Why do Ninja and Monk use different gear?

[Gralna]

No the reason they share is because they needed to give them some sort of gear because they were not about to make full gearsets - they just added DEX and NIN/ROG to the MNK gears for that time. And MNK fit better for the melee aspect of NIN than BRD did.

If they had planned to make Nin dex based from the start, it would of been much easier to have them share gear with brd, instead of having them share with mnk, and adding dex to all mnk gear.

[Noxifer]

Paladin should have some use of White Magic (I know it doesn't, unless you count Stoneskin and Clemency), so Mind should be appropriate. [...]Ninjutsu and Intelligence?

AFAIK, Clemency doesn't scale with Mind, but with Attack damage.
Ninjutsu counts as magic damage, but scales off of Dex.

Pretty disappointed with the additional stats as well, although I hope Heavensward changed that a bit... Still, I think stats should enforce the Jobs identity a bit better, take the three melee DPS; Dragoon wields a large lance, I'd expect their attacks to be slower (-Skill Speed), but more accurate and powerful (+Critical Hit Rate and Determination). Monks fight with their fists, I'd expect that to be fast and blunt (+Skill Speed and Determination, -Critical Hit Rate). Ninjas are assassins, so I'd expect them to be fast and accurate (+Skill Speed and Critical Hit Rate) but not have a lot of individual hitting power (-Determination). You'll notice I used "accurate" to refer to Critical Hit Rate a lot there, that's because I think they should be the same bleedin' stat. I'm pretty disappointed Accuracy is solely a hit/miss decider, in my head Accuracy also applies to where you hit; Do I strike your jugular, or attack your little toe for massive damage? I really think there should be some value to having more Accuracy.

I'd actually kinda love this. Not sure how easy it would be to balance damage output between DPS with taking "gear penalties" (which I'm interpreting your 'negative' stats as), but it'd definitely make things a lot more diverse.

[SendohJin]

Next dps HAS to be a mage in some way or form.
We got 2 magic dps vs how many physical now?

it doesn't have to. they don't care to balance magic vs physical because parties aren't built that way.

parties are built with 2 tanks, 2 healers, 2 melee, 2 ranged almost all of the time. currently there are 3 tanks, 3 healers, 3 melee, 4 ranged. the next 3 jobs should be 1 tank, 1 healer, 1 melee, that would make 4 of everything.

and the next melee can be physical (SAM) or magical (RDM, BLU)

[Kahnom]

tell me why dragoons always get unique gears. design-wise and stats-wise. other jobs have to share their gear with other 2-3 jobs or sometimes palette-swapped version of each other's.

I guess str-user gears divided into light gears(mnk) and heavy gears(drg).and if Samurai is dps job,they would probably share gear with Dragoon.Well just guessing ..

[MiniPrinny]

To be completely straight forward, I'd have the following sets:

of Fending (Vitality/strength): As is, with one exception, the jewelry has half the STR of Slaying equipment.
of Healing (Mind): As is, accuracy is included as free stats on the jewelry in small amounts and on the chest and legs in larger amounts.
of Praying (Piety): An in-between suffix reserved for casters and healers who need to round out their MP reserves, used only on jewelry, this suffix comes with weaker scores for Mind and Intellect, but has both on it.
of Casting (Intellect): As is.
of Maiming (Strength): Heavier equipment used by soldier-type (dragoon, samurai?) melee combatants. Has higher defense than Slaying equipment.
of Dueling (Strength): Light equipment used by duelist-type (monk, ninja, red mage?) melee combatants. Has equal defense and magic defense.
of Ranging (Dexterity): Light equipment used by ranger-type (bard, machinist) ranged combatants. Has equal defense and magic defense.