New To The Game Question About Class Armor And Skins

[Denzel Dragmire.3124]

Just got the game a few minutes ago with all the upgrades/expansions and before I begin the game proper I'm curious to see what class has the best armour in terms of showing the most skin. I intend to play as a Male Norn or a Male Charr and I wanna play a class that shows off as much as possible within reason of course. If there's a class set that shows off the chest, the legs, and the thighs that would be a major plus.

[Khisanth.2948]

The simplest approach there is just to create a character and walk over to a bank and check things out in the wardrobe.

[Denzel Dragmire.3124]

@Khisanth.2948 said:The simplest approach there is just to create a character and walk over to a bank and check things out in the wardrobe.

Cheers mate, I'll give this a try asap.

[Danikat.8537]

For a male character I think heavy armour is actually your best bet, followed by light armour. In either case you'll need to mix and match skins from different armour sets to get the best effect. Something like the Scallywag chest piece combined with the Pit Fighter legs, with the shoulders, helm and gloves hidden.

BTW on a related note equipment stats and skins are largely seperate in this game. Equipment with good stats is relatively quick and easy to get, but which stat combination is best depends on your build, so you'll often see players discussing the best choices. The wardrobe system will collect skins for items as you unlock them and can then be used to apply them to any matching item (it has to be the same item type - heavy boot skins can only go on heavy boots, sword skins can only go on swords and so on). All items have a skin of course, but many of the more interesting ones only come from specific places (for example each dungeon has a unique armour and weapon set which isn't available anywhere else) so it's quite common for players to get equipment with good stats by whatever method is easiest and then spend time hunting down the skins they like most, or simply collecting lots of options to experiment with.

As you level up you'll change your equipment frequently, and skins don't carry over from one item to another, so it's probably best to just stick with whatever you get until you reach level 80, then get a full set of exotic equipment with matching stats which suit your build, then get the skins you like for them. (Although if you can get an item with the right skin and stats together you may as well - for example the Scallywag chest is available relatively cheaply on the Trading Post with level 80 exotic stats in a variety of combinations.)

The other option is to get an outfit. These are one-piece costumes with no stats which hide your armour instead of reskinning it, which means the appearence won't change when you swap out equipment and you can get more of a variety of styles than with armour - for example you could put a heavy armoured character into something which looks like cloth robes. The downsides are that they're far less customisable (you can't mix and match pieces and only get 4 dye slots for the whole outfit) and the vast majority are only available from the gem store. But it's another option, and one you can use right from level 1 without constantly having to use transmutation charges as you update your equipment.