Every now and then, I come across a piece of equipment in FFXIV that I would love to use for glamour that I can’t, for the life of me, incorporate into a look I’m satisfied with. This invariably frustrates me, and sometimes I spend hours trying all manner of things before I finally give up.

One of those pieces has always been the Ninja Chainmail, from the Ninja Artifact Armor set (modeled here with the Augmented Ninja Chainmail, dyed Pure White).

This overall has a much sleeker profile than the Iga Ningi, which would make it useful for certain types of looks over that one. It’s more armored, as well, making it a natural pairing for a handful of items, like the Allagan Gauntlets and Allagan Sollerets. But, for smaller, lithe characters, the design of the Chainmail has a rather major flaw: inexplicable muscle curvature in the armor plating, which makes very little sense on characters that don’t have the option to adjust their muscle tone (some races can adjust this at character creation, but not all of them). Other items, such as the Noct Lorica, have this problem as well, and it quite bothers me.

I did use the Chainmail for a decent amount of time in 2.4, since it was one of the few body pieces with enough of an Eastern flare, but now that we have the Ningi, I doubt I’ll ever find cause to use the former piece, even though I actually prefer the way it looks overall.

We haven’t seen many pieces recently with this sort of issue, which thankfully leads me to believe the art team is being more conscious of things like this, although with the Allagan Tomestones of Law gear in 3.2 supposedly being Primal themed, it’s conceivable we might see this issue rear its head in a Titan-themed tanking set (though in that case it would at least make some sort of sense).