Unfortunately this just exacerbates Skyrim's armor issue. Check out Armor Rating Redux's's description page, it explains in more detail how messed up Skyrim's armor problem is.
The vanilla armor system is utterly, utterly broken. Having an armor rating of 0 - 300 is pretty much pointless, as you still take almost full damage. Having an armor rating of 300 - 600 suddenly means every point is valuable, as your survivability increases hyperbolically.
The hidden bonus was added because at the last minute, Bethesda devs realized how ineffectual armor was for most of the game, both player and NPC alike. Yes, by removing the hidden bonus, you're also nerfing enemies, as well, like bandits and guards. So they tacked on a hidden bonus as a quick-fix, even though it still didn't address the fundamental problem with the armor formula itself. Basically with the vanilla formula, there's hardly any difference between light vs heavy and effective health pool dramatically and exponentially increases around the last 100 points before hitting the cap.
Armor Rating Overhaul tackles the same issue, but overhauls the whole issue of resistance in general. i use this now but have also used Armor Rating Redux .previously, plays nicely with Smilodon - Combat of Skyrim too. the problem is more involved than a simple fix can really tackle, and Bethesda fudged combat - probably for more positive early reviews
There's also Armor Rating Rescaled. However, it's bugged. Trap damage will always be reduced by whatever the max DR% is set to (80% by default), and it seems to fudge up bashing by making it far less effective.
Yeah, I've kind of given up on armor mods in the meantime. Now I just live with and accept vanilla Skyrim's dumb formula lol. To offset things though, I give armor to certain creatures types like draugr and better perks to bandits, soldiers, guards, etc. I've also found Equipment Durability NG helps. Unless I keep my armor in tip-top shape, I'll start taking more damage real fast (big difference between 500 AR vs 300 AR, for example).
Maybe not the perfect solution for everyone, but Blade and Blunt uses its own formula for armor rating that I really like, involving a flat 0.15% damage reduction per point up to 500 AR, which is then reduced to 0.03% per point for every point up to 1000 (which is the actual hard cap, representing 90% total physical damage reduction). Blade and Blunt is obviously a comprehensive overhaul of several related systems so it'd be hard to justify running it if you're only interested in the armor mechanics, but luckily Kulharin recently isolated the system in a new plugin and dll. For me, this is a super appealing way to keep armor upgrades and buffs rewarding well into the higher levels without skewing game balance severely in favor of heavy armor stacking vs. melee opponents, and the only thing I'd mention is that it pairs best with mods like Apothecary and Thaumaturgy (or any mods that close the crafting loop in some way) so that 1000 armor remains a mostly unattainable goal without copious buff usage.
4 comments
The hidden bonus was added because at the last minute, Bethesda devs realized how ineffectual armor was for most of the game, both player and NPC alike. Yes, by removing the hidden bonus, you're also nerfing enemies, as well, like bandits and guards. So they tacked on a hidden bonus as a quick-fix, even though it still didn't address the fundamental problem with the armor formula itself. Basically with the vanilla formula, there's hardly any difference between light vs heavy and effective health pool dramatically and exponentially increases around the last 100 points before hitting the cap.
the problem is more involved than a simple fix can really tackle, and Bethesda fudged combat - probably for more positive early reviews
Yeah, I've kind of given up on armor mods in the meantime. Now I just live with and accept vanilla Skyrim's dumb formula lol. To offset things though, I give armor to certain creatures types like draugr and better perks to bandits, soldiers, guards, etc. I've also found Equipment Durability NG helps. Unless I keep my armor in tip-top shape, I'll start taking more damage real fast (big difference between 500 AR vs 300 AR, for example).