Light armor is better suitable for advanced characters who have access to following: Food with high health and healing rate (as opposed to stamina), any essential consumables, well trained combat skills (which reduce stamina cost), and selection of high grade, upgraded weapons so they can confront any enemy type. Knowing your enemy and being capable of avoiding their attacks easily helps too. You'll be able to gather more and move and fight faster, but I think those effects are not quite as desirable or useful as they could be.

I'm against increasing armor values, as heavy armor should not be made obsolete either, but lightening the weight or increasing other benefits of light armor could work. It could also be slightly easier to make and upgrade than it currently is.

Armor strength is very strongly tuned, so going lighter is almost always a bad idea. Matching half the enemy's attack power will double your effective HP, and matching the enemy's full attack power will quadruple HP. Bonemass power(and resists) also apply before armor reduction, allowing the armor curve to double dip.

Fenris pants have an acceptable trade of losing some armor for dropping the -5% and gaining +3% speed. Adding a Fenris chest is risky but doable. If you're cave diving, or trapped in battle, stick to max armor at all times. For exploration, a little speed definitely helps.

Fenris pantaloons & hood with Wolf Armour Chest for cold resistance & no cape is my latest dance craze. Food is turnip stew, bread & wolf skewers. No problems so far against 2 star Fulings, but I did die while engaging one when I got blasted by a tar growth that had snuck up on my blindside. The price one pays for not paying close enough attention to ones environment ...

I am doing a run through with Fenris armour, and will be onto Moder when gained enough food. Using the claws and a draugr bow and mostly wood arrows, its good enough apart from when you get swarmed. The only mob that is a pita, because I am not using a shield is the stone golem. Fenris armour in ice caves is great and I have enough dps to kill 1 star wolves.
I have not been into plains much with it, but on a few occasions, again with claws, I have enough power to kill pairs of fulings as long as no stars, and can always use bows to soften them up. Fist combat with light armour requires more precise attack timing to make it work, if I get the first hit in on a wolf its trivial, miss the first I have to dodge once to reset the timing.
The extra run speed has saved me a few times by using terrain. Does it need a boost? I am not sure tbh consuming less stamina is always beneficial.

Light armor is for archers IMO. Unlike the soul series, in Valheim you can go full ranged... except one boss may be (there's trick for it too, you just need higher tier arrows).

Originally posted by Landorf:

Light armor is for archers IMO. Unlike the soul series, in Valheim you can go full ranged... except one boss may be (there's trick for it too, you just need higher tier arrows).

I've done range for every boss. It was fun!! :D

Fenris armor needs a buff or wolf/padded armor needs to be lightened. It's weird because in every other game, padded armor is lighter than ring mail and has nearly the same level of AC, but in this it's the equivalent of scale armor and as heavy. I'd like actual scale armor in the game, we have sea serpents and the scales they drop currently only make a tower shield. Can be expanded on, I think. Having chain mail, which would go great at swamp stage, would be nice. They could make it a lighter armor with good defense, using chain from the wraiths and iron from the crypts. Maybe some leather, troll perhaps? Deer? I mean, there are the right resources already available, just need the implementation. I'm not looking for a complete rework, just an expansion of options. I like moving quickly and shooting bows, but hard to do that when the only decent armor is all heavy mail, and you currently unquestionably need it for the mountains and plains.

Yeap , only troll armor its like you want ( me too )
A full upgraded light armor ( lvl 4 ) most have lvl 1 heavy armor defense of their biome
Troll armor have almost same than bronze , but root and fenris has way less than iron and wolf lvl 1 ...

Some would say that's the trade off aspect, Light armour is light, made to avoid melee, but I do get where your coming from, but I have found light armour viable, especially fenris, viable in plains

yeah if the light armors are gonna be THAT much lighter then you should get either more speed or even less stamina drain for running and roll dodging. troll, fenris and root armors all have their associated bonuses of course but i'd trade them all for a more dramatic impact on stamina if the armor value is gonna be that low.

Yes. Fenris is good looking and sprinting feels great. But like it's been already said, It seens off that I'm spending the same amount of Stamina on Light Armor that I am on the wolf set.

The armor loss is too big too. Obviously the armor loss should exist. But if I'm losing so much armor that I might die in 3 hits, then I'm not using it on the Plains.
By 3 hits, assume that at least one of them comes from a Deathsquito you didn't notice, so you end up dying from 2 hits. (Because you won't see the third coming at you).