that extra armor which is hard to increase because of the low soft caps, does not come close to the usefulness of the light armor passives. Ignoring the passives is really no solution, it's just sticking your head in the sand.

VlVEC

p.hurst1b16_ESO

I have a DK Dunmer Tank so I use heavy armour. Overcharge to the max and lots and lots of spell resistance on rings too. Does not do more than moderate dps but has a build to take plenty of damage and helps protect the group.

As long as the group knows how to follow up the pull then I can keep the healer up and bosses occupied and use group shields.

The passives are excellent, more resist and a bit more damage and health regen as well as extra healing received. Also blocking costs 10% less and with DK and 1H/s I can reduce the cost of blocking a lot.

Heavy armor is ok for dps if they go 5/2 so 2 heavy, probably chest and legs to improve damage resistance etc. But with a good tank then better to go 7 light for maj or 7 med for the savvy DW dps that not many players know how to build.

UrQuan

fyendiarb16_ESO wrote: »

Ur-Quan wrote: »

If you don't overly care about the passives in the skill lines then heavy armour will always get you a higher armour value - even with the soft cap. Now if there was a hard cap, that would be a different story.

Thing is though that the passives of light armor are so massively superior because all class skills use and scale with magicka. The small effect of that extra armor which is hard to increase because of the low soft caps, does not come close to the usefulness of the light armor passives. Ignoring the passives is really no solution, it's just sticking your head in the sand.

If you're primarily a tanking stamina build... It might not be the most effective build, but if it's the way you like to play, then heavy armour is the way to go.

Maverick827

Heavy armor is useless. The passives are exceptionally poor. Massive amounts of armor is easily obtained via numerous abilities. To illustrate what it would take to make a heavy armor wearer as good as a light armor wearer, we'd need the following ability:

Immovable for Heavy Armor Wearers
Target: Self
Duration: 8 seconds
Cost: Invisible third resource bar that you don't use anything else for

Reduces the magicka cost of spells by 21%, increases magicka recovery by 28%, increases spell resistance by 56%, adds 10% spell critical strike, adds 42% spell penetration

And even then things still wouldn't be equal. It's much more powerful to have all of the light armor passives at all times than it is to have a higher armor score at all times. The amount of uptime a light armor wearer would need for Immovable/class ability is a lot lower than the uptime a heavy armor wearer would need for the above ridiculous buff.

Medium armor is slightly better, but still only really useful for the melee crit. Since melee is also garbage, though, this doesn't amount to much.

Sadly, I don't think this is on their radar. Next patch is for Nightblades and I don't think they have the ability to fix more than one thing at once.

Arsenic_Touch

Ur-Quan wrote: »

If you don't overly care about the passives in the skill lines then heavy armour will always get you a higher armour value - even with the soft cap. Now if there was a hard cap, that would be a different story.

There is a hardcap. what do you think it means when your values go into the red? When you hit the soft cap, your value changes to orange. Then when you hit the hardcap, a red number appears. The red number shows how much you gained over the soft cap. Once it's red, you won't gain any more stats.

rusila22

I wear full set heavy armor if i'm melee dps making high aoe.
Or
I wear full set light armor if i'm range and the group need me as a healer or a dps.

I never wear put a combo heavy+light armor because the passive is too important and in veteran mode you won't be Op if you do that

Swordguy

heavy armor definitely looks awesome, and says " I are tank"... as for the passives, they have situational uses. I'm almost of the opinion that Zenimax is keeping things underpowered (attempting to) because not too distant future content will open up more skill lines that might cause imbalance. otherwise, heavy armor was intended for rp in its current form, and little else.

fyendiarb16_ESO

@rusila22‌ If you go melee dps (expect using mainly weapon skills for damage), wouldn't medium armor be much better in such a case?

Heavy armor does look much better while you are doing it though, especially with a big 2-hander.

UrQuan

Arsenic_Touch wrote: »

Ur-Quan wrote: »

If you don't overly care about the passives in the skill lines then heavy armour will always get you a higher armour value - even with the soft cap. Now if there was a hard cap, that would be a different story.

There is a hardcap. what do you think it means when your values go into the red? When you hit the soft cap, your value changes to orange. Then when you hit the hardcap, a red number appears. The red number shows how much you gained over the hardcap. Once it's red, you don't gain any more stats.

Hmm, I guess I haven't ever hit the hard cap. I haven't ever heard anyone mention a hard cap either. Is it possible to hit the hard cap with light armour? Is it possible to hit it with medium?

phaneub17_ESO

I started with 5 Heavy /2 Light, but soon realized Heavy doesn't survive that well. The benefits of going all Light or at least 5 Light increased my survival rate quite a lot in both how long I live and how much faster other stuff dies. Heavy Armor just prolongs a fight burning your resources at full capacity when Light and Medium give resource recovery, cost reduction, and making your attacks hit harder thus ending fights sooner rather than later.

My spell resists has been overcharged for a crazy long time, if I need extra armor and health recovery there's the Circle spell from Fighter's Guild line which does the exact same thing, being a stamina ability it doesn't take away from my primary resource. I'm also playing a Templar and the Radiant Aura spell covers that effect as well. I am also doing Sword and Board for my Offensive skills while Restoration Staff for my healing Swap. The extra Blocking power, Shield Bashing, and some of the skill line abilities like Defensive Stance, Shielded Assault, and Reverberating Bash are amazing defenses that work well.

fyendiarb16_ESO

Ur-Quan wrote: »

Arsenic_Touch wrote: »

Ur-Quan wrote: »

If you don't overly care about the passives in the skill lines then heavy armour will always get you a higher armour value - even with the soft cap. Now if there was a hard cap, that would be a different story.

There is a hardcap. what do you think it means when your values go into the red? When you hit the soft cap, your value changes to orange. Then when you hit the hardcap, a red number appears. The red number shows how much you gained over the hardcap. Once it's red, you don't gain any more stats.

Hmm, I guess I haven't ever hit the hard cap. I haven't ever heard anyone mention a hard cap either. Is it possible to hit the hard cap with light armour? Is it possible to hit it with medium?

I may be wrong, but I think @Arsenic_Touch‌ is using the addon that shows the soft caps. The red numbers that addon shows is the amount lost because of the soft cap. So (not real numbers) if you would add 100 armor while at the soft cap you would get a 50 armor increase and the number 50 in red that is lost.

However as I said; I may be completely and utterly wrong here, but I have not heard of a hard cap either. Just an increasingly bigger percentage of increase lost the further you get over the soft cap.

Correct me if I am wrong.

Arsenic_Touch

Ur-Quan wrote: »

Hmm, I guess I haven't ever hit the hard cap. I haven't ever heard anyone mention a hard cap either. Is it possible to hit the hard cap with light armour? Is it possible to hit it with medium?

Wearing 5 leather, 1 light and 1 heavy. I'm sitting at about 1100 defense. My hard cap is about 1600-1700. On my nightblade when i come out of invisibility or stealth, I hit my hard cap because of the passive that adds armor and spell resistance (hit the cap on both, it actually renders the ability pointless because it's supposed to add over 1k defense and spell resistance and ends up only adding like 400-500 points.

I could swap over to full light armor and still hit the hard cap with it.

rusila22

@fyendiarb16_ESO I'm templar i have a 2h and they are many aoe abilities if combo with 2hand.
In my opinion medium armor is good if it's a solo boss so full single target burst.

But as you know many boss are not solo. I remember a boss called the spider in a dungeon for veteran. this boss spawn many adds each time she disappear. Trust me in a fight like that those abilities are really useful for aoe (8min fight)
Biting jab>>>>> 236K
Blazing spear>> 207k
brawler>>>>>> 107k

Sakiri

Youve actually had a stat hard cap? Lol

Kayira

I have never worn anything other than light armor but as a healer I have found that tanks survive longer due to the passives that allows better healing. As a tank they are very useful. Tanks in medium armor die so much quicker than heavy armor tanks.
Just from a healer perspective.

Arsenic_Touch

fyendiarb16_ESO wrote: »

I may be wrong, but I think @Arsenic_Touch‌ is using the addon that shows the soft caps. The red numbers that addon shows is the amount lost because of the soft cap. So (not real numbers) if you would add 100 armor while at the soft cap you would get a 50 armor increase and the number 50 in red that is lost.

However as I said; I may be completely and utterly wrong here, but I have not heard of a hard cap either. Just an increasingly bigger percentage of increase lost the further you get over the soft cap.

Correct me if I am wrong.

Yes it's the soft cap addon. However from what I saw on the site, there's a bug with the red number display possibly. However I've seen a hard cap on certain stats(where no matter how much you add it doesn't change). Or there's a display error in the UI. There's discussions about the softcap/hardcap on tamriel foundry and other eso sites.

dennissomb16_ESO

I originally wore heavy armor as I was designing my character around it and put a lot into armor crafting. Now I wear because I am to lazy to start over with light armor LOL

Reenlister

dennissomb16_ESO wrote: »

I originally wore heavy armor as I was designing my character around it and put a lot into armor crafting. Now I wear because I am to lazy to start over with light armor LOL

Aye, I be a tank, and I swing me sword. I have said that before. I 'taint starting all over from scratch now, I be to old for that nonsense. I see that the days of the sword and shield with mighty armor is dead and gone though, this here world be run by the magiky types fer sure. No offense to 'em, but we of the sword, well we have no role here now.

Estin

I wore heavy armour for defense and how bad ass it looked, until the recent patch. I haven't touched the game after the recent patch, but mainly because of the memory leaks and the roll backs. They say it has been fixed, but I still see people stating that they have these problems. I hope they at least give a free 10 days for these problems.

PBpsy

NB tank with shield . 5 heavy+2 light
Bracing is great if you block a lot.
Armor and spell resist
Health recovery so I cap health with Lamea
5% weapon damage not bad but not that useful
5% healing received is great for me since i live by siphoning.
Also heavy can easily soft cap armor without any reinforced traits so i can put Infused on most items.
Two light pieces for reduced cost,recovery and resist and penetration.

The light armor does not offer extra magicka so It does not make a huge difference in the end.
I still cap magicka,magicka regen,health regen and armor without food. With food the only thing that isn't capped is stamina which i just siphon and use only for blocks and rolls.

I think I could actually cap everything but i prefer to have my magicka over the cap and use spell cost reduction enchants on my rings so I can siphon even more.

Maverick827

PBpsy wrote: »

The light armor does not offer extra magicka

Yeah, just spell cost reduction, which has no cap, and magicka recovery...