Something i've always wondered, and never bothered to ask.

I know a lot of people, myself included, do not use full tatts because they're pretty dang expensive. As opposed to the other sets of armor, full tatts tends to cost about 10x as much as the others, just because you have to use Parchment as the base material. But that's just my opinion.

/=LOTHAR=\

I see this a lot in PvP... and if you're going for asthetics power to you, but really you want the judges armour on your chest where you're three times as likely to get hit, and if you think you look ugly with a diaper and a chest armour put judges on your legs as well (you're twice as likely to get hit there).
Other places you don't get hit enough statistically to be bothered to put extra armour on, so you may as well go for the energy boost with the tattoos.

That is the set up I, and just about every top GvG guild monk, use. It's perfect for battle against smart opponents who will target you.

Hint: several elementalist attack skills (eg: chain lightning, lightning strike, phoenix) all automatically strike the chest (not entirely sure about phoenix, actually). Aside from that; stoning, stone daggers, shard storm, water trident, etc all are projectiles and therefore hit wherever they do. That's why it's better to have greater resistance in your chest armour than a simple 60 AL - most of the time that's where you're getting hit.

Frankly, it looks like a severe rash!