Half the skill it takes to play a character is knowing what to wear at what times and is part of this game in general and removing that is removing part of the skill in the game. Both support and offensive classes need to do this. Also, a priest is a non trans and they can swap evangs to ones that are better in different situations. Wizzards are basically support classes in WoE as their role is offensive disabling and not really killing and they can swap SoM to one that better fits a situation even though they are a non trans class. Even sages are mostly used for support in WoE and they can swap tomes as the situations calls. This makes the argument of not being able to swap to differently carded SQIs make no since from a game stand point.
There is also the fact the only reason the SQI was made soul bound was an attempt to make it more of a zeny sink so it makes no since to only allow someone to only make one as this limits the amount of zeny making this SQI can pull out of the economy.
Finally, even though soul linkers aren't much of duelers, you still can duel with them and garment swap is an important part of dueling.
And the response you would likely get is then to swap to other garments. You can still use your skill and smarts to swap intelligently. A SQI isn't required in all scenarios. If you were to get a player example you might get something like: Paladin A swaps between his Toad Aegis and Stone Bucklers as the situation demands in PvM and does just fine. Substitute other shields for gameplay type.
But I can see your argument is based around that x classes can swap already.
Generally, if you argue based around the logic of "old SQIs" versus "new SQIs" then you're going to run into a problem. The "old SQIs" should have been soul bound / account bound, but they weren't (so you'd see no swapping besides between regular weapons/SQIs and players would have to work together better and smarter). So you're arguing against a new ideology favored by the GM team which I doubt will be changed. You can see such in the old thread about abolishing soul bound / account bound which indicates their opinion on how SQIs should be handled.
As for the zeny sink logic, people sell accounts yet with SQIs, so I wouldn't go so far as to say it was a successful zeny sink unless account selling would become illegal at some juncture. So being able to make more wouldn't pull out anymore zeny in the economy.
Same logic with dueling. You can intelligently swap despite what abysmal damage a SL would do in PvP against anyone decently geared.
And as a final point: I'm just noting what would likely answer your question. You can debate with the GMs further if they choose to weigh in. Do I think it's the wisest choice? No.
