Heavy Armor

Maichail · February 2022

Is it still best to have mainly heavy armor, or a combination?

I'm talking about a Stamina\Medium Armor, but same goes for Magika\Light. I used to wear all Heavy, which is good for health, not so much for damage.

I've been told that reinforced instead of impen is now more useful but does that allow you to drop to medium?

This is mainly for Battlegrounds. Is there a difference for Cyrodil?

Larcomar · February 2022

If you scroll down youll find this thread. https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/596189/mag-armor-options-what-armor-ratio-for-mag-builds#latest I think for mag at least, most people would say 3-1-3. I certainly find that the best combo, but I'm pretty casual cyro rather than serious bgs. Might be diff situation in a close quarters bg.

Either way, I suspect that for stam, it'll vary more. On a nb for instance or say a stamsorc skirmisher, you'd prob want full medium. On a more tanky brawler, you might want more heavy. I suspect that, ultimately it's something you'll want to play around with to see what suits you and your playstyle. My usual rule is a bit of both and then adjust to tase.

On reinforced vs impen, impen seems a bit lacklustre now. I think a lot of people are runnign reinforced on the big bits but Id say well fitted on the small ones. I dont think reinfoced is going to do much on gloves or waist, whereas the well fitted bonus is statis.YMMV

Maichail · February 2022

Thanks, I guess I just need to try a few combinations and see what happens.

I'll try 3-3-1 to start with and see how this pans out.

malistorr · February 2022

It's so expensive golding out gear so a 3-3-1 or 3-4 combo is probably a good compromise for just about everyone. If you give up a little armor you can always make up for it with changing an armor enchant to max health instead of stam or mag. That way you're not constantly broke and ending up with 100 pieces of gold gear that you're barely ever going to use. You can fill in anything you're missing with food/drink choice, mundus, jewelry enchant etc. and you won't have to use so much gold.

etchedpixels · March 2022

Maichail wrote: »

Is it still best to have mainly heavy armor, or a combination?

I'm talking about a Stamina\Medium Armor, but same goes for Magika\Light. I used to wear all Heavy, which is good for health, not so much for damage.

I've been told that reinforced instead of impen is now more useful but does that allow you to drop to medium?

This is mainly for Battlegrounds. Is there a difference for Cyrodil?

NoCP mostly heavy - CP maybe more other things.

Some of it is a balance. The really good PvP players can often get away with more lighter pieces than the rest of us. If you keep dying then more heavy can really help. Having plenty of health from food and armour buffs also helps because you don't look like a gank magnet even if you ought to be.

Heavy and damage is not entirely contradictory. I seem to kill plenty of people even though I am wearing medusa armour and mother's sorrow especially as people don't tend to stack impenetrable so much any more. Sustain is more the challenge.

The sets matter more than the traits in some ways - Pariah is still the best protective heavy set for PvP for most cases, and not hard to get. Orgnum's Scales is craftable and pretty effective too. My baby stamdk seems to work with sword singer and orgnum's as easy to get and cheap levelling gear.

Variety is also helpful. Everyone knows how to counter Alcast generic PvP build because they've fought 50 of them a day. When you start running some of the effective but more off the wall sets like mad tinkerer or grace of gloom it causes confusion.

MEBengalsFan2001 · March 2022

Larcomar wrote: »

If you scroll down youll find this thread. https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/596189/mag-armor-options-what-armor-ratio-for-mag-builds#latest I think for mag at least, most people would say 3-1-3. I certainly find that the best combo, but I'm pretty casual cyro rather than serious bgs. Might be diff situation in a close quarters bg.

Either way, I suspect that for stam, it'll vary more. On a nb for instance or say a stamsorc skirmisher, you'd prob want full medium. On a more tanky brawler, you might want more heavy. I suspect that, ultimately it's something you'll want to play around with to see what suits you and your playstyle. My usual rule is a bit of both and then adjust to tase.

On reinforced vs impen, impen seems a bit lacklustre now. I think a lot of people are runnign reinforced on the big bits but Id say well fitted on the small ones. I dont think reinfoced is going to do much on gloves or waist, whereas the well fitted bonus is statis.YMMV

Reinforced vs Nirnhoned for medium pieces. Nirnhoned is better than reinforced for all light gear if you want to increase your resistance and for medium anything that is not a chest also benefits more from Nirnhoned over reinforced. Reinforced on medium legs, head, shoulders and boot provides 291 increase when the gear is legnedary whereas nirnhoned at legendary provides 301, which means if you run those pieces on your character and use Nirnhoned over reinforced you gain 40 more total resistance. It isn't much but it is worth pointing out. For light pieces the bonus of using Nirnhoned over reinforced is greater.

Heavy gear other than waist and gloves benefit more from reinforced. Shields also benefit from using Nirnhoned over reinforced.

This is why I go reinforced and heavy with chest, legs and shoulders. Than head and boots I go medium or light with well fitted, impen (if I want to increase my crit resist a bit), or nirnhoned. My waits and hands always has impen or well fitted. It is all dependent on how I'm trying to build my character. Even if I build a tank based PVP character in all heavy my waist and gloved would be well fitted.

soniku4ikblis · March 2022

Really, the big heavy hitting Magplars are running high penetration/spell damage and high regens.

So I tend to wonder if they are running 5 medium 1 light/1 heavy.

Even with my tanky Magplar at 41K resistances, 36 percent mitigation, I'm getting bowled over in Magplar 1vx and seeing 12k +6k Jabs/BL on my death recaps.

So atm, it seems to me high damage and regens/heals are winning out over tanky sets.

I'm assuming these Plars are running Clever Alchemist/Olorime and Stuhn's. They all open with Charge to proc Stuhn's.

I also think Magma Incarnate is in there too. Or Balorgh's.

I do know they do not have more than 30K Heakth. And in medium armor, with CA you can hit 30k.

MEBengalsFan2001 · March 2022

soniku4ikblis wrote: »

Really, the big heavy hitting Magplars are running high penetration/spell damage and high regens.

So I tend to wonder if they are running 5 medium 1 light/1 heavy.

Even with my tanky Magplar at 41K resistances, 36 percent mitigation, I'm getting bowled over in Magplar 1vx and seeing 12k +6k Jabs/BL on my death recaps.

So atm, it seems to me high damage and regens/heals are winning out over tanky sets.

I'm assuming these Plars are running Clever Alchemist/Olorime and Stuhn's. They all open with Charge to proc Stuhn's.

I also think Magma Incarnate is in there too. Or Balorgh's.

I do know they do not have more than 30K Heakth. And in medium armor, with CA you can hit 30k.

Go build a character up with 8k damage and compare the actual ability damage values to one that is around 6-6.5K damage. The bump in damage after 6K is minimal compared from going 4K to 6K. That 2k more needed to hit 8k damage isn't worth it given how much you miss out on with other stats.

If you are getting bowled over are you in IC or Battlegrounds? Don't forget some content CP don't matter so your defensive CP can't help you out. Also, if you get off balance, stunned, rooted, etc... players do gain some advantage in damage towards you.

soniku4ikblis · March 2022

MEBengalsFan2001 wrote: »

soniku4ikblis wrote: »

Really, the big heavy hitting Magplars are running high penetration/spell damage and high regens.

So I tend to wonder if they are running 5 medium 1 light/1 heavy.

Even with my tanky Magplar at 41K resistances, 36 percent mitigation, I'm getting bowled over in Magplar 1vx and seeing 12k +6k Jabs/BL on my death recaps.

So atm, it seems to me high damage and regens/heals are winning out over tanky sets.

I'm assuming these Plars are running Clever Alchemist/Olorime and Stuhn's. They all open with Charge to proc Stuhn's.

I also think Magma Incarnate is in there too. Or Balorgh's.

I do know they do not have more than 30K Heakth. And in medium armor, with CA you can hit 30k.

Go build a character up with 8k damage and compare the actual ability damage values to one that is around 6-6.5K damage. The bump in damage after 6K is minimal compared from going 4K to 6K. That 2k more needed to hit 8k damage isn't worth it given how much you miss out on with other stats.

If you are getting bowled over are you in IC or Battlegrounds? Don't forget some content CP don't matter so your defensive CP can't help you out. Also, if you get off balance, stunned, rooted, etc... players do gain some advantage in damage towards you.

I play Overland Cyro. Generally, I hold my own. When it comes to 1vx, that's not a problem either.

In this scenario I mentioned, I was fighting two templars spamming buffs on each other. And it appeared they were wiping out my straight mitigation with Stuhn's and buffing themselves with Major/Minor Courage.

I could damage the primary templar doing all the tanking as they were of average squishyness, but their buddy kept them healed.

All I was saying is that against small scale teams with good buffs, I was getting bowled over.

In this instance, building specifically for damage while having full heals is an effective playstyle it would appear. So going from 4.5k tooltip jabs to 6k+ tooltips on jabs does work effectively. I thought it was pretty clever of these guys. They certainly did a good job.