An Explanation: Armor Types

tawok · April 2014

So from what I gather, choosing an armor type is solely about the passives you gain. Health from Heavy, Stam from Medium, and Magicka from Light? I also understand that most successful medium or heavy wearers do a 5 heavy 2 medium or vise versa to maximize passives. Can anyone shed a little more light on this? I'd like to make an informed decision before I start spendin' points.

spideyfk · April 2014

You are correct regarding the passives, more or less.
Each type of armor skill provides different skills that will help you with your combat tactics.
For me, "sharing" two types of armor is a good thing if you need some passives that you cannot find with your "appropiate" armor (When i say appropiate, i mean for your combat style). For example, you may be in need of some Magic defense, or Magicka regeneration, or maybe more health. Also, think about the second weapon type you will be using on level 15, and from that you may gain an insight into what bests suits you.

Xionar · April 2014

It is pretty much all about the passives, yes. People will go light armor for the decreased magicka cost, as well as extra spell crit. Medium armor for weapon crit, stamina/sneak passives, and heavy for damage mitigation/health regen.

The reason people usually go 5/2 is because the one of the top passives in each skill line requires that you wear 5 pieces of that type of armor to be in effect. Light armor, for example, grants 10% more spell crit rate for those wearing at least 5 pieces.

So a light armor wearer could also run with 2 heavy armor pieces, to increase mitigation/health regen and armor rating if they wished, however this would also be of detriment to some of your primary armor type passives, as they would lose out on those other two pieces (which increase the % effect of your passives).

Personally I'm rolling light armor, while wearing some heavy armor to be able to grab heavy armor's primary skill Immovable, then switching to full light afterwards.

tawok · April 2014

I see the light. I'm using 5 heavy 2 medium on Dragon Knight. Extra stamina is crucial for tanking.

I do hope they implement an armor "ultimate passive" of sorts. For wearing 7 pieces of heavy armor, you get +10% health or something like that. Something to give incentive to wearing a full suit.

Vikova · April 2014

Yes, 5/2 for passives is the standard fit. The only other factors are armor level (which is not very relevant with how easily you hit the soft cap) and appearance.

Until they raise the soft cap for armor, passives are essentially all that matter for armor.