Quote Originally Posted by Kowen View Post
Just because gear swapping mid-battle isn't allowed doesn't mean that horizontal gear progression has to become obsolete. If the game is designed well then equipment can still be situational, just on a session-by-session basis rather than for each individual action.

One day you might do a dungeon with monsters that spam blunt AoE attacks, so you decided it would be more efficient to switch some of your STR gear for other pieces that cut a high % of blunt damage. The next day you might run a dungeon with monsters that have fairly low evasion, so you can afford to trade out some gear with accuracy bonuses for others that will increase your damage.
This, very much so. And to expand on this point, there is no reason you have to use the gear on a session by session. There's nothing stopping you from changing gear/classes between fight or before bosses