Light armor is mostly viable in PvP but only when using wards. Rarely do I find a magic build not using healing ward. Medium go squish... Heavy armor sets favor stamina so much there is little reason to not go use it if you plan on being pon the front lines. Most of the time your plans go wrong anyways and end up on the front lines somehow

How is heavy armour worse than shield stacking? What are you all on about?

I use light, medium and heavy armour across my characters. Yeah medium armour is the worst of the 3 but I have a couple of medium builds that work absolutely great. All my Magicka characters use light, mag DK is even settled on light now. I think I've 1 character left still on heavy because it's absolutely crucial to its build and playstyle.

Are we getting confused with tanks and blocking or just players with high mitigation or damage reduction buffs/debuffs like minor Maim? I think heavy armour is perfectly balanced, like really honestly.

Cactus316000 wrote: »

The problem with heavy armor is over performing sets i.e Ravager, Seventh legion, Knight errant, etc.
So if light armor magic characters get super tanky from shields and keep the damage output.
Medium armor gets no shields, reduce roll dodge and is extremely squishy.
And Heavy armor has amazing healing, resources back, no real loss of damage compared to medium armor, amazing over performing sets where does that leave medium armor as viable for pvp?
After playing battlegrounds tonight, I can say 90% of everyone in there I fought was in heavy armor.
What does everyone else think of heavy armor right now? Its weird to think that heavy armor "The guys that should be slow, hard to kill slugs on the battlefield" are doing the most damage.

@Cactus316000 heavy armor, and those sets u mention are relatively fine.

The issue is medium armor.
We used to rely on roll dodge to mitigate incoming dmg but now nearly everything hits us through roll dodge, making it a relatively innifficient resource to mitigate dmg.

Shuffle is rng based, some fights they will miss me all the time, some fights they hit me most of the time and it cannot be counted on like raw armor mitigation or shielding.

The real reason why medium armor is subpar is bc zos nerfed roll dodge into the ground, u take aoe dmg/dots/birds/siege and then u get a debuff that if u were to roll dodge again, it saps the hell out of ur stam.
Why would i want to wear medium armor whose form of dmg mitigation was nerfed into the ground when all i need to do is stack 20% into cp and 2 ish pieces of sturdy armor along with 5 heavy and i get a crapload more defensive.

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

Goshua wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

I'm always amazed by the people who think that people can't/shouldn't be mobile or active on the battlefield in heavy armor. That's simply not how it was historically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzTwBQniLSc

Now, that's not to say that ZOS has gotten the balance of tankiness to damage potential quite right - they certainly haven't. But please don't repeat bad myths about historical armor in order to justify your argument. That's bad history. Real armor is so much cooler than that.

What is true is that they tired fast. Doing a few star jumps and push ups is not in the same ball park as being in a skirmish and fighting for your life against multiple opponents, any longer than 5 mins solid you'd be worn out in HA.

Alright, although really not relevant to a discussion about a magic based game, let's talk history.

Whenever you think about what was done in history, it's useful to keep in mind that people are people. They weren't inherently dumber in the middle ages. From that perspective, who in their right mind is going to run out in heavy armor that is a distinct disadvantage? Medieval fighters, even inexperienced ones, knew that they would likely be fighting all day for several days... It was also no secret that even on horseback, if you wore heavy armor, you risked being pulled off by peasants and stabbed to death on the ground...

People get confused because most surviving examples of armor are heavy. However, those pieces survived because they weren't used much... Usually ceremonial armor. Battle worthy armor was extremely valuable, and handed down generation to generation, or taken off the battle field, but in either case used until unusable. People that fight in armor today often use modern materials to avoid having to replace their armor every couple of years. Fighting and sweat are both hard on armor.

This article is fairly accurate.

http://knowledgenuts.com/2014/05/17/knights-armor-was-much-much-lighter-than-you-think/

Take a trip to the Tower of London. The plate used in battle is the medieval equivalent of modern 18 gauge mild steel. In other words, very thick tin foil...

The same applies to weapons. Weapons were also fairly light, about 2.5-3lbs, with 2h being about 4.5lbs. Conditioning makes everything easier, but if you weigh 120-160lbs (not many fat people back then), no amount of conditioning is going to let you swing a 10lb sword all day, or even for a short time.

Another source of people's misconceptions about armor come from bad articles on energy consumption of armored fighters, which are almost always based on late period tournament armor, or the heaviest examples from a battle, which were typically ceremonial armor of a non-combatant (old nobility, etc.). Some existing examples of jousting or ceremonial armor weigh more than 100lbs, but they were designed for a very specific purpose and not used aside from that purpose.

Exhaustion was an issue with plate, but had little to do with the weight of the armor or even the type of armor. Rather, it has to do with helmets. Wealthier combatants could use close faced helmets. Closed face helmets limit the amount of available oxygen, even with multiple 'air holes.' This is not particular to plate, it just was more likely that if you wore plate, you also wore a closed face helm.

If you really want to know what is and is not reasonable, there are multiple medieval reenactment or recreation groups where you can go experience armored combat first hand. If you stick with it, you'll find that the weights I quote above are pretty reasonable for a well conditioned fighter, and anything heavier is a recipe for loss.

I generally agree with most of your points but do disagree with some. While you are correct in that there is a BIG difference between tournament armour and battlefield armour, armour DOES sap your energy over time. There is no getting away from that.
Quality Late Medieval plate armour was generally made with varying thicknesses. 18gauge was about right for many of the edges, but they did thicken towards the centre of the pieces. The thinner edges were generally where it was overlapped by other plates. This alone is telling in that they tried to make it as light as possible while affording a certain level of protection.
But there is also mail in the gaps, and padded arming jackets etc. underneath, which make it VERY warm.

In terms of energy consumption - it is largely down to lifting arms to swing weapons - where every time you lift that arm, you are lifting the weight of the armour on that arm. And as we know - due to the way levers work, the further you hold something from your body the heavier it feels. This is especially true of gauntlets.
Its the same for the legs. Every time you lift a leg, you are lifting the weight of that leg armour with it. It wasn't uncommon to see infantry armour missing these more energy-sapping parts of the armour (lower leg/forearms/hands..)

It does sap energy.

Exhaustion, though, was more from heat. Helmets can feel enclosed but unless very badly designed, they do allow for heavy breathing. Heat was the killer. Under all the armour (which is heating up from the sun) - is a layer of padded clothing for cushioning. In combat it is absorbing heat from the armour, AND keeping body heat inside - working like a quilt. There was simply no outlet for the heat on a warm day (and most campaigns were fought in summer when food was abundant)

Fighting all day for several days? I don't think that is generally true. It was rare for a battle to last longer than a few hours - those that did were especially noted in History - partly because of that. They were generally formal affairs to begin with - both sides providing a 'show of force' hoping one would be clearly outmatched and sue for peace. It is only when even that fights happened.
Therefore, armies generally travelled with their equipment in carts - and on encountering the enemy force, stopped and camped up, then in the morning, both sides would 'suit up' ready for that show of force.
And then in a battle, so much time was spend forming up, standing, waiting, being shot at etc. with generally relatively little time spent in combat - and of that time, you could 'rotate' in and out of the front line as you needed to rest.
Not to mention that those who could afford full armour often had a horse to carry them too. This added a LOT to the ability to stay in armour.

In terms of applying it to games though, the simple truth is that historically, heavy armour was better. But it cost more. Wearing what could be considered as 'light/med/heavy' was purely down to wealth rather than a choice of 'combat style' - if this were to be applied to games, then everyone would start at level 1 with no armour and as higher levels are reached, slightly heavier types and more types of armour would become available. Padded, to hardened leather, to mail to brig to plate etc. with variations inbetween for coverage/quality. But most games tend to prefer inventing new and more durable materials to tier it by instead. :-)

btw.. Medieval re-enactor of over 20 years here. Done a lot of studying and have a lot of practical experience on this :-)