Imho light armors should be nerfed, i.e. cloth tunic sometimes takes 2 hits with 50cut weapon and 8ps..
Has nothing to do with armor rating, actually. It's because player you were fighting have a ton of HP. It would be the same if he was completely naked.
Light armors shouldn't be buffed, but it would be cool if light armors had same heirloom modifiers as everything else.
And it's not true that heavy armor isn't worthwhile, bellow 60 total armor rating everything feels squishy. The higher you go above that number, the more game breaking it becomes. And since everyone has looms these days, there's ton of people with 65 AR and higher.