In terms of combat flow, that frees up the other three to attack non-stop. Instead, because of target preferences of end-game mobs, my Cleric is basically only wearing +AC, +Resistance and +Endurance gear because mobs only ever attack them and they spend 90% of their time healing themselves. In my current party, my Knight only ever receives AoE damage. Your non-tank classes end up being your tanks. At first stats are great, but then the diminishing returns make them mostly worthless if you get light/dark magic and your only mid-game power increasers are +HP and SP, but you reach a point that a few extra HP or SP don't really matter and all you want is +AC, 'Of Power' and 'Of Recovery'.
If you don't powergame and look up the math (most of it only available this century thanks to Grayface- if this was 1998, you'd be spinning your wheels with wasted slots), then gearing is very misleading. Here me out: Half of the classes don't seem to have any real purpose other than to lead you away from better classes (Druid vs.
