Any disadvantage to heavy armor?

[Muse]

I just begun the game and can't see any difference.

[TKzip]

None that I ever noticed. I usually equipped whatever offered the best protection/benefits to my character. I think one of the main factors for "heavy armor", is that it usually requires a slightly higher number of points put into the "Might" skills, but I could be wrong on that.

I think another implied question is, does the "weight" make your character slower? Not that I could tell. In a fairly short time, you can easily create an OP character, so I wouldn't worry too much about labels. :-)

[mpnorman10]

There are the three types of fighting: might, finess and magic, two or three of which can be blended as a focus if desired. For each focus alone the ideal armor is different, supporting what the character is focused on (even if one of the possible blends). Even among heavy armors widely different strengths are possible.

Heavy armor provides the best direct armor protection, but that is only part of the story. Finess armor helps with dodging and killing fast including critical hits. For magic, the mana and possibly health regen rate is much more important, as well as boosts to magical damage and reductions of mana costs.

Heavy armor does often have requirements for points invested in might, but those are not difficult to meet if might is even one of the players focuses. Later in the game items might require 40 points in might (same for finess and magic focused armors) but there are 120 points to go around.

Including the blends, there are many different fighting styles possible in this game. If I would give any advice it would be to suggest focusing on doing what you do best and make that stronger. Having one or a few genuinely powerful forms of attack is much stronger than dabbling a little in a dozen different types. During battle you can only do one (non-sustaining) thing at a time.

[alexshiro]

No disadvantage as such iirc, but the bonuses on medium armor are much better if you're going to do malee fighting.

PS: Don't use swords.

[CommanderAngel1]

Read what "mpnorman10" said, it's basically spot-on.

If you're worried that heavy armor will slow you down, or that mage armor is more easily broken, or some such... don't worry, that kind of thing doesn't exist.

If you play on "Casual" difficulty, you could arguably pick your armor based on aesthetics alone.

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If you want a better idea of what armor is available across the game, you can always check the wiki; as long as you don't venture too deep, you won't stumble across spoilers.

[Kocafujimo]

I'm not even sure "medium" armor exists in this game, as the type of armor you ca equip is based solely on how many perk points you've invested in the trees. It's not so noticeable early game, but later on you'll get rogue armor or robes you can't equip because you dont have X amount of points in that class tree. You can equip whatever weapons you want at any time, however.