I spent the better part of yesterday in front of the Summoning Bell and Market Board, fiddling with my new tank glamour. While I was doing Palace of the Dead, I picked up the Hellfire Armor of Fending, and since I was really trying to get my weapon, I didn’t stop to rework my entire glamour around it. Luckily, the body worked well enough with the pieces I had already been using that some changes to the dyes was all I needed to have something functional until I finished the weapon. After I had the weapon, I rushed through Weeping City and Void Ark to get the dyable, Augmented version of the body.

 

I went with a nice blue to match the glow of the Padjali Greatsword, but I knew this wasn’t going to last as a more permanent look. For one, the Hellfire Armor doesn’t cover enough for the Light Steel Subligar to really work, but the bright gold bits on the Replica Allagan stuff also didn’t really jive with the body piece, either, and the Heavy Allagan Flanchard was just far too bulky.

I’ve been playing Dark Knight a lot more lately, so before I could settle in yesterday and get to the roulettes I wanted to do, I thought I’d figure this out—I really didn’t think it would be a tricky glamour to polish, but I was quite wrong on that! My troubles started when I noticed something pretty cool:

The designs on the Dreadwyrm Gauntlets of Fending actually work really well alongside the similar silver bits on the Hellfire Armor. I have a hard time passing up pieces that mesh that way, so I proceeded to make the Replicas for both those and the Dreadwyrm Sabatons, which sadly, are only knee-height:

I was definitely going to need to find some pants for this look, but that can often be a really tricky prospect, especially for tanks, and especially again because the Dreadwyrm Sabatons have a pretty narrow profile. Since a lot of FFXIV’s leg armors are basically just tights with pretty textures, chicken legs syndrome was a very real danger (though to be honest I think this is largely a problem for Miqo’te and Au Ra females, since their frames are pretty thin to begin with):

My go-to for tank pants, the Dhalmelskin Breeches of Fending, didn’t really work, though:

Even in Jet Black, they weren’t stark enough to key off of the black in the Hellfire Armor, and the gold/yellow stitching didn’t really fit into the overall color scheme (though the Dreadwyrm Gauntlets and Sabatons have a little gold, it’s barely noticeable).

So I started scrounging through my retainers and trying on every pair of pants for tanks on the Market Board to find what I was looking for: something that wasn’t really skin-tight, but also not too  bulky. The Hellfire Armor has a really sleek look with the corset-like shape, and I didn’t want to compromise that. Whatever I was going to use would need to have a bit of sheen, too, so the black would match the body.

The Replica High Allagan Trousers ended up doing just about everything I wanted, but since I wasn’t using something thigh-high for the Feet slot like normal, that gold ring above the knee really bugged me. I ran around with these for awhile as I worked on getting the Esoterics and a Gobtwine for what I thought might be a better option: the Chaos Flanchard.

There’s a bit of red on them that doesn’t dye, though, which is rather unfortunate, since, like the Dreadwyrm pieces, the bits of silver actually work pretty well with the Hellfire Armor. While they’re a little more narrow than I would like, I think these would actually work great with the rest of the pieces in red or black, so the red sash on the Flanchard doesn’t seem so out of place. Perhaps once I have Nothung and can dye it, I’ll try them again.

After several hours of this (these are just a sampling of things I tried—I tried on every available option that I had access to), I gave up on completing this look for the time being. Chances are I’m not going to find something that works extremely well with the Dreadwyrm pieces for now. I’ve got my eye on the Augmented Hellfire Sabatons, which I’ll have hopefully tomorrow, since I’ll be able to dye them to match, but I can’t see them working well with the Dreadwyrm Gauntlets.

For now, I’m using the Storm Elite’s Skirt, which has the right sort of black to it without any extra colors that stand out (there’s some red on the sides, but it’s all covered by other pieces). It’s an okay look, but I’m not greatly satisfied with it and I’m sure I’ll have another day like this one where I try to get a more long-lasting glamour.