Healer/Caster Armor is Boring

[Anvaire]

I completely agree that caster healer gear is getting boring. Not because the items themselves are bad, but because they come on the back of a truck load of similiar frilly dress designs and there is no reason for it to be like this.

They can do robes without them needing to be frilly, or look like dresses.
I think the overly feminine designs are pretty nice if you play a female char (or a male who likes to wear dresses) but if you dont want to play a male wearing a dress, they often look terrible.

I think it comes down to the Healer and Caster gear being made for White Mage and Black Mage Aesthetically, which suit robes, while Scholar, Sage, Summoner and Red Mage do not. At this point I really dont think the devs will change the approach. But i do think its a needlessly limiting system.

Personally i was very disappointed seeing the Alagia and Euphrosyne gear, not because they were terrible, but because again they were dresses. I really think part of the problem is that they seem to be using Western Religious outfits as a base and going from there.

I can think of loads of examples that while would still be robes, would be a nice variance - Sydney from Vagrant story, Seymour's outfit in final fantasy X and any of the Chinese, japanese staple magic user outfits would bring a lot of variance, while also retaining the "robe" aesthetic.

[Barachim]

I was always a big fan of the whole Battlemage aesthetic, so I would welcome Healer designs with slightly more armoring.

[Dogempire]

The one thing that I think casters have over any of the other jobs in terms of glamour is the fact that they actually have access to gloves that hide sleeves, which can make otherwise awkward looking tops look actually decent if you want to go for a more edgy look.

Heck, it's one of the primary reasons I like playing a caster is just because of the existence of these items, even the new alliance raid drops gloves that hide sleeves

[RyuDragnier]

I play a healer in every kind of RPG/MMO I've ever had. I don't know how most of them have not fixed this yet. Healers wearing robes is an extremely overdone and boring concept. The new Euphrosyne raid is out now, and the tank armor looks so amazing, while the casters just get another flat-colored robe with crystals on it. I want more ACTUAL armor. The Radiant's set at level 90, and some of the Aglaia gear is nice, but come on. I'd even love it if they made the Ward's Knight armor on the mog station no job restriction. Just anything.

It's why I wear the Heavensturn armor from this year as a glam. You look like an actual armored healer, and it works well.

[ForsakenRoe]

I quite like the base model of the current raid set for healers, I say base model because I'm not a massive fan of over-the-top VFX on armor. Would rather they left that to the weapons. Though I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to egregious VFX on 'relic armor' if we had it again, as long as there's a way to have a non-glowy version, either by locking the glow to only activate if you're using the full set, or just having a 'matte' replica at the same time that doesn't have the glow.

As for armored healers, I quite liked one of the SHB sets for that, had like a scale-mail effect on the robe. Think it was Deepshadow? Had a good aesthetic mix of 'lightweight' and 'armored'. I wouldn't mind seeing full plate gear, but it seems we're mostly being shoehorned into robes, because we have 'druid-y hippie', 'Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War (It's a gain on 2)', 'weird tarot card enthusiast' and 'trust me I'm a doctor, no you can't see my license', and none of those really say 'armored'. So I think the best we could hope for is scalemail sort of vibes.

[Alpheus]

Considering the FF franchise has Arch Mage/Warlocks like Golbez and ExDeath, yea it's dumb. DoM classes have to rely on seasonal event attire (that new Valentione's [that's modeled by the Elezen] top they blog posted looks good for some XI doublet vibes for DoM tops for example) to get non robe vibes, unless we get thrown a bone like Sohm Al or Pagl'than which....would be fine if it occurred more often. But I do like the fact that those who prefer a more feminine aesthetic are spoiled for choice, even if I don't vibe with it (because Roes just aren't fitted to those outfits very well, the Lego-ness of how the gear works visually gets really apparent with Roes, as if different people are responsible for "refitting" the pieces for male Roes [which is understandable] but it means there's an inconsistency to it that isn't present on other races [as other races tend to lend themselves to one another in terms of silhouette so there's more work that can carry over between them] and for some pieces it's enough to throw the whole vibe off so I just stick with what works, which usually means dressing like a himbo lol).

Honestly I just hope they can just make the Sohm Al and Pgalthan gear dyeable like they did the Tactics Ogre/Ogre Battle gear. I'm hopeful the Sohm Al gear is simply getting a lot of work done for the graphics update because it is bizarre to me that in all the years since HW they haven't had a reprint. If they could just make more non robe tops STOP at the waist it can at least give DoM Jobs a new modular approach when it comes to glamming. Like say, reprint the Sohm Al DoM gear (for DoM jobs NOT giving this edit idea it to DoW instead) but remove the "skirt" part of the top that covers the upper legs, those sets have cool pants that are otherwise obstructed by the top and the shoes of that set and it's really unfortunate.

EDIT: Also to add to the post above the EW healer set for the 85 dungeon also has a non removal white color and.....yea those pieces aggravate me too. Because while I could dye it red and get cool FF WHM vibes, that's....basically it whereas all other roles get more flexibility in the vibes they wanna portray and healers already have to deal with a monotonous battle rotation, the fact they have to deal with a somewhat monotonous vibe popping up every so often for their glams just...cements healers are an afterthought to the Devs (and I exclude the gear design Devs in this because again while I don't vibe with their "Robes everywhere, all the time" direction they otherwise do good work with the time and resources given and they do look at glam collection websites for inspiration so they're clearly open to ideas/suggestions which is more than I can say for the Combat Devs regarding healers, and I say that knowing full well that they are all overworked so I'm not mad but just disappointed and irked more than anything since these are issues that are years long in the tooth).

[Renathras]

Honestly, there are, what, 10 (general Healer) armor sets each expansion?

Entry launch tomes ("tier 0 tomes"), tier 1 tomes, tier 1 armor, 24 man 1 armor, tier 2 tomes, tier 2 armor, 24 man 2 armor, tier 3 tomes, tier 3 armor, 24 man 3 armor.

Added to this is the entry level gear for each Job that has their aesthetic, and then in a few cases (ARR's upgrades to them and then Eureka and Bozja), a variation/upgraded/special version. ARR had a recolor, Eureka had a dyable version and then the generalist set, making 11 of those in SB, while Bozja had 3 more, making 13.

...and then there are, what, 3 crafted generalist sets? So basically 14 generalsist sets in SB and 16 in ShB (which also did the dyeable sets from the Solus' fight)

.

There's no reason to me that we can't have at least one armor set with a flair of each healer's archetype and then have some general sets on top of that. It's not like we don't have enough sets.

And I agree with ForsakenRoe (not common, but it happens ) about the Deepshadow chestpiece. I love the scale mail look to it. I'd honestly prefer more chainmail or padded leather armors (seems more practical to me - I go for various kinds of adventurer gear, and I would think some good leather armor with pouches and satchels for my healing reagents and such) options being around as well.

[Rilifane]

The Deepshadow chest piece looks great, it's still one of my all time favourites because this classic RPG cleric look with a mix of medium armor and robe elements is something I always liked but found lacking in FFXIV.
Especially if it has some practical belts, pouches and such.
No, not the oversized purely decorate belts. I mean practical belts. Some of the Aiming sets have them and some of the old ARR robes as well but they became pretty rare on healer gear.

I don't want a lot of each style just 2-3 per style would be enough for me but we have this heavy emphasis on robes that look more like wedding dresses and a lot of alternatives aren't even dyeable sadly.

[Allegor]

The Euphrosyne scouting/aiming set is so pretty I wish it was the healer set instead. If anything, it shows they can design robes that aren't dresses... just not for casters/healers, we're bound to floor length towels forever.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

The Euphrosyne scouting/aiming set is so pretty I wish it was the healer set instead. If anything, it shows they can design robes that aren't dresses... just not for casters/healers, we're bound to floor length towels forever.

When I first saw the glam showcase, I was hoping -that- aiming top's gonna be healer's. Then I just lost all hope when they lift up another paper showing even more robe'y glam: "Yeah, that's definitely healer's lol."