Id like to add something similar to this situation of the original poster...
Having one point in LA and wearing the full get-up of leather armor, I was able to defend off many of the mobs in the arena. When I finially got the strength to wear chain, I upgraded thinking this would improve me. Yet it didn't. I had 3 points in medium armor yet the chain armor protected me far less than the leather. Yes I was using the chain torso, and chain arms, a battle helm with the rest being leather, boots, gloves, legs...
My point is. After all the work to get my strength up to wear chain and I can already hear people responding with, "You need to put more points into MA", it still does not make any sense. There are SO many points just to get the stupid chain armor, then on top of that I need to dump more into MA and LA just to make it AS effective as the leather was already?? This is back peddling... It basicly renders low level MA completely USELESS...
There is definately and inbalance here... I understand the requirement issue, so that people wouldn't just by-pass leather armor and go straight for chain if there were no requirements to use it. However the effectiveness is far below all the effort just to aquire the use of chain, it makes it pointless to even use until you have dumped considerable amount of PP into it.
My solution is to bump up the effectiveness of chain a "little" bit more at lower level of MA skill. The reason being, is all the effort put in for the strength increase, there is basicly nill reward for upgrading to chain even after meeting the minimum strength requirement.