Light armor question

WacArnold

Is it possible to be as tanky in light armor through cp and gear as in heavy armor? Right now i have 15k base defence in ha if i got 15k base defence in la would it be same or are there other factors that contribute other than defense alone?

M1SH3LL3

Look at the LA and HA passive abilities

Alpheu5

When I wear light armor without shield, I have ~11k resists. When I wear heavy armor without shield, I have ~21k resists. Barring item sets that increase resistance, I don't think there's enough allocatable CP in the game for light armor to provide as much resists on your character sheet as heavy armor.

Nestor

I am at 29K base resist on my tank before buffs. 15K is not what I would call tank but your not squishy per say.

Let me ask, are you 5 Light and 2 Heavy (chest and legs are best). Some sets to get to mix with LA is like Storm Night which adds resist along with being heavy and has passive damage. There are a couple sets that do this.

I forget the name of the set (rattlecage?) But it comes in heavy and boosts spell damage.

However in 5 light, the best you can get is Tanky, but your going to.have gear up for that

disintegr8

I wouldn't have thought so, first thing you would lose is the heavy armour passives.

In light armour you would have to choose gear and CP aimed purely at making up for tankiness and would end up with no room to add anything that helps self heals, stam/mag/health regen or attacking. A tank in light armour that runs out of resources after 15 seconds is no good to anyone.

brandonv516

Wizards Reposte.

VaranisArano

By base defense, are you meaning physical and spell resistance? That's typically how we tanks measure how "tanky" we are besides the obvious health bars.

Physical and spell resistance caps at around 31-33k, which just about halves incoming damage if I recall correctly. Heavy armor sets have a lot of gear bonuses that provide resistances, so they have a lot of options. Light armor is going to have less options in terms of gear, but you do have some. Being at or near the resistance cap is not strictly necessary for a tank outside of harder vet dungeons or trials, but it sure is useful.

Monster helms and shoulders can drop in any weight, so a light armor user can go 1/1 with pieces that boost physical and spell resistances, or 2-set pieces like Lord Warden's Dusk or Mighty Chudan. Mighty Chudan gives about 8k physical and spell resistances.

The Clockwork City crafted set Fortified Brass will give about 8k total physical and spell resistances. Other crafted sets that are good for tanks that can be made in light armor are: Hist Bark, Whitestrake's Retribution, and Armor Master.

Its hard to find non-crafted light armor sets that give resistances, but not impossible. Almalexia's Mercy gives additional spell resistances and Meritorious Service grants physical and spell resistances if you use a skill from the PVP support skill line. Both are acquired through PVP.

However, in reality, most builds would have 5 pieces of a light armor set, 2 monster pieces, and jewelry+weapons in another set. So a light armor build could still run Ebon Armory or Plague Doctor on jewelry and weapons if they wanted to (I don't recommend it unless ZOS has fixed the health bonus resetting every single time you bar swap. But once you open up the "heavy armor" sets in jewelry and weapons, you have access to a lot of very resistance heavy gear while still wearing 100% light armor.

Plus with light armor you'd have access to the Light Armor skill Annulment and its morphs, a short duration damage shield which is practically like getting extra health.

So can you be exactly as tanky in 100% light armor as a dedicated Heavy Armor build? I'd have to hop in game and check, which I'm not going to do, but you could almost certain get close to the max resistances once you add in the correct skills to support your gear. However, unless you wanted to run a light armored tank, you be giving up a lot of potential gear choices that make for better DPS in order to do so.

For context, my Mag DK tank hits the resistance cap with 5 armor pieces of Ebon Armory, Lord Warden's Dusk (or Lord Warden/Mighty Chudan), and the Volatile Armor skill. She's got a whole 5-piece jewelry and weapon set left over to do whatever she wants.

WacArnold

Idk how to ask this question lol. What i mean to say is. Is 15k spell and physical resistance in ha the same as 15k spell and physical resistance in light armor. I see the passives and excluding resolve and juggernuat i do not see a difference in defence. 15k defence is 15k defence no matter the armor type right? Is there a hidden factor here? Or is it as simple as that?

Sanctum74

Higher resistances will definitely help with being tanky whether it be la or ha, but more importantly keeping your buffs, shields, and heal over times up is what will really improves your survival more than anything.

If your only doing pve then you can go with reinforced or nirnhoned gear for higher resistance. For pvp I'd recommend impenetrable.

If you are just looking to get your 5 pc la armour passives, then go 5 la and 2 ha and make sure you have all your passives chosen accordingly. Have 2 large pieces like chest, head, or legs be heavy so you will get the most benefit.

You can also use defending weapons and a shield for more resistance. For damage you can get more spell pen from cp to make up for the defending weapons.

A monster set will also help like blood spawn, bone pirate, or mighty chudan. There's so many gear options available depending on if you wanna just tank or do damage. You should be able to get about 25k resists in la and will be very tanky IF you keep your buffs up.

VaranisArano

Yes, if your resistances are 15k physical/spell on your character sheets in heavy and light armor, those are the same. That's simply the number of the resistances you have and I don't believe that there's any "hidden" factor there.

However, that's about the same resistances my medium armor wearing stam sorc DPS has with hurricane running (actually she has more like 18k), so that's really low for someone trying to be "tanky".

Sixty5

You can cap your resists in light armour pretty easily actually.

Next patch you can run Fortified Brass + 1pc Pirate Skeleton and 1pc Mighty Chudan, then throw in major and minor buffs and hit resistance cap.

All in 7 light.

Thing is durability =/= resistances alone

In light armour running a couple of shields will majorly boost your total survivability, along with strong healing and finding ways to get buffs such as major/minor protection and such.

Taleof2Cities

Impregnable light armor set does help with crit resist in PvP ... such that you can reallocate any champion points that were in crit resist to other areas (which could be physical and spell resist champ passives). That way you still get the light armor passives too.

VaranisArano

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Impregnable light armor set does help with crit resist in PvP ... such that you can reallocate any champion points that were in crit resist to other areas (which could be physical and spell resist champ passives). That way you still get the light armor passives too.

Good point here, that resistances are a good way to judge tankiness in PVE, but for PVP you also MUST take your crit resistance into account. PVE monsters can't critically attack you, but players can. Physical and Spell resistance will help against players with penetration, so it can be beneficial to stack resistances past the cap to counter that, but critical resistance is absolutely necessary in PVP. Impenetrable trait gear helps a lot.

Urza1234

Run Pariah Jewelry and 2 Pariah items, Chest and Helm/Greaves/Shield I think is best.

The other 5 pieces of gear run Fortified Brass in LA once Clockwork comes out. These two sets combined will get you to the resistance cap, while still receiving all of the LA perks.

Yes OP to answer your question resistances provide the same point for point value whether you are in LA or HA, the difference is that HA provides more resistances per piece of gear when comparing gear of the same level.

One thing that you should be aware of though OP is that Damage Shields, ie Conjured Ward or Annulment, do not benefit from your resistances.