The armour's actually not that... great; it's just some well-made plate. Shield's good for turtling, though, but why the hell would you try and attack [i]through [/i]that enormous shield?

Funnily enough, the pendant doesn't mitigate anything. It [i]can[/i] be activated to deflect dark magic, though. And all the dark magic in the game is black and obviously evil, so most stuff will bypass it. Not, I imagine, necromancy and stuff. 

As for the second ring... basically? It boils down to 'even better pain threshold'. Probably helps against mind control, but obviously not perfectly.