This is an archive of all the Plate vs Cloth discussion in one topic for the convenience of the developers. It is a collection of problem statements and solutions proposed by various community members; there might be overlap/duplicate suggestions/problems.
Hope this helps the developers 
Issue Statement
Plate is in many ways superior to Cloth, these are most of the arguments across all posts:
- Enchants on armor and weight are percentage based, thus they favor Plate.
- It is too easy to reduce weight on plate through enchanting.
- Cloth armor does not have it’s own incentive to be worn over plate outside of weight. Yet, this is trivialized with point 2.
- Plate has both armor and poise as incentive, which are very strong currently. Thus, plate users can get hit multiple times whereas cloth users get one-shotted much faster.
- The balance seems to be around weight load, but as incentive, this is generally not seen as enough for the community.
- The only reason to wear Cloth and Leather is for roleplay.
- The first couple of points into equip load provide a massive benefit since they double your effective available weight.
- Heavy Load has a shoulderbash, Light Load does not have a unique ‘’ability’’.
- Almost every build defaults to Plate.
- Artists worked hard on Cloth and Leather armors, yet they aren’t worn.
- Recovery frames on cloth are too slow, when shoved to the ground it often means death.
- Most stats on armor are skewed towards plate whilst weight is not sufficient enough as a tradeoff.
- There is too much that trivializes the weight of plate such as rings and affixes. The trade-off between armor and weight becomes meaningless.
- Blink trivializes having a Heavy Load.
- In a poll on the forums: Out of the 45 people who voted, 71% thinks Plate is either overpowered or stronger when compared to Cloth
- In a poll on the forums: Out of the 42 people who voted, 74% wear, primarily, either Plate or Mesh armor.
- The early game cloth and leather weighs too much, wearing rags, basically being naked. Yields a normal or heavy load.
- It breaks immersion when you fat roll wearing worn rags.
- Some stats are skewed towards plate so enchantments are skewed to plate also.
- Less armor is a massive disadvantage.
- Most builds default to plate.
- Equip load rings and affixes that reduce weight are too strong.
- There are almost no hybrid builds: leather helmet + plate chest + mesh gloves or incentive for this.
- Certain enchants are skewed too plate, armor and less weight.
- It is too easy to wear plate and achieve a medium load.
- No enchantments prefer Cloth or Leather.
- Plate requires little investment.
- The Echo Knight one taps you when wearing Cloth and Leather.
- When wearing Cloth and Leather you get stunlocked too easy, which results into an easy follow up attack that kills you.
- It is harder to stay alive when wearing Cloth and Leather to learn a boss’ moves.
- Almost every Meta build uses Plate.
- Cloth and Leather don’t provide anything unique over the tankyness of Plate.
- The iframes difference between light and normal roll matter little.
- The iframes on light dodge are too short, chaining normal rolls extends to iframes a lot more.
- Light dodge feels niche.
- Armor types affect dodging, but it feels very minor.
- Enchanting feels the same for each armor type.
- Making each plate upgrade heavier is boring.
- Cloth and Leather is just a cosmetic outfit without defense.
- There is no reason to not cap the armor value, especially at higher levels.
Suggested Solutions by the Community
These are most of the suggestions from the community on how to solve the issue:
- Add another stat to armor that is skewed in favor of Cloth > Leather > Mesh > Plate.
- Unique effects, armor set bonuses for when someone wears a complete set of either Plate, Mesh, Leather or Cloth.
- Make equip load less effective.
- Balance the Armor stat more between Cloth and Plate so there aren’t such big gaps in survivability.
- Add another penalty to wearing Plate.
- Add armor specific enchantments/affixes.
- Affixes have different value ranges depending on the armor they are on.
- Unique bonuses to each armor type slot, plate gloves, cloth helmet etc.
- Add Effective Focus gain to armor and skew it in favor of Cloth.
- Add flat stamina penalties or stamina recovery to armor.
- Make cloth and leather weigh less early game.
- It has to be hard reaching normal load when wearing cloth, less so for leather.
- Add different types of weights to armors of the same type.
- Plate focuses on survivability: armor and healing, Leather focusses on attack speed, parry and stamina regen, Cloth focusses on focus regen and elemental resistance.
- Make certain affixes more common and less common on certain armor types.
- Add flat bonuses to affixes such as +armor so they are more meaningful for cloth and leather.
- Add armor type exclusive affixes.
- Light load needs an incentive and a unique benefit. You just die too fast.
- Add stamina penalties to Plate > Cloth.
- Add affixes variations to armor, percentage and flat.
- Add exclusive mechanics to Cloth and Leather.
- Plate should not allow stealth.
- Cloth and Leather should focus more on offense whilst Mesh and Plate focus on defense.
- Add rings that add bonuses when having a light load.
- Give a speed boost to lighter builds.
- Add a second defensive stat that is skewed towards Cloth like evasion.
- Stamina regen and speed should scale with weight.
- Add a more dynamic scale to weight and in between equip loads and their bonusses.
- There should be flat reductions to weight on affixes besides %reductions.
- Add dynamic stamina regen to weight.
- % values affixes are exclusive for rings.
- Enchants are classified as offense and defense. Cloth yields more offensive affixes and plate yields more defensive affixes.
- Review equip load attribute scaling.
- Cloth rolls higher affixes, the % range. Cloth has the strongest enchants, Plate the weakest.
- Remove weight modifying enchants.
- Cloth, Leather and other armors need unique distinctions that boost attributes.
- Cloth can provide better magic resistance.
- Cloth should fall more in line with light, Leather light or normal, Mesh normal or heavy, Plate heavy.
- Give light builds more iframes to counter the tankyness of plate builds.
- Give each unique armor its own identity.
- Give cloth a magic shield.
- Add increasing stamina costs that scale with weight.
- It should be harder to reduce the weight of armor through enchants.
- Light and Normal weight categories need their own distinctive buffs to encourage their use. Focus regen or increased parry window.
References
6 different topics about this issue:
