I was doing the Thieves Guild questline for the first time since I prefer paladin/mage playstyle and I wanted to do all quests in the game.

I already knew about Nightingale Armor and the leveled/pre enchanted aspect of the set, so I searched for it after getting it and I'm surprised with the amount of hate over the armor.

Obviously it's not the best armor you could craft, but it's far from bad, reaaaally far.

Armor: best piece of the set. 40 stamina points isn't significative, but 50% resist frost is big and I'm not even considering survival mode. There's no way to put elemental/magic resistances in armor pieces, so it couldn't be better than that, maybe poison resistance but vampire >>>

Bracers: 25% one handed is good, not 40% you could get from generic pre enchanted items, but it's good, especially in a guaranteed item. Bonus lockpicking is also interesting.

Coat: That one isn't fortify archery, but fortify illusion is directly the second best option after fortify archery, granting you less investment to get reliable invisibility or any other illusion options.

Boots: That's the worst part of the set, since you could simply cast the muffle spell, especially considering the fortify illusion in the coat. It's bad? No, it's useful and practical, but the ideal option would be some elemental resistance or fortify one-handed (though there's no fortify one handed in generic pre enchanted boots)

I also heard lots of claims about the armor rating being bad due to having no associated perk and thus a maximum of flawless temper level, but you're playing Skyrim, the number in your armor rating is limited by your own limits while using crafting skills.

"But I don't want to use restoration potions or bugs"

I'm not talking about bugs, four 25% fortify smithing pieces (which aren't not even close to what you could have using crafting correctly) and one fortify smithing potion would put it at the armor cap.

"But I play without alchemy/enchanting"

That's the funny part. I'm currently playing with only smithing as crafting tree and no alchemy/enchanting, just using pre enchanted gear and found/purchased potions. My armor rating is at 598 with full nightingale set and I not even have all the perks in light armor or ancient knowledge buff.

If you're playing with limitless crafting, just make a ring to compensate the lack of fortify archery in the coat/bracers and a necklace for resist fire/resist shock

If you're playing with only pre enchanted gear, get a Necklace of the Firewalker for the dragons and a Ring of Peerless Archery. With the correct perks in alteration + lord stone/Breton + agent of mara + frost resistance from the armor, you will be a walking tank anyway.

Drip over stats, always, but Nightingale stats aren't bad, so drip + stats for the set.

About Nightingale set being "bad"