Quote Originally Posted by Ailis View Post
that's a great idea but I see why they didn't think of it before, ninja weapons are just 1 item that uses only 1 slot while pld is literally 2 items. I think they'd have to get rid of the conjurer/thaumaturge shields to implement that. Who knows, there's hope for 4.0 lol
It is very unlikely that a change like this will be in 4.0 - they would have said something about it by now, if there were.

That said, this may be something they're working toward. It's been many years since a shield equipable by THM or CNJ has been added to the game, and a lot of the one-handed weapons for those jobs have had two-handed equivalents introduced. If they can first phase out shield for those jobs, they can work on fusing GLD/PLD swords and shields into a single-slot sword-and-board item. At that point, the only purpose for the off-hand slot will be for crafters and gatherers.

Even so, this change may never happen. Off-hand shields were a remnant from 1.0, when there was a lot more freedom as far as what classes could equip what items. It's been an albatross around the devs' necks practically from the inception of ARR, and they've had to jump through a lot of hoops to deal with it - and some of those jumps have been pretty awkward, resulting in awkwardness like being able to upgrade sword separate from shield for certain stages of the original Relic weapon. Unfortunately, to combine them now means that they'll need to go back and deal with all of those workarounds again, to account for the fact that now only one item is involved instead of two.

The loss of glamour options is a shame, but I have the feeling it's a low-priority concern on the devs' part. The existing infrastructure is almost certainly the big issue, here.