Design of DRK and PLD

[ArthurATDayne]

The Real Life Meta Reasons why shields would fall out of favor for a Knight is that the armor that they wear evolved enough that a shield feels redundant for protection and to defeat the defenses of their peers/enemy they needed the 2nd hand for greater control and leverage over increasingly sturdier weapons beyond arming swords so we see more Long Swords/Bastard Swords and later large True Two-Handers that possessed either dedicated thrusting or combination thrust/cutting capabilities to get through the gaps in armor or if thrusting isn't possible at the time, hitting with enough force to better break bone and flesh through trauma etc.

Maybe for narrative reasons we can interpret the Dark Knights/Gunbreakers/Warriors as either possessing enough personal defenses to make shields redundant and/or enough offensive 2-handed leveraged might to get through the best armors of Eorzia & the First, and in the Gunbreaker's "arming sword" case, their Gunblades are so Aether-Tech Mechanically Superior & Powerful that even with one hand they are more than enough to get through enemy armor.

/End Rant