which armor is good?

[Aperture Science]

currently im wearing courser uniform and dirty army helmet which adds up to 40 protection, im fairly sure thats wank so which armor should i get and where do i get it, im at the point in the story where you choose which faction to join, (talk to railroad, minutemen or brotherhood)

[Ruin]

I'm a devout lover of power armour myself...

Do the Automatron content and you will get, what is arguably the best vanilla Power Armour in the game, the Tesla T60...

[Doombringer]

You can join all the factions, but at a certain point you need to choose which one to finish the game with.

There are railroad missions that will get you ballistic weave, which lets you add 110 armor to 4 types of hats and a lot of clothing, so that is 220 armor before you even add actual armor.

I generally go with the lightest weight stuff that has the legendary abilities I want.
If you just want silly high armor rating, upgraded X-01 will get you near 2000.

[Drake Ravenwolf]

The best protection you can get (outside of PA) is as follows:
Ballistic Weave Green Rag Hat = 110 B 115 E
Ballistic Weave Military Fatigues = 110 B 120 E
Operator Goggles = 4 B 4 E
Disciples Metal Chest Piece
Operators Heavy Arms & Legs

That all gives you around 430 B&E defense, ten times what you have now
You unlock ballistic weave by doing missions for the Railroad, the other items are looted (or bought) from the Nuka World Raiders which requires the DLC. If you don't have the DLC then the next best is a Heavy Synth Chest Piece with Heavy Robot arms and legs which you'll loot from the Rust Devils and Synths.

Robot arms/legs have the benefit of being able to be moded with "Dense" which can then stack with "Padded" on the chest piece for 75% reduced damage from explosions, inc nukes.

[Doombringer]

Heavy Operators has 5 more damage resist, but 13 less energy resist than (metal/spiked) Disciples.
The weight on both is silly high though... (137 for full set)
Marine armor saves 56 weight for -17 / -18 armor compare to Heavy Operators.
Heavy Synth is similar to Marine armor.
Robot actually give the highest (non-power armor) damage resist, but you can't find legendary robot armor :(

[Drake Ravenwolf]

Originally posted by Doombringer:

The weight on both is silly high though... (137 for full set)

Ultra-light works far better on Nuka World armor than on anything else because it reduces weight by 80% vs only a static value

[Doombringer]

Well, heavy/normal armor are different items in the DLCs, whereas the base game armors are the same item with an itemmod that determines if they are normal/sturdy/heavy.

And lightwieght affects base weight only (not itemmod +weight), so yes it is MUCH better on heavy DLC armor, especially if you don't make the improved version.
(ultra lightweight is -80% base weight)
(makes heavy operator/disciple armor go from 137 --> 49.8 full set if improved, 109 --> 21.8 if not)

On the flipside, itemmods that increase weight are also a % of base weight, so much heavier on DLC armor.
(dense adds +3.5 on any Synth chest, but +16.5 on a Heavy Operator (or Disciple), etc.)

[Nite69]

Metal standard armor is what I always use, fully upgraded, I can complete about 95% of the game with it, and I only have to use the hazmat suit in temporary locations

this game is too easy to need power armor so its useless

[Doombringer]

Power Armor has very few legendary abilities (no random drops) and requires upkeep (cores, repair).
Also damage reduction from armor is roughly a cube root equation, so that insane 2000 armor actually doesn't do as much as you would expect.

Rough guide:
if armor = 15% of attack damage or less it will do pretty much nothing (1% reduction)
if armor = 25% of attack damage you get 17% damage reduction
if armor = 45% of attack damage you get 33% damage reduction
if armor = attack damage you get 50% damage reduction
if armor = 3x attack damage you get 66.5% damage reduction
if armor = 7x attack damage you get 75% damage reduction
if armor = 20x attack damage you get 83.3% damage reduction
if armor = 100x attack damage you get 90.7% reduction
if armor = 550x attack damage you get 95% (max) damage reduction

Armor damage reduction is based on attack damage before difficulty damage modifiers, so it works just as well on all difficulties.
The highest damage enemy attack are mini-nukes which do 450 (before difficulty damage mods).

[ghpstage]

Honestly OP, most sets of armour once upgraded would easily beat the 40 you have, and you can wear various clothing underneath that have additional bonuses to SPECIAL. Some can even get ballistic fibre for huge DR values (army fatigues, military fatigues as examples).

Try a bunch out.

[Nite69]

@doombringer, when I had standard metal armor fully upgraded, I had a super mutant suicider walk up and explode right next to me with just a tiny bit of health left, surprised I survived it lol

[Kameraden]

There are a number of Gunner Major post in which you can get nearly a full set of Heavy Combat Armor at most of them from their leaders. Combat Armor is not the best, but it's not the weakest at any specific catagory as well. Not exactly visually the most appealing armor in game. It's the Jack of All Trades Armor.

You can put it bluntly this way.

Base Game Armor Goes like this.

Leather "Sucks" mostly for early game, provides more ER than DR still.

Metal when you have a full set of heavy provides the highest DR but the lowest ER of the primary mid/late game base sets.

Combat Armor, provides a balanced DR/ER but isn't weakest at either. Full set of Heavy without upgrades will provide 101 in both DR and ER, when upgraded, of course it's much more.

Synth Armor, hardest to find honestly a full set of Heavy Synth armor has the highest ER for base game none DLC armor. Being most top tier enemies including Synths/BOS/Gunners and Super Mutants ie their top dogs mostly use energy weapons it's likely one of the best, but hardest to collect sets in the game. It's the opposite of Metal Armor in short, high ER, low DR.

Personally the easiest of the 3 is Combat to get a Full Set of Heavy for. Metal it's purely chance, but Combat Armor you can find them off Gunner Leaders are most of their main camps, regardless of your level. So you can collect a full set (most of the time) relatively easy after you raid a few of their bases. Synth is most definitely the hardest to collect, definitely if you choose to side with the Institute, as the only way to find Heavy Synth armor after that in a bit way is wait for the Institute's vender to sell them individually.

[Nite69]

the synth leader at the fishpacking factory would be a good spot to farm heavy synth armor, they all the time respawn at it

[jackhickman999]

Normal armor goes something like this
1.The disciple/pack armor from nuka world .
2.Operator armor from nuka world.
3. Marine armor from Far Harbor.
4. Heavy Robot armor from automatron.
5. I think is like synth or maybe metal/combat armor.

Then if you do the railroad quests you can get ballistic weave which you apply to normal clothing.
You want to use it on either the miltary or combat fatigues as they leave all your other armor slots open for extra armor pieces to place over it. Then you need to find an hat that you can ballistic weave to wear as well.
You can also get better weave the more points you put into the armorer perk.
This is the best you can do non-power armor wise.

Power armor is the best late game armor if you can have the X-01 armor fully upgraded provides the best protection in the game and you can add jets packs etc to it making even more useful.

I really like the perk for making fusion cores last longer up to twice as long and you can basically use one to deploy a small nuke which will demolish everything.

There is also a bobblehead to give them an extra 10% capacity as well for a total of 210% which I think makes them last for about 40 minutes real time which is a long time when you got over 100 of them. So you can get enough to power your suit and collect more core than you use and I've got over 4000 minutes of power for them. which is more than 66 hours worth in storage never going to burn through that.

[bigdale]

I would switch to non-complete uniform. You want the best 10% running speed that you find for both legs (survival) and then I like one piece of auto-stim armor mixed with whatever else you like. Strength and endurance armour is probably the most useful for the carry weight, HP and melee dmg.

[Eminem]

Power armor lets you run headlong into battle if stealth / hiding behind cover is not your thing...