Heavy doesn't provide stam or stam regen, so unless your a nightblade with all the weapon and stam regen buffs its useless unless your tanking.

Heavy armour is the worst of the 3, so get used to hearing that and stop whining.

Tigeracer wrote: »

So are people saying that bracing (increased block mitigation) and armour rating only go up to 50% damage reduction together? Or does armour go to 50% damage reduction and bracing adds more?

Maybe my heavy armour build is just really good because I am a nightblade, but I'm sure DK heavy armour builds would be fine for stamina (with green dragon blood). Not sure about sorc and Templar though.

Templars would be fine, with restorative aura they get passive Health/Stamina regen and an extra 80% when they activate it. Templar might have the worst magicka returns, but they surely get a lot of ways to get Stamina back.

Sorcerers on the other hand only get a 5% stamina discount but get instead a lot of options to increase health/magicka recovery. So it would probably be the worst of all 4 classes for stamina sustain while tanking.

Tigeracer wrote: »

All I seem to hear on these forums and in the game is that heavy armour sucks. I hear people saying that the passives are useless or that armour rating is useless.
What game is everyone playing, seriously?

I am a nightblade. I use medium armour, because I think it looks cool. I use dual wield/bow for pvp and dual wield/sword and board for pve (depending on situation).

Sometimes I struggle with soloing craglorn public dungeons or even normal public dungeons. Sometimes I struggle to take down a dolmen on my own. So you know what I do? I use my heavy armour set with sword and board!!! I never struggle with my heavy armour on. I even took out a dolmen in cyrodil while some jerk tried to kill me. He was very annoyed that he couldn't kill me, even after multiple attempts.

The thing is, armour rating is not useless when it's over 2.5k (mine sits at 2.6ish with my green gear). The health recovery from the passive is crazy (mine is just under 110). Block mitigation and cost are freaking insane! My stamina barely moves while using heavy with sword and board.

While in medium armour, I have to run around and dodge like crazy. In my heavy armour, I stand in one spot and don't even move for aoe attacks (dodge for some boss heavy attacks though).

I think the weakest armour in the game is definitely medium, but I don't complain about it, just find out how to get more use out of it.

So next time you want to whine about heavy armour, actually try using with your brain switched on.

Really how are you getting those numbers? If i put on all blue Heavy armour im still only just above the softcap, thats 1960. Do you have increased armor trait on every piece? You dont get to 2500 armor rating without using spells. And you need to use smthn like immovable to get from 2000 to 2500 becaouse of the softcap kicking in.

Crazy Health regen? its 4% a piece so 7x4= 28% so you say you have 110 then i would guess u allready had around 80-85.

So switch on YOUR brain and go over the passives for light armor and Heavy armor, compare them and then come back.

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

It's because you can hit soft cap (30% reduction) and even hard cap (50% reduction) with light armor alone through spells and abilities while still having the resource bonuses that come along with them. Heavy Armor needs some way to get over that by allowing it to have a third cap of 70% damage reduction, this gives heavy armor a special uniqueness in damage taken. The best suggestion so far is giving either Resolve a 1/2/3% damage reduction per heavy armor equipped or Bracing a 10/20% damage reduction when wearing 5 or more pieces of heavy armor.

With temporary buffs sapping your magicka, time spent casting them, and using bar slots that you could be using other buffs in, you can come close. However, light armor + 3x armor rings alone (1800 extra armor rating) will not hardcap you by a long shot. The armor hard cap is over 3300, while it softcaps a bit under 2000.

While I don't think the OP explained it quite clearly enough, the so-called "fact" everyone parrots of heavy armor not having any usages is actually an urban legend.

Bracing + 1-2 block cost reduction glyphs + high armor rating + sword/board = incredible mitigation blocking with a very low cost for doing so. Add in Defensive Stance from the sword-board line and you're rocking . Really what you are suggesting is already done by how it is currently designed .

Aeratus wrote: »

james_vestbergb16_ESO wrote: »

Really how are you getting those numbers? If i put on all blue Heavy armour im still only just above the softcap, thats 1960. Do you have increased armor trait on every piece? You dont get to 2500 armor rating without using spells. And you need to use smthn like immovable to get from 2000 to 2500 becaouse of the softcap kicking in.

Each v12 legendary +armor jewelry glyph gives +600 armor, and you can have three of them. So you can have 1800 base armor even while naked.

Next, you can get another 525 armor from set bonuses (alessia's bulwark + deaths' wind).

From the above, you can see that it is possible to reach close to the hard cap of 3150 armor even while equipping only light armor. Of course, there's no real purpose of doing so, but for the purposes of illustration, it is clear that it is possible.

If you're willing to use 1 heavy armor piece, you can get another +375 armor from the unassailable set bonus while blocking.

That's actually wrong.

You can get +1800 armor while sacrificing a huge amount of +spell damage rating (39) on all three rings, but the softcap is about 1960 at which point you lose six points out of every ten of any further stat you place in it to the diminishing returns mechanic from the softcap.

What you describe is basically specializing everything into armor rating at the expense of using any of the offense you would normally gain from light armor, while sacrificing ability slots and entire set bonuses to the cause to reach the 50% number while wearing that armor type. It's OK to illustrate that it's technically possible, I suppose, but it doesn't actually affect anything in gameplay and doesn't prove the argument of "Well you can hardcap armor in light while not losing anything".

Your quoted numbers if you exclude set bonuses and immovable (which any build can use), grant a rating of about 720 (base armor in light without reinforced trait which is again another major sacrifice and would result in you being crit the vast majority of the time in PVP since many people run either 30-40% crit, or 70-80%+ (such as myself)), then 1800 from the rings which would bring you to approximately 2184 armor. Adding immovable from there which requires a bar slot, stamina, and is a temporary 8-second buff at that, provides a diminished amount of 460 additional armor due to softcap bringing you to a total of about 2644 armor.

Doing so requires you to:

-Sacrifice approximately 15-20% depending on skills used, in damage or healing from class skills compared to using spell damage rings.
-Sacrifice a bar slot for Immovable.
-Sacrifice stamina during combat and proactively maintain immovable during the fights to keep your armor rating.

and, if you then dedicate traits, you give enemies up to a free 40-70% additional crit chance on you (providing the crit rating on their end is high enough) on you, for another ~170-220 armor minus softcaps resulting in about 80 additional actual armor added and a total of just over 2720. That also restricts your gear choices as you would no longer be able to use dropped armor sets for the vast majority of cases (virtually none have reinforced).

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

...

I did not say that you can simply add up the numbers while disregarding the softcap diminishing returns. If you were to add up the numbers that I've listed (together with 900 armor for 7x light armor), that would exceed the hardcap, but I did write that you would only get close to the hardcap.

Just for completeness, the build I listed (7x light, 3x armor jewlery, +525 armor from set bonuses) gives around 2640 armor for a setup with all blue pieces (without immovable, without shield) if the weapon has a defending trait. With a shield, you can get more.

Also, I didn't write that you should actually stack armor in a light armor setup. There was no recommendation that you should do so in my post.

Aeratus wrote: »

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

...

Also, I didn't write that you should actually stack armor in a light armor setup. There was no recommendation that you should do so in my post.

I may have read your post out of context then.

My ramblings probably should be in some theory crafting section or something, but this thread really got me thinking. If hard capped armor really gives 50% mitigation, it would be quite easy for sorcerer to hit that cap. We have an armor buff that gives permanent 1000 armor for exchange of 10% max mana and a skill slot. Now if sorcerer was melee, that would mean next to nothing, because with constant blocking and already hard capped armor immovable would be useless. Mana would not need to be so high either, because you'd only use it for critical surge.

So if I'm right, with enough stamina regen and shield blocking it would be a huge mitigation almost all the time. That could make a really resilient character, that's still capable for nice damage and some healing with critical surge. Second bar could be 2-handed weapon where stampede probably could give enough healing, and executioner to finish opponents off. So anybody has any experience of this kind of build, or is medium armor still better for melee sorcerers too?

EDIT: I just remembered that some Alliance two-handers also has a huge armor debuff as their enchantment, so if you'd start with 2-hander, you would hit pretty much naked people if they had light or medium armor.

You know you are talking about people's opinions... right?

Turn off chat.

Don't read forums.

Problem solved.

Tigeracer wrote: »

Yes. If anyone knows how to record a good quality video with a computer, I will happily upload a vid for proof.

I'm loving Open Broadcaster; It's pretty solid and it's free (https://obsproject.com). I've recorded some dungeon runs and some work stuff.

They can block more and receive larger heals. Heavy armor, as I see it, is working as intended; for tanks.

Pseudonym wrote: »

They can block more and receive larger heals. Heavy armor, as I see it, is working as intended; for tanks.

See, this is my problem with it: it's just for Tanks. While the other two types of armors allow for versatility, Heavy Armor is pigeon-holed for Tanking. Why can't Heavy Armor provide for survivability instead of Tanking, since the former allows for the latter, but not necessarily vice-versa.

For instances:

Constitution
Tanky: Health Regen/piece
Survivability: +Health/piece

In the first case, you need to be hit before you even see a bonus from it. In the second, you are just tougher over all because you're wearing the armor.


Rapid Regen is similar: you get more healing received per piece, which is only useful after you get hit.


Heavy Armor should be, IMO, about avoiding/mitigating damage, not healing it afterwards. Passives that boost survivability would still let you Tank better, but would mean that heavy armor isn't JUST for Tanking.


And this isn't even getting into the fact that Juggernaut doesn't do anything for you unless you're using melee weapons, which makes it useless if you're using three of the six weapon skill lines.

HA can work for some builds, it just does not work for all builds.

My DK in HA does just fine.

People complaining are probably doing PVP. Huge difference from your PVE experience.