Shields Material vs Shield Armor Rating

[Teralitha]

Its a bug or visual glitch, similar to the ebony dagger damage numbers.

[Teralitha]

Turns out it was just a visual bug for the armor ratings. Back to discussing the shields...

[Teralitha]

So, according to that wiki page, both shields and armor use those ratings, at the top of the chart. (But then Actually it does explain that shields have static ratings down at the bottom, but doesnt say why)

Why would I ever use a higher material shield when there is no benefit?The wiki's weight ratio is correct though. It says elven is x2 weight, and it is.


Either way, it doenst make sense for shields to suck like they do. Does Unity address this in any way? Any reason to wear anything but leather shields?

[Ommamar]

The only reason I can see in the current build for using a shield with a higher material is if you are going to add enchantments to it. Otherwise I agree you are better off using the leather shield of whatever size or just using a two hand weapon. If you are going for a min/max build any way.

[Teralitha]

Hm, well the wiki says that ebony is as light as leather. So... ebony armor and shields then for the max. It seems really strange that later games,(morrowind etc) have ebony and daedric weighing a ton, while here ebony is considered the lightest, and daedric the same weight as steel.

Its really those weight modifiers that screw shields over.

[mikeprichard]

I was considering trying to fix the UESP armor page as well (though I'd need to do more research to confirm all of the specific displayed armor material modifiers vs. the actually implemented modifiers in classic, similar to the weapon modifier display bug already addressed), but I'm kind of burned out from working on the Critical Strike and Weapons pages... I might get back to it, or maybe not.

OK, I see the armor rating topic (viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2338). Will discuss there.

[Jay_H]

You're doing good work fixing up the UESP, mike.

[mikeprichard]

Ha, for now it looks like all the Armor page needed was a note explaining the bug - the values in the UESP table there already showed the correct values applied in game. I might later add a second column (similar to what I'm testing on the Weapons page subject to other users' feedback) showing the incorrect values displayed in the classic tooltips for clarity, but we'll see.

[Teralitha]

I guess fixing shields will have to be something a modder would do.

[jayhova]

The primary purpose I could see for shields of varying materials would be for the sake of durability. Really how many axe wielding skeletons could you fight with a wood and leather shield? Clearly, a ironbound shield would be superior and a steel one more so. Is this at all implemented in either DFU or classic?