Armor question.

The armor choices feels weird, especially if you come from WoW, which is very strict on your armor choices.

You have heavy armor (plate and mail), which are mostly worn by Gladiators/Paladins and Marauders/Warriors. Some of the pieces can be worn by Lancers/Dragoons, but not all of them. The pants are sometimes cloth though, but specific for those classes. So everything except some pants are made by Armorer, while the remaining pants are made by Weaver.

The last two is leather and cloth, and those are split between Disciple of War or Disciple of Magic. Although for the DoM gear it's often listed as "All classes", so DoW's can wear them as well. It's not always like that though. Leather is mostly aimed at DoW classes, but have belts, gloves and boots for DoM. Cloth goes for both about equally.

This is just for crafted and leveling gear. So if you are leveling a Gladiator or Marauder, you will stick to plate armor and DoM classes will be cloth armor. The other DoW classes tend to jump around between cloth and leather. At max level the gear you get is either specific to your class or have a smaller selection. While the armor tends to follow the same principle as above, there are exceptions.

My main job is a Monk, so I will use that as an example. On your last 2 quests for Monk, you get the Artifact gear, which is specific to Monk (excludes Pugilist). It's the class specific gear you can view when creating a character. With Soldiery I can buy the Gloam set, which is usable by Pugilist/Monk and Rogue/Ninja. It's cloth gear and actually looks like something that will fit a caster better. There is a set that drops from the Syrcus Tower raid, The Guardian's Striking set, which is also uses by the same classes, but it's plate armor. While it's plate armor, the defensive value is the same as cloth/leather armor of the same ilevel and less than the sets that drops for tanks.

/r/ffxiv Thread