Why Are Melee DPS Forced Into One Job Through Gear Yet Nobody Else Is?

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Originally Posted by FeliAiko

Then you'd end up with NIN and MNK exclusively having 3 main stats (DEX/STR/VIT) compared to 2 main stats for the other jobs, which would upset job balance.

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But back in 2.0 dex used to affect parry now it doesn't. A monk with +600 dex would be affected just as much as a WAR with +600 mind.... No reason other than avoiding confusion that they couldnt share sets. They are almost always just color swaps anyway.

TLDR
Dex does not help a Str class anymore. They could share again.

Yes, they 'could share again' if SE felt inclined to make another short term, cost effective measure without fully compromising the NIN aesthetic (as was the case with adding DEX to i50-i110 Striking gear) but it's unlikely they're going to go back on the direction they've established for the melee classes now. Plus as another person mentioned, this also sets it up for potential future melee classes to share one of the 3 sets, without compromising their respective theme, such as Samurai (Maiming) or Dancer (Striking/Scouting).

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Originally Posted by Niamh_Rillemaugh

We've had a few rounds (3?) of job-specific gear up to this point- Artifact, Myth, and Esoterics gear. This thread is not about those gear sets.

Instead, I wonder why melee DPS gear sets are the only ones without any overlap when every other gear set can be used for at least 2 jobs.

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Its mostly because of aesthetics and lack of multiple melee dps that use the same aesthetics. My copy of the 2nd Artbook "Art of Ishgard -Stone & Steel-" shows that they divide currently gear into 7 types: Tank, Mail, Range, Rogue, Melee, Caster and Healer. Currently only Dragoon is the only user of Mail, Monk of Melee and Ninja of Rogue.

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See the disparity? An example of issues this creates: I have a friend that has mained Bard since he started playing. Recently, his raid group decided they would benefit more from a Mechanist instead and he found out that he was even better in that role! Yet, if I tried to make a switch like that after a few weeks, I'd be out of luck.

If additional DPS jobs are added, won't this just get worse?

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Additional DPS jobs should actually help things. All that is needed to balance things out is the introduction of 3 new jobs: one Mail, one Melee and one Rogue.

Samurai could easily be a Str based "Mail" DpS like Dragoon.
Red Mage could work well as a Dex based "Rogue" DpS.
Beast Master could work well as a Str based "Melee" DpS.