Light armor is NOT a defenseive skill.

[InDarkestNight]

I've tried playing two-handers that wore light armor several times. I just can't get them to work. You're just too damned fragile Now, I have gotten light armor to work multiple times, but those all either used shields.

Trying to figure out why two-handed and light armor don't mix, I may have realized what's wrong; light armor isn't actually a defensive skill. Let's think about this; why do you wear light armor? To reduce carry weight, sneak better, and stamina regen. For comparison, what do you wear heavy armor for? Damage reduction, reduced fall damage, better unarmed attacks (for what that's worth). Why do you use a shield? To reduce damage, protect against arrows, and elemental attacks. Why do you sneak? To avoid damage. Why do you summon stuff? To get your foes to attack something other than you. You get the idea.

Light armor doesn't really protect you; you have to try and dodge attacks to survive. Heavy armor is known to make more of a difference early on. Light armor isn't practically any better than not wearing anything at all. I've actually had a similar problem with a 'heavy armor' character once. However, he only wore a helmet, gauntlets, and boots. For his body slot, he wore robes. Amusingly, he did get farther than any light armor two-hander I've made. Still, as the playthrough progressed everything kept hitting him harder and harder. Eventually, this culminated in me being unable to enter a forsworn camp I needed to clear for a quest due to the archers one-shotting me. I tried innumerable times to approach, but I simply could not. Also, I actually got used to playing the game at half health, because keeping my health up was just so futile (though part of that was me relying on restoration spells when had a freaking warhammer, which has a stupid long equipping animation).

You don't take light armor to defend yourself, You mainly take it to reduce carry weight AND HELP YOUR SNEAK SKILL, which is an actual defensive skill.

Could a light-armor two-hander be made to work? Maybe. Sneak doesn't help much. Yeah, the sneak archer thing works fine, but what do you do when you lose stealth, or you're wondering the overworld, or you're walking through narrow passage ways with nowhere to hide? Also note that sneak has NO PERKS for two-handed weapons. Those light armor builds that work, they aren't true light armor builds. They're shield builds, stealth builds, summoners (strangely, I've never done a light-armor character that used summons, they always wear robes or heavy armor strangely).

Point is, this is why I can never get this build to work; I have no defensive skills. I'm a melee glass cannon character. Mages don't have this problem strangely, but that's because of their summons and healing spells! A light armor two-hander has nothing to defend himself with; he's just rushing in with a weapon with pitiful damage. I've actually had more luck with light-armor dual wielders. What does that say? Dual wielding deals far, far more damage, and at least you can quickly pull your weapon back out after you've used a healing spell. On that note, two-handers are worse for defense than one-handed weapons. The long equipping animation leaves you vulnerable, making you even more frail than the fact that you don't have a shield. Blocking with a weapon is also useless; the only reason to do that is to bash a dragon to stop it breathing fire on you.

So yeah, no more glass cannon builds. I realize now that light armor is NOT a defensive skill. Any character I make, has to have at least one defensive skill, and now I know that light armor shouldn't be part of that list. Maybe now I can make this light armor two-hander work. What can I do to defend him? Summon stuff before the battle. The two-hander doesn't allow restoration though. You also don't use it for sneak attacks; you use a bow because it gets the better multiplier. Cloak spells do work fine though, and you can even use the other spells for ranged offense if you need to (I've done that and it worked fine, albeit with heavy armor).

What is light armor then? Its mainly utility. More carry weight, more stamina, and a buff to an actual defensive skill. Its less defensive than freaking alteration. Alteration gives you better armor, magic resist, and paralysis spells. So yeah, crappy lame alteration is superior to light armor; what does that say? Light armor just sucks. Even speech is arguably more useful than light armor.

So more barbarian builds. From now on, all twohanders need a defensive skill. Summoning stuff, heavy armor, shouts maybe. Light armor shouldn't be on the list of options. Why is the skill system so crappy anyway? Didn't bethesda put any thought into it at all? Balance is non-existent, few perks really do anything interesting other than giving you bigger numbers. This is why we need perk overhauls. Too bad they all seem to make you OP. Been thinking about making my own; maybe I should get to that. Would be great if now I can actually do scripting, though honestly maybe skipping scripts would be the better option. Guess we'll see one day.