Good god, surely this is a mistake?
There have been far more annoying and disagreeable decisions on the part of the development team but I have never come across one this utterly stupid and incomprehensible in all my time following the genre. I can't imagine it's anything other than some sort of bizarre error.
Here's hoping someone in the know speaks up soon because just.. wow.
And yeah it's also downright sad dyes aren't created by crafters anymore and that the number of colour choices have apparently dropped in contradiction of developer promises (getting to be a bit of a pattern, that) too, but even that's a side issue beside letting stat and class usage be controlled by an item's colour.
Good lord..