

Nirnhoned is a flat value. Reinforced is a percentage bonus on the value already provided by the armor piece. That means nirnhoned gets better value as the base value of the armor it is put on decreases, and vice versa.
Your example lists a heavy chestpiece, which is the highest-possible base value, making it the best possible for reinforced, and the worst possible for nirnhoned.
However, put the nirnhoned on a light belt, and it will be clearly better than reinforced, because it will still provide the same 301 armor/spell resist while the 16% increase from reinforced would be a negligible value(because the belt base armor value is very low).
Reinforced for heavy, nirn for med and light.

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »Nirnhoned is a flat value. Reinforced is a percentage bonus on the value already provided by the armor piece. That means nirnhoned gets better value as the base value of the armor it is put on decreases, and vice versa.
Your example lists a heavy chestpiece, which is the highest-possible base value, making it the best possible for reinforced, and the worst possible for nirnhoned.
However, put the nirnhoned on a light belt, and it will be clearly better than reinforced, because it will still provide the same 301 armor/spell resist while the 16% increase from reinforced would be a negligible value(because the belt base armor value is very low).
Yeah I get that, but still... 7 pieces of Nirnhoned is only going to improve your Light or Medium armor by 2107. That's just too weak for something that costs so much. A better stat for Nirn would be (at least) 500 armor points per piece. That would give you 3500 extra armor for a full set, which seems like it might be worth considering.