What's the reasoning for melee jobs to have three different sets of gear?

In 2.4 when NIN releaed, they shared striking gear, but for reasons unknown, they deviated from that immediately. This feels bad as someone who runs with all melee jobs, because if you want to run higher level content, you pretty much have to stick with one set. Sure, you can clear with lower gear on other jobs, but why should this have to happen in the first place? By the time your others catch up, the raid tier is most likely over for you. The only thing you can do to help ameliorate is to create an alt character just so you can progress whatever gearset mixture you want at the same time.

For real though, why? The only counter argument I can think of is melding, but the difference between good melds and bad melds only shines if you're doing ultimate or something.

NIN uses DEX as a governing stat for all of its damage as opposed to STR. DRG has always been more heavily armored than the other melee. The reason NIN shared gear at release is because they weren’t going to retroactively add in endgame NIN gear for older content.

In addition to what Mikko already said in regards to the technical aspect of having different stat-values (DEX for nin instead of strength; more defense for dragoon than the others) I'd also imagine that its the same reason we get different job-sets at all: To give each job a more or less unique look by tailoring the gear more towards that job - I would have expected people to be more thrilled about that... seriously, I envy dragoons and ninjas a little for getting job-sets that always fit their particular job so well instead of being just given a generic melee-set...

There is also "unlimited" gear, like crafted set, that will allow you to gear up all your jobs - and since Savage gets cleared during week one, crafted gear is good enough to clear it. As long as the player is good enough, that is.

What I don't understand if why they didn't revert Ninja back to STR, then do the following:

Dragoon/Samurai - Maiming (possibly including a new set of accessories along with it)
Monk/Ninja - Striking

Samurai tends to wear heavier armor and such that it'd work just fine with Dragoon. While yes, the aesthetic wouldn't be perfect. That hasn't stopped them from releasing Aiming sets that do not take Dancer into account whatsoever. Conversely, they could just drop the job restrictive glamours entirely outside more iconic sets like the Artifact gear and relics.

IMO I would rather just take it as an excuse to get new jobs later to share sets with DRG and NIN.

Also keep in mind some jobs benefit more from certain substats than others so its not just the primary attribute stats we should be looking at.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Samurai tends to wear heavier armor and such that it'd work just fine with Dragoon.

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Have you seen the AF gear? Neither one of those sets are heavy armor.

Also have to bear in mind that (at least according to Yoshi-P) the inspiration for Samurai for FFXIV was the Edo period, post-military samurai that served less as an armored soldier and more as a diplomat and local security that also served as the same inspiration behind the Jedi in Star Wars.

Now realistically, I'd argue it would make more sense to make Ninja instead wear Aiming armor instead of trying to combine them with other melee.

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Originally Posted by Kazrah

Now realistically, I'd argue it would make more sense to make Ninja instead wear Aiming armor instead of trying to combine them with other melee.

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Please no to this, no to ever having this.

As it currently stands, the most intense competition for armor in the game comes from trying to get loot from the 24-man raids.

Tanks can always roll need on the gear for their job if they want it and get it since even though there are four tanking jobs, there will only ever be one in the party.

Healers always have to compete with one other healer.

With 5 DPS in a party, if four jobs shared gear, the possibility of having to roll against 4 other players who can all wear the same item you can is a very real possibility, especially if those four jobs are among the most popular in the game.

Also I will say that keeping multiple sets like this is likely an intentional method to keep people playing the game. More distinct armor sets means more grind for gear if you want to have good gear on multiple jobs.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

With 5 DPS in a party, if four jobs shared gear, the possibility of having to roll against 4 other players who can all wear the same item you can is a very real possibility, especially if those four jobs are among the most popular in the game

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So let's have to farm for 3 different melee dps sets to avoid that when every other role shares gear.
That aside, melee sets could have str & dex. Or have ppl forgotten that physical DPS gear up to lvl50 has both

I see no reason why they can't just add dex to the striking gear since dex literally does nothing for monk and samurai. But at the same time, I see no harm in leaving things how they are now so we get a bit more variety in how gear looks, even if only one class can use a particular set.

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Originally Posted by 24842

So let's have to farm for 3 different melee dps sets to avoid that when every other role shares gear.
That aside, melee sets could have str & dex. Or have ppl forgotten that physical DPS gear up to lvl50 has both

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That's only because they didn't want to add gear lv 1-50 just for ninja since the job wasn't actually added until the latter part of 2.0

Drg has more Vit to be more bulkier thats why it gets armor similar to tank mostly

Ninja is Dex
I feel Samurai should have been too but that's only since i see more games use Katanas under Dex than str

I don't really care about this stat or roll wise...

But do we really want to sacrifice the small remaining armor model variety we still have?

They already cheap out often and give NIN and DRG a striking or fending recolor. Do we really wanna get rid of them permanently?

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Originally Posted by Kazrah

Have you seen the AF gear? Neither one of those sets are heavy armor.

Also have to bear in mind that (at least according to Yoshi-P) the inspiration for Samurai for FFXIV was the Edo period, post-military samurai that served less as an armored soldier and more as a diplomat and local security that also served as the same inspiration behind the Jedi in Star Wars.

Now realistically, I'd argue it would make more sense to make Ninja instead wear Aiming armor instead of trying to combine them with other melee.

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... the Shadowbringer Samurai set is literally body armor. It's not too dissimilar to the new PvP that just released. I'd say that's close enough.

And while yes, that may have been the inspiration for Samurai. The whole aesthetic argument loses merit when Dancer gear—outside their AF set—looks nothing like what a Dancer would wear.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

... the Shadowbringer Samurai set is literally body armor. It's not too dissimilar to the new PvP that just released. I'd say that's close enough.

And while yes, that may have been the inspiration for Samurai. The whole aesthetic argument loses merit when Dancer gear—outside their AF set—looks nothing like what a Dancer would wear.

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I'm not sure how it does lose merit because of "dancer"-gear, considering that
...outside of the AF-set its not "dancer"-gear but "physical ranged"-gear, meaning that you can have a set thats more tailored to maschinist or bard, giving only one of 3 jobs a really fitting piece of gear
...most of the current gear a dancer can wear was designed and released before dancer was a job, meaning it was designed without dancer in mind
...not even the AF-set is something every dancer would wear - considering that there are many different dancing styles and they outright said they didnt want this "dancing is sexy bellydance and nothing else" image (to bad they didnt actually stick with that when designing the AF-set). Anything that allows for free movement is something a dancer can (and probably would) wear, they're not limited to a bellydancer outfit.

Considering your original argument: What would be won by removing one of those sets and making samurai share with dragoon? At least in terms of design, which seems to be your problem with the dancer-gear: Nothing. We'd just lose one set.
Also: Just because something insipired a concept doesnt mean that everything has to follow said concept afterwards.

I kind of wish they'd just lift glamour restrictions in general, barring weapons and artifact sets of course.

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Originally Posted by Vidu

I'm not sure how it does lose merit because of "dancer"-gear, considering that
...outside of the AF-set its not "dancer"-gear but "physical ranged"-gear, meaning that you can have a set thats more tailored to maschinist or bard, giving only one of 3 jobs a really fitting piece of gear
...most of the current gear a dancer can wear was designed and released before dancer was a job, meaning it was designed without dancer in mind
...not even the AF-set is something every dancer would wear - considering that there are many different dancing styles and they outright said they didnt want this "dancing is sexy bellydance and nothing else" image (to bad they didnt actually stick with that when designing the AF-set). Anything that allows for free movement is something a dancer can (and probably would) wear, they're not limited to a bellydancer outfit.

Considering your original argument: What would be won by removing one of those sets and making samurai share with dragoon? At least in terms of design, which seems to be your problem with the dancer-gear: Nothing. We'd just lose one set.
Also: Just because something insipired a concept doesnt mean that everything has to follow said concept afterwards.

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Bard spent considerably amounts of time looking like a cowboy because it better suited Machinist. They only more recently moved away from that hence why I stated it wouldn't matter much if Dragoon and Samurai shared a set. I have no idea why you brought up old gear when I was referencing 5.0 and beyond. Likewise, my original argument had less to do with the aesthetic and more gameplay related. What would we gain? The ability to gear the remaining two melee up faster. By adding Maiming as its own set, you now have both it and Samurai gearing up. And the shift to Striking slots Ninja alongside Monk. Right now, Dragoon and Ninja only benefit themselves left side. Thus, if you main either, you're less able to bounce jobs at a comparable ilvl than a Range or Caster.

Finally, I never said the jobs have to maintain their original inspired aesthetic. In fact, my entire argument went against that. I have to wonder if you mis-quoted me or meant to refer to someone because I didn't insinuate a lot of what you're arguing here.

Without a remapping of all gear from the last half of ARR all the way to current as well as changing DEF and VIT on SAM only gear, I doubt we would ever see SAM merged into maiming outfits. We would lose scouting sets, some of which have different appearances from striking, and it would also make it so that dragoons and ninja have to compete with another class for gear drops in dungeons.

People talking about what armor looks like when most of us are going to glamour over it anyway. Anything you would like, you'd keep to glamour with eventually.

For the different stats, like DRG has more HP than MNK, NIN, SAM, I'd rather they raised the base stats according to job stone, or had a hidden stat multiplier related to the job stone, to give the varying values that exist now. People that play Monster Hunter know a similar system if you've ever taken a look at motion values per weapon. It's a great system that really allows each weapon(job for XIV) to be different without having to tailor armor specifically to them.

Those fearing that they'd lose variety in gear looks, I think it'd help more in the long run. Right now they have to design fending, maiming, striking, aiming, scouting, casting and healing (7) and we see past models being reused anyway. If it got slimmed down to fending, striking, aiming, healing and casting (5), it might promote more varied armor due to needing to create less overall armor every new dungeon, raid, savage, tomestone, PvP, crafted and whatever else I missed.

However, I don't see SE every changing this anytime soon, if ever.

The reason: aesthetics > fairness.

Ranged get 3 jobs' coverage. Casters get 3 jobs' coverage. Healers get 3 jobs' coverage. Tanks get 4 jobs' coverage.

Melee get 1-2 because despite having multiple appearances tied to a single item in the case of gender, such apparently cannot apply to jobs and there is of course no possible way we could have attached Samurai to the Maiming aesthetic or Dancer to the scouting aesthetic, let alone actually flesh out those currently unique armor classes in the face of "too many melee!" (by which we mean 8 melee vs. 12 ranged but prefer to categorize it instead as 4 melee, 3 ranged and 3 casters despite there being more armor classes in those 4 "melee" than across all 6 of those non-melee, so that we can continue to increase ranged's breadth of choices per armor class while pigeon-holing melee).

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Originally Posted by Phireblast

stuff

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I love your avatar.

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Originally Posted by JunseiKei

People talking about what armor looks like when most of us are going to glamour over it anyway.

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Right? I have 1 glamour set that fits every class with the exception that 2-3 of them require certain arm glamours to fit

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Originally Posted by JunseiKei

For the different stats, like DRG has more HP than MNK, NIN, SAM, I\\'d rather they raised the base stats according to job stone

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That or Job Traits like,
"Dragoon Mastery: Increases physical defense by 10%" etc

7 sets, 5 roles, 4 roles share gear. It is rather ridiculous how much extra work has to be done to gear melees, given caps and lockouts and such.

If people require different melds, the simplest solution would seem to be to allow people to get duplicates of armor if they want. If you wanted to meld all your gear differently, it'd take no longer than it would have anyway.