Quote Originally Posted by cjbeagle View Post
Arguably there's another exception: WHM vs BLM. Sure, they call one a "cane" and the other a "staff" - but that's purely semantics. You actually touch on this yourself when you say that Sage could've used staves - I imagine you meant canes since they're a healer, but they're indistinguishable.

fwiw I love the weapon creativity in FFXIV - just pointing out that there's precedent for weapons that are basically the same, just called something different, shared by different jobs - even different roles - beyond arcanist.

The more I think about it, the more DRK + GNB = [dps] seems legit, with a combat style akin to Ruby Rose but with a giant gunblade instead of an ordnance-empowered scythe.

Exactly! Just because they are similar weapons does not mean they can't be different with different job functions. So limiting potential classes because of the weapon type seems counter productive.