The problem is that this game has only one 'scenario' that is relevant: you will always have the role type you need and damage is king. There is no content with different party requirements and possibly class skills dealing with out of combat mechanics. There is no solo content challenging enough for you to need to think about your defensive capabilities if you're not a tank. There is no duo content where you can't fit the trinity roles.

An example based on an experience I had in XI: I was a samurai with a dancer sub class that allowed me to self heal with my TP. I was trying to solo some tough mobs, I can't remember for what but I did. I went into the zone carrying a katana near to my current level and started fighting. Each hit would give me some tp and then I would heal myself with that but the mobs were hitting me too hard and I died. I came back and took a look at my inventory. I had an old katana that was a multi hit katana that would rack up lots of tp per attack round. It was weak, and would do less damage than I would with my current katana overall, even if I spent all the TP I gained into special moves, and I would be dead if I spent my TP that way. But I was able to solo the mobs I was trying to kill simply because I could outlast them with all the heals at my disposal, even if it took longer. I would definitely have to use my 1st katana in a party situation but that 2nd katana is not worthless to me.

But then, you refute to me that it'd bloat the armory system. That is SE's problem not ours. Plenty of other games are able to give their plays tons and tons of inventory system without constantly making excuses despite repeated demands and requests. We ditched 1.x because it had a lot of problems, because it had many limitations that wouldnt allow the devs to do what they wanted to do. Yet here, we are, this time with probably just as many can't dos and won't dos because of self inflicted limitations. One of the excuses are even something like "we can't do something like that because...the way we set up the system, it'd be troublesome." Then why even design something like that when you already had 1.x at the back of your mind? Dev convenience over customer convenience?