Is Barkskin broken?

I'm trying to use Barkskin but it seems broken or I don't understand how it works. I see the Barkskin buff icon up. I have 5k ES and I can get hit until it's almost gone but I still have 0 armor? I do get a second Barkskin buff icon with like a duration timer on it but if I mouse over it there is no information given. My armor doesn't change on the character sheet and it sure doesn't feel like I have any armor. It's either broken, I don't get how it works or it's working in a way too stupid to comprehend.

Can anyone provide any insight into this?

Is it possible that your character has no armour on other equipment?

The buff skill says that it is limited to gaining a maximum equal to the amount of armour already provided by your other equipment.


To specify, other armour items would include:
helmets, body armours, gloves, boots, and shields/foci.

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Pehr#3739 wrote:

Is it possible that your character has no armour on other equipment?

The buff skill says that it is limited to gaining a maximum equal to the amount of armour already provided by your other equipment.


To specify, other armour items would include:
helmets, body armours, gloves, boots, and shields/foci.

Yeah. That was it I discovered. Seems kind of stupid. The main reason I wanted it was because I was a full ES build and had no armor. If I'm wearing armor I wouldn't bother with barkskin. I guess it might be for hybrid armor/ES builds or something? Seems much less useful than I first thought.