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Just a quick question.

Would it be better in general to use a piece of armor enchanted with protect xx% or piece of armor with higher innate defense.

In this case, I found a Fur Cuirass (2 defense for me) with 7% shield, but am currently wearing a steel Cuirass with 4 defense.

I guess, I'm just looking for the calcs for weapon protection enchant v. armor class value.

Cheers,

PMJ

In this particular instance the fur cuirass would give you more protection.

Sanguine is correct.

The shield effect confers points of defense for how much points of shield there is.

You can wear nothing and have an 85 point shield effect going on and you don't need to wear Daedric. Do note that all points above 85 are useless, as they will not be counted in defense.

ALSO! If you have the choice of putting or selecting a normal Shield enchantment and a magic Shield enchantment (example: fire, shock, frost shield), choose the magic one because in addition to protecting you more from those elements, it counts towards your armor rating just like a normal Shield enchantment would!

You also have to consider that using shield enchantments slots reduces the number of free slots you have to divert other pursuits. But in your particulat instance yes the fur provides better defense. But if your a heavy armor person keeping heavy armor on will allow it to level up and surpass lighter armors.

A few more notes, you can use an enchanted shield with two handed weapons, warhammers, battleaxes, claymores (dai-katanas) and staves, you don't gain the armour rating from the shield but you gain the enchantment
Also in the endish game you can wear clothing that gives you the same highest defence rating as armour.
So it's either clothes with 85% defence and some magic resistance (fire/frost/shock) or armour with 85% with whatever enchantments you want, the armour will weigh less in the end but still require a hammer which enemies can disentergrate your armour within battle

Course there are lot of ways around that, master armorer, 100% reflect makes your armor undamaged by anything but arrows, oblivion has 10 ways to do everything.

Redguard_Master wrote:master armorer

I wonder why I mentioned "during a battle" when you can't repair your armour?

You'd have to have one marathon of a battle to break your armor in a single sitting.

Redguard_Master wrote:You'd have to have one marathon of a battle to break your armor in a single sitting.

It's possible... *remembers the time my armour was destroyed by several minotaur lords* ... yeah I'm pretty sure it is possible

Dragour wrote:

Redguard_Master wrote:You'd have to have one marathon of a battle to break your armor in a single sitting.

It's possible... *remembers the time my armour was destroyed by several minotaur lords* ... yeah I'm pretty sure it is possible

That´s why you´re also a good alchemist so that you can make a potion to give you 85 armour in one sweep (preparation needed though) =D

Redguard_Master wrote:You'd have to have one marathon of a battle to break your armor in a single sitting.

Go to the arena, choose 3 minotaur lords and watch your armor get obliterated in 1 minute.

^ Never happens to me.

I have always figured that a shield essentially acts as a better shield enchantment, as long as you take the time to hit journeyman and have high magic resist, spell absorb,etc.

Yeah, I use Lord K's Bulwark from the Fighter Stronghold DLC because it has arguably one of the best armor ratings in the game; plus, once you hit journeyman, it won't be damaged anymore except by disentigrate spells, which is where the magick resists come into play.