I came across something rather strange today: improving armor with no perks, 4x 29% fortify smithing enchanted items, and a 130% fortify smithing potion (made via 4x 29% alchemy enchantments), I was able to improve ebony armor to 99 points, but glass armor to 102 points.
That's in spite of the fact that (according to the uesp wiki) ebony armor's base is 43, and the base for glass is 38, so ebony should come out at least +5 over glass.
Can anyone reproduce this result? Any theories on why it happened?
I had previously improved the glass armor to legendary with lower quality gear (4x 25% enchanted gear, possible also 120% potion, made with 4x 25% alchemy gear).