Why all the light armor hate?

[MidbossVyers]

Why does everyone only focus on heavy armors? In vanilla Oblivion, all artifact, unique, leveled shields are all heavy. In mods, while the Silver Light armor does come with both heavy and light versions, the light cuirass is classified as heavy armor. The Defiled Crusader armor has two different shields, both of which are heavy. Why does no one pay attention to light armor?

[nosisab]

In a way, light armor is meant for speed and shields are cumbersome. If playing a fighter, heavy armor seems to be the right choice (unless barbarian), if playing a thief, maybe... still somewhat out the character... if a ranger (how do you ever know there is such thing as shield board?) ... if mage, are you sure you need one? :)

[MidbossVyers]

And there's also acrobats, scouts, and pilgrims.

[FMod]

Light armor is pretty useless in-game. In Morrowind, light armor rocked unless you get into extreme enchantments. In Oblivion, is there even any decent stock light armor? And making your character only viable with mods is a tough choice.

 

The problem is not light armor per se, it's the extreme dependence of effectiveness on armor skill. Effectively you can only pimp out one of your armor skills, and that's going to be heavy armor 9 out of 10 times. Then already mediocre light armor starts looking even worse. Much worse.

 

Am I alone in thinking Morrowind's light armors, like Netch Leather, actually look better than Oblivion's? That's before you get into Medium types that got merged with Heavy.

[DrakeTheDragon]

Drake's an absolute sucker for light armor. All he's ever going to wear will be light armor. He doesn't like to get hindered in his agility or reflexes by bulky heavy armor parts being in the way or slowed down by the overall weight of his equipment (though this is of minor concern to a strong dragon like him), and he anyways dislikes too much stuff covering his scales at all times.

 

He was born in a cave-dwelling society of secluded dragons, walking on all fours although they very well can walk upright, hiding away from mankind and in many regards living more or less close to the way of animals anymore. Those dragons didn't need much clothing in their warm, protected cave system deep inside the mountains, and as such also didn't wear much. Thus when not in human shape Drake and his kind stick to this habit, mostly, and only ever wear armor and the like when going into battle, and even then it's rather the light type than the heavy for most of them.

 

Likewise most equipment I design for him is going to be Light Armor accordingly. My Guardian Equipment is a good example, yet pretty much not fitting into lore, originating from a different world after all.

But of course, when things get too bulky or there's a lot of metal involved and the like, I'll have to classify it as Heavy Armor nevertheless. I'm not gonna call a full-body suit of heavy metals "Light Armor", just because it's my preference!

 

I don't think there's outright "hate" for light armors. It's just more or less neglected rather. I can only advise a good read of "The Armorer's Challenge", or what the ingame book was called, where it focuses on the different aspects of the different types of armor with their advantages and drawbacks alike. But that's just me.

Coming to think of it, of course, the total "lack" of those aspects playing a role in Oblivion entirely could very well be responsible for the neglecting of light armor all the way. Its benefits were never implemented in this game!

Edited December 28, 2011 by DrakeTheDragon

[Nephenee13]

Effectively you can only pimp out one of your armor skills, and that's going to be heavy armor 9 out of 10 times. Then already mediocre light armor starts looking even worse. Much worse.

 

This doesn't follow. There is nothing "making" you pump heavy armor instead of light armor.

 

Calirinia solely uses light armor, except for when she has to scrounge if battle has been heavy and everything she carries is broken (Unequip Broken Armor is a good way of spicing up those trips into Oblivion...).

 

And my second character (when I get around to actually starting her for real) will exclusively use heavy armor.

[FMod]

This doesn't follow. There is nothing "making" you pump heavy armor instead of light armor.

Oh, I can't fully agree. There is something - it's called FCOM. And ramp the difficulty up for good measure. If you want to survive, you have to go in heavy. That, or be an alchemist.

[Nephenee13]

This doesn't follow. There is nothing "making" you pump heavy armor instead of light armor.

Oh, I can't fully agree. There is something - it's called FCOM. And ramp the difficulty up for good measure. If you want to survive, you have to go in heavy. That, or be an alchemist.

 

That makes me think that the problem lies in FCOM's balance, not in anything in more-or-less vanilla Oblivion.

[wetblanket]

A character with 100 light armour skill and 75+ armourer skill (to enable 125% armour health) wearing glass armour has the same armour rating (85, capped by the game) as one with 100 heavy armour skill and 75+ armourer skill ie. at a high level there is no disadvantage to light armour in vanilla. Add in other ways of boosting your armour rating at lower levels and I see no necessity to use heavy armour whatever the difficulty.

[Striker879]

I agree with wetblanket completely (see any of my posts about using enchanted clothing instead of armor). Mod authors are catering to the 'I'm bored with this character I created yesterday so I'll start a new one' crowd. Making their 'bikini armor' into heavy armor gives the impression of 'more protection' (to go along with 'the less it covers the more it protects' theory). Notice I said 'impression'. As wetblanket points out, you need skill in any weight of armor to get it's rated protection. For those unwilling or unable to grasp the subtilties of the vanilla armor system the word 'heavy' says it all for them.