Quote Originally Posted by Wolf_Heartnet View Post
Saying that glamour is not a valid excuse is DEFINITELY not a valid excuse. Especially since you do not even explain yourself regarding that. So that argument alone has been made automatically invalid.
It's not valid because the glamour system is still restricted by role/job. If you're a tank you can't glamour bard gear onto your stuff. You can't be a mage and glamour a full set of plate armor onto yourself. So the job's basic armor identity still plays an important role. Just because there's a number of universally glamour-able items such as swimsuits etc. does not invalidate that.

The reason for the 170 tank gear looking the way it is, is because in development for heavensward, their decision for the next tank came down to Dark Knight or Samurai. It wouldn't surprise me that they had already made gear ahead of time for the samurai.
And that's simply speculation. We don't know how far along they went with samurai in development and in terms of creating art assets.

And while Bard/Machinist has some sets that are similar to Red Mage it doesn't neccesarily make as much sense for a caster to be a dex class. Like i said, it makes more sense for it to be a healer because it could use white magic to heal and then go into cleric stance to use black magic. It just makes more sense.
It makes plenty of sense, Red mages cast multiple types of magics from different schools on top of weaving in swordplay. That takes a dexterous mind as well as body to perform. Dexterous doesn't apply to just physical feats after all, someone with a dexterous mind is considered clever, and mentally adroit. It's much like Ninja's, who use dex as their primary stat, yet the class has many forms of magical abilities it casts through dexterous hand movements.

White Magic also does not equal only healing magic. There are numerous White Magic spells that are enfeebling or protective without being purely healing. Poisona, Blindna, Invis, Silence, Hold, Confuse, Blink, Haste, Dispel. Even if you wanted to give a DPS role some kind of healing it can still be done on RDM, something like an instant cast medica on a longer cooldown would still align with support-like moves other DPS jobs have like Mantra etc.

If Red Mage was a healer it would spend most of it's time healing, and a little time casting black magic, and virtually zero time using the sword element that it's often tied to. DPS would allow it to use all of them (as well as tank, but that brings itemization issues).