bronze nuggets as armorer

Silly question but weren't armorers as well as blacksmiths able to make bronze nuggets?

Frankly, I am still unsure why they are two separate classes.

Well, they share their job quests, and their guild hall. So they're kind of combined. :)

Armorers make armor, and Blacksmiths make lots of weapons and tools. If you combined them, "Armorsmith" would make a ton of useful items, making all the other jobs relatively weak. So I think they separated them to keep one crafting class from becoming too powerful.

They are also seperate jobs to begin with. Armorers were used to make armor, blacksmiths to make tools, weaponsmiths for weapons, and whitesmiths/goldsmiths for jewelry and stuff.

You might use somewhat similar tool for both armorer and blacksmithing, but they actually make fastly different items. xd

Actually, blacksmith just means someone who crafts implements out of iron or steel. An Armorer was more traditionally someone in a military or police force who's job it was to maintain and repair small arms and weapons, not actually craft or create them.

Neither of those roles is very accurately represented in the classes for FFXIV. There's no reason a blacksmith wouldn't be able to craft tools weapons and armor, though not every blacksmith would have needed the expertise in all those aspects.

I understand making the classes separate out of a need for balancing... but they should either have made them completely separate including separate guild quests. Or they should make them the same class with different specializations.

Making things weirder... a BSM can make most metal nuggets, but if I want to make brass nuggets, I have to do it as a GSM.