Saying we'd lose something from making scouting aiming gear instead is kinda silly. Every gear set/collection only has about 3, maaaybe 4 at most visual designs. The rest are reskins or have the smallest tweak, like, one has shorter sleeves but is otherwise the same, lol. The only thing that'll change is having 3ish designs split between 5 gear sets instead of 7. So we just get less reskins.

Think about the exarchic set. Fending and Maiming are basically just reskins. Scouting, Striking and Aiming are literally reskins. And Casting and Healing are basically reskins minus the headpiece. There are really only three appearances, split across 7 gear sets. So nothing changes, we're still getting the same 3ish appearances. Like, if you want a different colour, then just dye it. Think about the gear sets we've gotten in shadowbrings that aren't artifact gear, they're pretty much all like that.