Wearing 5 pieces of heavy armor should give a flat out 10% damage reduction bonus to all dmg that is not penetrable (like armor).

Now medium/light is way stronger.

Saturn wrote: »

Penetration should just be capped like armour and spell resist, which would mean that even light armour wearing players wouldn't get hit as if they were running around naked. Just make it 50% max spell penetration, I mean it is only possible to reduce damage by 50% with capped spell resist and armour, so it'd make sense.

Also, you might say that the healing taken buff is useless, but trust me that stuff stacks really nice. I can heal about 75% of my missing health with Coagulating Blood on my DK by using 5 pieces of heavy armour Eternal Yokeda (5% + 8% increased healing taken), 8% from Coagulating Blood buff, 30% from Igneous shield, 10 points in Quick Recovery (4% increased healing taken) and 100 points in Blessed (25% increased healing done). You might say that the 5% from my 5 pieces of heavy armour doesn't matter, but with all this other stuff I have going on it really does. I will also point out that not every pvp player in the world has that high an amount of penetration, a lot do, but not everyone. Heavy armour really isn't useless in PvP as you think

I agree 100%. I use a similar method with my DK. Those who say that heavy armor is useless simply don't know how to use it correctly, or don't use enough pieces of it. You have to set up your build for heavy armor usage, that means using the appropriate skills and passives to get the maximum benefits. Healing initiated and healing received are extremely beneficial. I can instantly heal myself from between 25k and 45k anytime I want using my particular build.

A 5 piece damage reduction does seem like a decent idea. 5% or 10%. They could just tack it onto bracing.

I ran some numbers to see how heavy stacks up for sustaining resources. I was looking at pure sustain. That doesn't figure in reduced cost helping with potions or your initial mana pool. It only figures in you casting spells as fast as your resources can regenerate. It looks like heavy's constitution actually puts it on par with light and medium using this approach.

For example say a build has 1,600 mana recovery, 9% mana reduction, 800 stam recovery and 1% stam reduction (before armor passives).
Adding light armor will give it an equivalent of 2,171 mana recovery and 808 stam recovery (2,980 total).
Adding heavy armor 1,967 mana recovery and 1,000 stam recovery (2,968 total).

Here is a more balanced production build with 1,400 mana recovery, 10% mana reduction, 1,400 stam recovery and 5% stam reduction.
Light - 1923 mana, 1474 stam (3397 total)
Medium - 1556 mana, 1970 stam (3526 total)
Heavy - 1748 mana, 1656 stam (3404 total)

I checked it with varying numbers and it was always on par.

Now here is the issue:
- Reduced cost is superior when you have or add mana (pots, a full resource pool, warlock set, etc.)
- You must be hit in heavy armor.
- Heavy armor splits your returns evenly, controlling what skills you can use in rotation.
- Heavy encourages blocking which is a production killer.
- The %recovery makes light and medium increasingly better at higher recovery values. 1600+ for mana, 1200+ for stamina. (Before armor)

With all this in mind I still think constitution could use a 20-30% buff. This will give it more balance. Another option would be to allow some stam regen (30-50%) while blocking for heavy, so it doesn't encourage sustain killing.

Medium is currently the king of resources with 14% reduced cost attached to it. Light lacks the most in total mana+stam sustain for many builds but has good burst potential with 7% reduced cost. It also has a lot of offensive firepower.

This is just comparing one aspect of the armors I was curious about. Hopefully fixing penetration gives heavy a little more viability in PvP.

Yeah, /feedback is a must, because apparently

"Public Test Server
Public Test Server
Provide feedback on your experiences while testing upcoming content on PTS.
"

doesent mean anything. ZOS ignores forum feedback, we see it cleary with "0 stamina regen while blocking" unjustified ubernerf.