About SAM sharing armor.

[GrizzlyTank]

Any particular reason why they don't share their armor with DRG rather than MNK considering that Samurai for the most part wore heavier armor.

[Neri]

Depends on how SE visioned Samurai. In this case, they decided to go with the Shinsengumi type who wear robe over heavy armor.

[Nhisso]

I wondered same thing. But, as the wife pointed out, the game didnt take place in Japan. FF sam wears lighter armor i guess lol.

[Kaedan]

Any particular reason why they don't share their armor with DRG rather than MNK considering that Samurai for the most part wore heavier armor.

Because Samurai in FF14 are not typical battlefield Samurai. They are the iaijutsu master type Samurai. Yoshi-P even said his inspiration for SAM is Ruroni Kenshin.

[SendohJin]

Any particular reason why they don't share their armor with DRG rather than MNK considering that Samurai for the most part wore heavier armor.

I thought they should too (the game does not have enough armored classes as it is, everything is cloth and leather except DRG and tanks).

But I guess thematically they prefer grouping the Eastern classes together. hopefully the next AF set goes the Domaru route.

[Khel]

Sams are lucky, they put skill speed on 6 out of 7 pieces of the dragoons armor on both sets. Just horrible.

[Jonnycbad]

Samurai were an elevated social class of of warriors who fought for lord in exchange for land and status, similar to knights in medieval Europe. Now, Samurai existed for a period of several hundred years. During the feudal period, Samurai wore the heavy armor with the lacquered leather/metal plates, fastened with silken cords and a kabuto helm. This was a period of time where Japan was divided up into many small city-states thought frequently fought each other constantly for local power.Once Japan was unified, swords and other weapons were confiscated by the emperor and only samurai were allowed to brandish weapons. During this Meiji period, Japan was rather peaceful, there were no long open large-scale wars being fought so there was no need to walk around fully clad in heavy armor. Samurai wore haori and other types of robe. Because they were wearing lighter clothing instead of heavier armor, they wore their swords higher on their waist and due to this started wearing them blade facing up for a higher draw above the waist (as opposed to heavy armored samurai who wore katana with blade-edge facing the ground for a low-mid draw). It's kind of like how knights in the high medieval period wore thick plate mail and a full helm, but during the renaissance period they wore a tabard and tunic with a rapier+buckler.

That said, Samurai in FF5, FFT, FFXI were based on the former, and wore heavier armor (easily coulda been Maiming DPS) but the latter type I mentioned is what FFXI samurai are based on.

Yoshi-P even said his inspiration for SAM is Ruroni Kenshin.

Actually he said he was inspired by Seven Samurai

[TankHunter678]

Sams are lucky, they put skill speed on 6 out of 7 pieces of the dragoons armor on both sets. Just horrible.

Skill Speed actually helps out SAM a fair bit, cause its lets them go through the midare setup faster.

[Khel]

Skill Speed actually helps out SAM a fair bit, cause its lets them go through the midare setup faster.

I doubt it helps them more than the crit and direct they get in its place.

[Kaedan]

Actually he said he was inspired by Seven Samurai

No, Yoshi-P was quite specific in an interview. He said that his image of what a Samurai would be in FF14 is the lightly outfitted iaijutsu masters like Ruroni Kenshin.

Granted, the interview is in Japanese, so it's not likely to be well-known outside reddit, where a few people translated it (luckily I read Japanese myself).

EDIT: Ahh, I see what you were referring to. It was a later interview than the one he did in Japanese where he does mention Seven Samurai. Which fits, since some of the characters match with the image he said he had when he decided to implement SAM.