Gear swaps can be a real nuisance. Especially if your a healer. My RL best friend plays whm and always complains about people gear swapping when he tries to cure them. But then he also plays blm and every nuke macro he has has a gear swap included. The next question is this, how is the person you specifically targeting supposed to know your targeting them?

Now there is a simple solution to this problem that some people have already worked out, And I believe SE should take a page from their play book and make it a standard option. Through PoL (for consoles) or the FFXI configuration utility (only available on PC) they should offer the option to disable .dat changes. Or a much simpler solution write in a code to the game that keeps target lock even during a gear swap. I mean in all seriousness if a mob doesn't lose aggro during a gear swap then why do we lose target lock on people who gear swap?

In my opinion these are much more constructive solutions to a problem inherent in the games design. But Penalizing people for gear swapping would not be a step in the right direction to a game element people have grown used to over the last 9 years. I don't encourage the use of 3rd party programs as a solution, I only brought it up to ask this: if some kid in their dorm room or parents basement can figure out how to do it, then why can't SE figure it out and implement it as a standard option?