I'm not sure what others would think of this, but it's been bugging me for a while.

Most of the gear types are fairly unremarkable descriptions of what you are doing as you carry out that role in battle. You are fending off attacks, striking enemies, casting spells and so on.

Maiming stands out in an uncomfortable way.

It already is somewhat odd-one-out simply by being the intended result of your action rather than the action itself, but also that result is a cruel one - neither a swift death nor incapacitation with minimal harm, but a deliberate and permanent injury.

Any time I have to call the armour by that term, it's an unpleasant thought.

So do others feel this way or is it just me bothered by this? And is it something that could be even officially considered or is it far too entrenched at this point?

As for an alternate name, that would partly depend on what this new melee class is going to be, but a possibility not too far from what already exists might simply be Slaying - the term already being used for jewellery shared by the Maiming and Striking classes, while Aiming jewellery is shared by the Aiming and Scouting classes, so there's precedent for one of the gear groups to share a name with jewellery type.

Not that I'm entirely keen on that term either, but if we must kill our enemies then I'd certainly rather do it without maiming them first.

Or a DRG-focused term might be Piercing, or perhaps there's some nice archaic term for "leading the attack" as a counterpart to Fending with its focus on defence. (Vanquishing? Two syllables feels awkward though.)