If you craft some fortified brass you could still run as light armor. I think that's a better alternative, the extra penetration and other bonuses (boni?) that light armor provides are way more beneficial than going heavy. You'll take a hit in stam/mag by not running shackle but you pick up some extra health and have defenses at the same level as you would with heavy.

md3788 wrote: »

Kartalin wrote: »

If you craft some fortified brass you could still run as light armor. I think that's a better alternative, the extra penetration and other bonuses (boni?) that light armor provides are way more beneficial than going heavy. You'll take a hit in stam/mag by not running shackle but you pick up some extra health and have defenses at the same level as you would with heavy.

I thought about that but I was worried about resource recovery. So this may be a stupid question, but in terms of resistance would a light armor build be equal to a heavy armor build if the resistance values are equal? Does Heavy offer any additional mitigation, or is it all based on the resistance number?

Heavy passives do give you some additional resistances on top of what the armor gives you.

5 Light armor gives you 20% snare reduction (although wings will help here), 20% magicka recovery bonus, 10% magicka cost reduction, 1800 extra spell resists, 10% extra crit chance, and almost 5k spell penetration.

5 Heavy armor gives you 1800 extra phys/spell resists, 20% health recovery bonus, resource return every 4 seconds (a couple hundred magicka and stamina), 10% extra health, 8% extra healing received, 25% additional resource return on heavy attacks, and the revitalize passive which is like a mini-Fury bonus (Increases your Weapon Damage and Spell Damage by 10 for 5 seconds when you take damage, stacking up to 20 times).

Instead of Fortified Brass you could instead do light Armor Master with 5 pieces active only on your back bar and slot Dampen Magicka (or Harness, your pref.) and use Willpower weapon(s) on your front/damage bar and pair that with another 5 piece + monster set of your choice. Bright Toast if you're worried about recovery, tri-stat glyphs on everything, spell damage enchants on jewelry. Valkyn skoria or Grothdarr monster set. BSW is still an option but you might need some reduction/recovery glyphs on your jewelry.

My magdk is Argonian so between the potion passive and battle roar I can get away with 1200-1400 recovery, and it also depends on what you're comfortable with.
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I was looking at a website but I guess it’s out of date now. Also quick note on Armor Master, apparently you have to double bar it.

I use 5-1-1 light with protective jewelry on my magplar builds and a few of my magdk builds. I definitely agree that is a good way to go. I also have a fortified brass, Bright throats boast, skoria build that sticks with simple arcane jewelry. I think there’s a lot of good options out there but I think the most important component is those light armor passives. Paired with ele drain and/or spinners if possible.