Suggestion: Bound Armor should benefit from (light) armor passives if you don't wear any real armor

Semel · April 2014

Generally daedric armor is considered to be heavy armor but this one looks like a light daedric armor to me. Regardless of what kind of armor it is (light or heavy) I suggest that it should benefit from light (seeing it as a sorcerer skill) armor passive as a full set of 7 pieces armor in case if you don't wear any "real" armor.
Without that it is pretty useless especially considering that 1) it takes up one slot 2) consumes 10% magicka 3) you loose it if you swap weapons.
It doesn't seem unbalanced or anything with this added restriction and it still would be worse in terms of defense than wearing real light armor / real armor+ bound armor but at least it would have all those nice passives working.

Teloran · April 2014

It doesn't count as any armour. If you have an armour set equipped you will get the appropriate passives for it, regardless whether you have daedric armour active.

rorcusb16_ESO · April 2014

yep as mentioned above, the passives rely on the underlying armour.. I run with 7 light armour and can still top out the soft cap when I have bound armour and a sword and board (about 1.8k armour 1.6k Spell resist @ lvl43), I use it on both slots so I can switch between retro staff/spell casting and stam based puncture/silver bolts with sword and board without losing the bound armour summon.

Semel · April 2014

Perhaps I should have specified what I meant
I updated my initial post with this:

Bound Armor should benefit from light (seeing it as a sorcerer skill) armor passive as a full set of 7 pieces armor in case if you don't wear any real armor.

PS
I was farming Village Of The Lost last days and although I got hit maybe 2-3 times per mobs pack after 2-3 runs my armor was totally broken. It is BROKEN mechanic in the first place (previous elder scrolls games didnt have THAT kind of armor degradation) I cant even imagine whats going on with melee classes.
So I decided to try farming "naked" with bound armor active. Sadly, without light armor passives working it was a bad idea. Spells mana cost, regeneration and whatnot were atrocious and I was OOM almost instantly.
That's why I thought it would be nice if bound armor (sorc skill) benefited from light armor passives if you don't have a single piece of "real" armor on you. It doesn't seem unbalanced or anything with this added restriction

ThatHappyCat · April 2014

It doesn't sound unbalanced, but it doesn't sound like it's worth the programming time either. Plus ZOS implemented armour degradation for a reason (what reason that is is irrelevant), why would they add something to circumvent it.

Svann · April 2014

Why would you want to remove your real armor? Oh to save money? I guess Im not the cheapest person in the world.

RekkaAtsuma · April 2014

I think what the OP is saying is that if you aren't wearing any pieces of armor, light medium or heavy on your PC, Casting Bound Armor would activate Light Armor Passives.

That's how it technically worked in Oblivion: You could be wearing a full set of glass Armor in ES4Oblivion, and cast "Bound Cuirass" and Your upper body armor would be replaced by a weightless Daedric Cuirass.
However Lore-wise Bound Armor is Heavy Armor and, also ES lore-wise Sorcerers wear heavy armor...to benefit from the heavy Bound Armor.

Unfortunately for OP. I'm sorry to say that your idea simply wont work in this game. It'd be too unbalanced overall as it would allow Sorcerers to begin making money faster than the rest of us as they could go around without degradation of any kind.

Tetujin · April 2014

I love that this suggestion was in the end about avoiding the repair costs, that is awesome.

Semel · April 2014

It is partly about that partly about making it logical game mechanic wise

The suggested changes are absolutely fine in term of balance because if you wear only bound armor your defense will be worse than wearing normal armor anyways.