Current State of Heavy Armor

IcyDeadPeople

I'm glad currently it's possible to make a viable character with any of the four classes and your choice of light, medium or heavy armor. This was not the case at launch, and for a long time heavy armor was not viable in PVP except for certain extreme builds.

At this point, however, it's not hard to achieve extremely high physical / spell resistance, while still maintaining high burst damage and decent sustain in combat. Some large guild groups now push for most of their members to wear heavy, which is sort of a flashback from launch when everyone was pressured to use light armor and staff.

I wonder if there should be a bit more of a tradeoff when opting for the tankiness of heavy armor - so that you can get very high mitigation in heavy with reasonable sustain, but not so easy to get high damage, sustain and resistances at the same time. Or perhaps higher penetration passives with light and medium.

What do you think?

Kawall

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

I'm glad currently it's possible to make a viable character with any of the four classes and your choice of light, medium or heavy armor. This was not the case at launch, and for a long time heavy armor was not viable in PVP except for certain extreme builds.

At this point, however, it's not hard to achieve extremely high physical / spell resistance, while still maintaining high burst damage and decent sustain in combat. Some large guild groups now push for most of their members to wear heavy, which is sort of a flashback from launch when everyone was pressured to use light armor and staff.

I wonder if there should be a bit more of a tradeoff when opting for the tankiness of heavy armor - so that you can get very high mitigation in heavy with reasonable sustain, but not so easy to get high damage, sustain and resistances at the same time. Or perhaps higher penetration passives with light and medium.

What do you think?

For me medium armor need some love. Light amor passive and active much better than medium.

LadyLavina

Poll options need work, I'm thrilled with the current heavy armor passives. (7 piece heavy armor tank here)

JinMori

Medium armor needs some work, the passives are really bad compared to light or heavy, aside from windwalker. For more information check out gilliamtherogue video on medium armor, it's a bit long, but it's very detailed.

Entegre

If heavy armor provides more defence and more offence then what is the benefit of using medium armor? Currently everyone wears heavy armor in PvP except for shield stackers, only a handful of us nightblades still wear the medium armor but I am thinking of switching to heavy as well.

Yubarius

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

I'm glad currently it's possible to make a viable character with any of the four classes and your choice of light, medium or heavy armor. This was not the case at launch, and for a long time heavy armor was not viable in PVP except for certain extreme builds.

At this point, however, it's not hard to achieve extremely high physical / spell resistance, while still maintaining high burst damage and decent sustain in combat. Some large guild groups now push for most of their members to wear heavy, which is sort of a flashback from launch when everyone was pressured to use light armor and staff.

I wonder if there should be a bit more of a tradeoff when opting for the tankiness of heavy armor - so that you can get very high mitigation in heavy with reasonable sustain, but not so easy to get high damage, sustain and resistances at the same time. Or perhaps higher penetration passives with light and medium.

What do you think?

I think that heavy armor no doubt performs the best in open world pvp for most classes, but instead of doing a big nerf to it they just need to bring light and medium armor up to par with it.

LorDrek

Need more useful.

usmcjdking

Constitution needs to be percentage based.

idk

@IcyDeadPeople

Unfortunately the poll offers a very narrow selection and the half the choices are aimed at heavy armor passives though not a worry because polls in these forums are worthless.

The issue is not heavy armor nor their passives. The issue is we can gear for survival and still be able to do decent DPS, in PvP mostly through the use proc sets.

Setting up proc sets to have some aspect of scaling to our damage stats would go a long way. Changing HA passives could easily create issues elsewhere and is very short sighted.

Wollust

Heavy armor clearly outperforms light and medium pretty much on everything except magicka sorc and to some extent stamblade.

Baconlad

Heavy armor is great...and should accually be buffed to match the others damage. Its light armor and medium armor that need to be buffed defensively to be able to mitigate damage in their own unique way. Biggest issue with the armors i see is that take LA, the shield strengths for an average toon are severely gimped. Your shield is based off of max magick, unlike the other armors defense are not based off of their respective stat pools. If they gave all magicka shields a flat value (leaving blazing shield a unique shield) based on how much LA you are wearing, and ultimately increased how much shield strength in cyrodil you have. Medium armor needs to have their dodge roll cost increase nerf rolled back.

Every magick class has their own way to mitigate damage. But if wearing LA those magick classes should have to use shields alongside theyre main class given defense. For example, i should be able to prebuff my magplar in 7 LA with shields and jump into combat, when needed i cast my big heal and another shield. For sorcs, they rely on crit damage and shields. So in combat the sorc would double cast shields and crit surge to heal up when shields go down. NBs rely on the hots from funnel, dodge chance, cloak and shields. DKs rely on hots, wings, and shields....

Point being is all mag toons rely on many forms of defense, but due to how weak shields are, there are only two mag classes that do REALLY well in LA, NB and Sorc. Templar and DK in LA are very weak compared to where they should be defensively of course. B

The major issue with heavy is being so needed in PVP is not heavy armor itself, but the damage meta, you dont nerf the best defense we have, you buff the other options to match. Theres NOTHING WRONG IMO with sorc that shield stacks and is tanky AF. Just the same theres nothing wrong with DK/ Templar in heavy armor being tanky AF. If everyone in cyrodil were a bit more tanky it would indeed be a better place.

But yeah heavy armor needs to become an option for trials DPS, not just PVP templar and DK, and tanks in trials...this will never happen, i know better zos will just keep nerfing heavy armor and wonder why players are dying in two seconds to (insert random skill here). I dont know, tanky toons never bothered me to fight. What does bother me is how much damage i lose by going heavy just for a second more reaction time to a gank or high damage toon.

Waffennacht

Why did I go to heavy? Because I got sick of coinflips. The damage is so high that in medium and light armor you MUST be equally offensive to survive - your only defense is to kill before you're killed. I'm not the biggest fan of that, who's ult is higher is the winner stuff.

I agree that the mitigation provided by medium and light is too low to be as competitive as in the past.

With proc sets only proccing on hits (making the ability to react impossible) a build has to theoretically survive around 15k burst. I do not feel my playstyle can survive that in light or medium.

Wrath boost is cool, but even if that were completely removed, I'd still have to go Heavy for the resistance, increased healing, and max health boost.

Lynx7386

Heavy armor is fine, and actually the changes to it made with homestead are a bad idea imo. Making wrath take 20+ seconds to stack and only last 5 seconds is going to severely hurt heavy armor users in solo content and group pve.

When soloing, you'll almost never benefit from wrath now because in between each fight you lose all of your stacks and fights typically aren't long enough to get up to 20 stacks.

The only reason heavy armor can get decent damage is because of proc sets. Fix those first, and stop nerfing heavy

Edziu

Entegre wrote: »

If heavy armor provides more defence and more offence then what is the benefit of using medium armor? Currently everyone wears heavy armor in PvP except for shield stackers, only a handful of us nightblades(gangers) still wear the medium armor but I am thinking of switching to heavy as well.

added something

Knightpanther

Heavy Armor should be for Tanking, although stop nerfing the bugger for us PVE just because of PvPer.

Biro123

With 5 heavy(1med/1light), and a sharpened staff, my character has 16.5k resists and 5160 pen.

With 5 light(1m/1hvy) 13k/11k spell/phys resists and 10k pen - but if I make the staff defending, its 18/16k resists and 4880 pen.

Not a lot of difference really. Basically the tankyness of heavy is a fallacy unless you also combine it with other stuff to add to the tankyness (defending traits, major/minor resolve etc.) So basically, unless you're going full tank, the defensiveness of heavy isn't all that.

IcyDeadPeople

Knightpanther wrote: »

Heavy Armor should be for Tanking, although stop nerfing the bugger for us PVE just because of PvPer.

Does a PVE tank need the damage though?

In PVP currently there is not much tradeoff if you choose heavy armor. You can have very high damage output, reasonable sustain and still get close to resistance cap.

Rex-Umbra

Medium could maybe get a tiny buff.

Lynx7386

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Knightpanther wrote: »

Heavy Armor should be for Tanking, although stop nerfing the bugger for us PVE just because of PvPer.

Does a PVE tank need the damage though?

Yes. It's bad enough that groups already run without a dedicated healer or tank in favor of all dps with a few spot heals here and there.

Pve roles are suffering for two reasons: too much emphasis placed on damage above support, and too many balance changes based on pvp.

Tabbycat

I would say that if a certain armor type is required for use over other armor types that means that either the other armor types need to be brought on par with that armor type, or that armor type needs to be toned down.

Skinzz

Take shuffle away from heavy armor users then medium will be viable again.

Militan1404

Why Is heavy armor is just for tanking? Heavy armor dps is also a thing and it fit the lore to. Saying heavy is a tank its like saying light armor is a healer. light is the mage, its range dps and use damage sheild to protect them. Medium is the theif, its supossed to use stealth and finesse to survive and do some range with the bow and come in and do high damage up close before they quickly dissapear again. Heavy is the warrior, and is supossed to be up your face and and do damage while he use his heavy armor to stay alive. Light and medium aint supossed to stand face to face with a heavy armor, they have to use their strengt in range or stealth and agility to win their fights

Doctordarkspawn

Let me state it plain.

The PVPers dont like wrath.

The PVEers dont like Wrath on the whole.

And almost all of us who dont get active use out of Wrath, would rather Bracing be returned.

Lynx7386

Militan1404 wrote: »

Why Is heavy armor is just for tanking? Heavy armor dps is also a thing and it fit the lore to. Saying heavy is a tank its like saying light armor is a healer. light is the mage, its range dps and use damage sheild to protect them. Medium is the theif, its supossed to use stealth and finesse to survive and do some range with the bow and come in and do high damage up close before they quickly dissapear again. Heavy is the warrior, and is supossed to be up your face and and do damage while he use his heavy armor to stay alive. Light and medium aint supossed to stand face to face with a heavy armor, they have to use their strengt in range or stealth and agility to win their fights

Well said. All three should be capable of damage, just defending in different ways

technohic

I like that heavy is useful so I hate to say it needs changed, particularly as a player that is wearing 7 medium on my main character. What I would say is light needs spell power added to it and medium needs physical penetration added to it. I do think light is dangerous to use outside of shield stacking beyond that as far as PvP goes, but it seems to still be the PvE favorite for mDPS.

Riejael

Lynx7386 wrote: »

When soloing, you'll almost never benefit from wrath now because in between each fight you lose all of your stacks and fights typically aren't long enough to get up to 20 stacks.

Is that actually a problem? Here's how I'm looking at it:

Solo content is extremely easy. Most things go down in a few hits so stacking anything isn't even needed. If that's all your fighting. Why not use medium/light to make it go faster?

Well to take on bosses obviously. And I'd wager those million hp bosses last long enough to stack wrath stacks. If not, let's see the build, because I'm doing something wrong if someone can do 75,000-90,000 DPS in plate.

IcyDeadPeople

Lynx7386 wrote: »

All three should be capable of damage, just defending in different ways

With 7/7 medium it's not currently possible to be both extremely tanky and deal high damage output. I have a lot of respect for the skilled players out there running well fitted and jumping in and out of melee - this is currently much more challenging play style than heavy armor.

With 7/7 light it's possible to be extremely tanky and deal high damage only if you have access to sorc shields that scale on your offensive stat pool.

With a lack of tradeoffs, planning and testing new build ideas becomes less interesting. The fun part of planning build ideas is looking at all the options available and making difficult choices. If you make a choice to spec into being extremely tanky, it's a more interesting choice when you are sacrificing in other areas.

leepalmer95

This game doesn't need more buff's

Medium / light was just fine before they overbuffed heavy and suddenly everyone who knows what they are doing in pvp use it, apart from a few type of builds.

Wrecking_Blow_Spam

Heres the defences:

Light - Shields, need stack max magic.

Medium - Roll dodge often combined with shuffle (get away from snares) but usually need good sustain/recovery in medium to pull this off.

Heavy - High resistances, healing recieved, can sacrifice most sustain due to constitution.

Conduit0

There is nothing wrong with heavy armor. Wrath is the only passive that provides any offensive benefit and its incredibly meager. No the REAL problem is the fact that the majority of your offensive power comes from your weapon selection and how much stamina/magicka you stack. If you have 40k magicka/stamina and gold sharpened weapon/s you are going to do a ton of damage regardless of what armor you're wearing.

If you really want armor type to make a meaningful difference to offensive capability what you would need to do is nerf weapons, all sources of magicka, stamina, and weapon/spell damage. Then change the passives of Light and Medium armor to compensate for the nerfs.

idk

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Knightpanther wrote: »

Heavy Armor should be for Tanking, although stop nerfing the bugger for us PVE just because of PvPer.

Does a PVE tank need the damage though?

In PVP currently there is not much tradeoff if you choose heavy armor. You can have very high damage output, reasonable sustain and still get close to resistance cap.

@IcyDeadPeople the damage passive is for those who want to dps in HA. I think OP is missing something besides the obvious that the HA passives are not the issue.

When confronting an issue one needs to determine what the foundation of the problem is and this thread is not doing that. HA itself is not the issue.