How to mix and match armour?

Danikat

I understand that there are different benefits to each armour type (broadly speaking heavy is best for tanking, medium for stamina builds and light for magicka right?) and that many people like to mix and match to get a combination of benefits, but there's a few things I'm unsure of:

1) How do you decide how many pieces of each to use? I've heard 4:2 suggested a lot but I'm not sure if that's a universal rule or just for certain builds.

2) Does it matter which pieces? Is wearing all medium and then a light chest piece going to make more of a difference (in terms of the bonuses from the skill trees) than all medium with light gloves for example?

3) Broadly speaking is it better to wear a mix, or is it best to try and make a build that needs just 1 type?

catpower

When it comes to the amount of armor you get, it definitely matters what type you slot where.

Chest slot gives the most armor followed by legs, helmet, boots, shoulders, gloves, then belt.

Because of this, if you are going to use some heavy armor, you always want it in the chest slot first and then on down the line.

As to number of pieces of each type, just look at the armor passives to determine how much to shoot for, focusing on magicka and offensive casting, you want more light armor for instance.

For leveling, before you hit 50 in each armor, I recommend 2 heavy, chest and legs slots, 2 medium head and boots, the rest light assuming you want to focus more on light.

Some people do 1 heavy, chest slot, 1 medium, legs, and the rest light.

Adjust according to the type you want to focus on, but keep in mind the armor per slot I mentioned at the top of the post.

Tavore1138

A lot of the best armour passives hit at 5 pieces so often 5/2 or even 5/1/1 can work - it really is totally about what you want to achieve for your build and which passives work best for you.

As per the last reply you probably want heavy in the most rewarding slots, then medium, then light. Unless you are all about the looks of the armour in which case it might be different.

For early levelling wear a mix and get the skill lines up, trade up with dropped pieces and quest rewards unless you really feel the need to get crafted sets. When you start getting into VR then the trend is to specialise, you can be a jack of all trades in this game but if you start to want to run the harder content then you will be in a group and people will generally prefer if you are geared to support the role you are playing in the group - the armour you end up in will depend on what that role is

Rune_Relic

http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Sets
....Have a look on the various armour sets on here too

Take a good look at the stat boosts the various sets give you.
You cant access all of them yet.
Some of them are locked behind content and some can be bought, others crafted.
But you can think about possible builds for the future.