coolest looking heavy armor

[Zechariah]

modded or unmodded

[MeinChurro]

Unmodded, for males I would say, Dragonplate. For females I would say daedric. It also depends on your face though, I would say a big nord man definitely looks better in a dragonplate helmet, or stahlrim heavy armor, but they do end up looking kind of weird on elves. Just the shape of the face. Steel plate looks pretty good on males too. Vanilla ebony looks like trash, in my opinion.

[Perplex]

I like the look of Dwarven armor.

[NightLizard]

Originally posted by Wake Up!!:

modded or unmodded

Vanilla Dragonplate(for show face), Dwarven Armor, Ancient Nord Armor for females & Orcs, ebony mail plus the rest of ebony set.

Modded there are thons of good ones, and mostly a matter of taste. i like lore-friendly ones.

[alexander_dougherty]

Ebony Armour every time, modded or otherwise.

[ShelLuser]

Deadric is my all time favorite, for both genders. I never used mods to enhance on armor (only add new stuff) so... unmodded for me.

[FauxFurry]

Modded: Possibly Mingyanuu's Power Armor mod, Girl's Heavy Armors, Nisetanaka's Ebony Bikini Armor (it is modular so it still counts as heavy armor)or the Dwarven Power Armor.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/37542
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/17843
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/29150
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/30317
Well, those are the coolest looking ones which I can link here and are not just armors from some other game ported to Skyrim such as N7 armor or T-51b Power Armor, anyway.

Unmodded: Dragonplate. The helmet looks best on khajiit in my opinion.

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Madness and Amber (Without the Helmet for Amber) look great on Men/women which is a welcome change from most of the armors in Vanilla, which often look good on one sex, but horrible on another (the biggest culprit here is Glass, with a close runner up being Dragonscale. Wtf if is up with those boob plates on that?)

Elven and Ancient Falmer look okay on men, but look really good on Women. Not succumbing to cheap sexualization but still preserving feminine shapes such as hip accentuation. (I'm okay with armor sexualization, but either go full Dark Seducer/Golden Saint, or just keep it relatively gender neutral, don't try to half ass it like Dragonscale/Glass)

The Dwarven Mail (Just the body) and the Daedric Mail from Creation club also look really good.

Daedric in Skyrim is a bit of a mixed bag for me. It doesn't look horrible, but it's just a tad too spikey. (inb4 "That's the Point" pun). I think shaving off some of the shoulder/helmet spikes and getting rid of the barbs just above the midriff would have made it look a lot better. But I prefer a bit less High Fantasy in armor designs. Overall I'd say Skyrim Daedric is still at least tied with Morrowind Daedric in appearance (Except Morrowind's Daedric Face of God is the best Daedric Helmet ever).

Skyrim has the best looking Ebony armor of the entire series. Both the original Ebony and the CC Ebony Plate look excellent. Though if I could criticize it a little, the waistcloths on both seem completely unnecessary. Waistcloths seem to be a running theme in Skyrim armor for some reason.

[mikk011]

Unmodded, Nordic Carved and then Orcish for both male/female.