Quote Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda View Post
The Limsa leader who's name I can never spell right uses 2 guns. Also one of the quest NPCs for MCH uses a 1 handed axe + a gun. Raubahn dual wielded 1 handed swords until he sort of ended up only having 1 hand.
They're NPCs though who have long thumbed their noses at the Armoury System and do things we simply cannot (look at Alphinaud and his many unique Carbuncles). Just because a npc uses weapons in a certain way does not mean players will ever be able to do the same sadly. Especially in the case of Rostnsthal (the MCH npc you mentioned, although he's not a MCH himself, he's a MSK which was a class meant to be added to the game but never did and MCH ended up taking on it's role) - he's been dual wielding a flintlock pistol in one hand and a single handed axe in the other since 1.0's launch, without so much as a passing reference from SE as to why he can do that and players can't. It's simply to look cool and impressive.

Quote Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda View Post
I wouldn't mind more classes making use of shields. Gunbreaker could have been made to make use of a shield given the size of the weapon though it would have detracted a little from that FF8 squall image. One of the tank characters in the mobile game Kings Raid actually has this setup as a weapon. Given that a shield is a general defensive implement I just don't see why its really been limited to Gladiator/Paladin. They have for the most part phased shields out of Conjurer/WhiteMage Thaumaturge/BlackMage as they'd also pretty much phased out 1 handed wands/rods for them as well. At the same time that offhand/subweapon slot sits there empty for every other combat class.
Sadly that airship has sailed. As I mentioned in my previous post shield use was meant to be used by multiple classes as the SEN class, but was scrapped when SE redesigned the Armoury System in preperation for the addition of Jobs. As shield use then became GLA/PLD's 'hat', hence why it was restricted to what could equip it (THM/BLM and CNJ/WHM could still equip certain types of shields as a legacy of the old system, but they're generally only lower level). And it's pretty telling that SE are not interested in changing this, what with PLD's very Job icon being a literal shield - you are not going to see any new class or Job make use of them, that's just being realistic.