Armor becomes a lot more useful if you invest in the skill tree sufficiently to get the Praetorian feat. This negates penalties of "heavy" armor, which seems to basically encompass every armor piece in the game. That feat allows you to negate both dodge penalties and stat penalties, if any (e.g., some helmets impart an Awareness penalty).

Some have argued that the game is balanced around taking this feat, which is a view I would generally agree with.

This is exactly what i needed to know.

Thank you HanSewLow!

You are probably missing "DamageResistance" (measured in %) which in fact is more useful that the meager DamageThreshold reduction. Having a set of armor (including a frying pan!) that provides a 35% DR (for body) means that usually (there are some primarily melee weapons that have a chance to totally ignore all armor) in your example instead of 30 damage you will receive only (30-5)*0.65 = 16 damage. This effect is more noticeable with more than 45 starting HP. :)

The other thing is, of cource, the fact that enemy proficiency with weapons actually also counts towards their chances of hitting you so even if you are "naked", their hitting % would be somewhere in the nineteens (depends on the distance and the weapon) most of the time. As a rule of thumb: melee enemies will always hit you, regardless of your armor setup (or lack of it), sometimes with the chance to completely bypass all armor or knock you out and are amongst the most dangerous, rivaled only by SMG/Automatic Assault Rifle enemies at close range (a burst of 5 rounds at point blank range equals certain death no matter what). Sniper Rifle enemies are relatively tame (especially if they are unskilled, too dumb to shoot at maximum allowable range and/or at night) and can be initially ignored in combat. Shotgun wielders are a joke, if you have armor (especially with non-AP rounds) dealing from 0 to 2 damage.

IMO, the only character relying solely on dodge is the dog. Everyone else should probably benefit from some kind of armor (the frying pan does not have drawbacks apart from occupying the weapon slot!).

Appreciate info Alm888, it should help a lot!

I thought damage resistance only applied to status effects like poison and radiation.
lol yeah, i only started with 27 health. I went for a crit build with sniper rifle.
Hits insanely hard on crits....
At level six i was criting over 200 lmao, 158 ish on high armored.
killed everyone at the factory solo then just let the hostage go :D
plus the range is so good i cant get hit. or at least rarely get hit i should say, which plays into my dodge

Granted i had to restart a few times (like 5) till i found the best method of locating comps for crafting the +4crit sniper rifle but it was worth it.

Gonna give armor another go thanks to your info.

Fights are easy if you are allowed to control the flow of battle.

This is not the case with the dreaded Slavers' Ambushes.
Especially when those guys encircle you and start throwing grenades knocking you out. :)

In such cases a good crowd control strategy is in order (as well as lots of stimpaks and battle drugs). But, truth to be told, chances are a reload is immenent (no matter the armor or weaponry). :) "Enclave Patrols" have nothing on the Slavers' "Death Circles". :D