As I mentioned I would last time, I spent the weekend playing around with colors and other gear pairings with the Augmented Shire Philosopher’s Coat. After coming to the realization that Pure White just wasn’t going to work, I defaulted to Jet Black for the most part (to match my Ninja glamour), but I wasn’t quite happy with that. The Coat is a different type of fabric, which gives it a different vibe in the black, and it’s also more predominately “solid” in that there wasn’t much to key off of for other pieces. The result ended up being “too much” black (in a way that’s sort of funny since nearly all of my caster glamours have been completely black for awhile).

At one point while messing around with it, I pulled out the Star Velvet Bottoms of Casting again and thought the flared leggings looked pretty good with the coat, but the gap between the leggings and the skirt didn’t really seem fitting. Since there’s not something similar that’s just, well, pants, for casters, I decided instead to abandon the Coat and go back to what seems to have become a staple foundation for my caster looks.

Glamour Components
Head: Elegant Rimless Glasses | Body: Strife Vest (Jet Black) | Hands: Star Velvet Long Gloves of Casting (Jet Black) | Legs: Star Velvet Bottoms of Casting (Jet Black) | Feet: Archaeoskin Halfboots

Quite by accident I found that the Strife Vest makes for a much less “vulnerable” look than the previous iterations of this look, while still preserving the overall narrow profile that for whatever reason seems to be mandatory to me for caster glamours (well, probably for all glamours, now that I think about it). If there was one snag point, it was probably the gloves: the Star Velvet gloves are kind of at odds with the Vest.

I wanted something long in the hands slot for sure, since Alahra’s scrawny miqo’te arms don’t look right to me in the top unless they’re mostly covered. The next best option was the Gloves of the Black Griffin, but with the mandatory red on them, the overall uniformity of the look suffered (since going with red for the vest caused an unsatisfying break between the top and the skirt). The Witch’s Gloves have the ever-annoying orange ribbon, and the old i100/i110 PvP gloves don’t dye well at all for this kind of look.

So in the end, I stuck with the Star Velvet ones. At least with the Star Velvet Bottoms they don’t look too out of place. Since we’re more or less at the end of major content updates for Heavensward, I don’t think it’s likely that we’ll see any new gloves until Stormblood. Even so, I’m going to keep my eyes open for new possibilities here. It’s possible we’ll see new skins from the Diadem or from new crafted stuff in Part Two of Patch 3.5, and that might just mean I get to perfect this look before the expansion.