Shamans, priests and mages are all tidesages in a way.
You have the NPC during the KT unlock line whom obviously is a shaman (you ask her if she is and she calls herself a tidesage).
I see it easier to overlook an armour limitation on an otherwise cohesive class than it is to try and pretend my jul tiran mage cannot blink, nor polymorph, or whatever else because these are powers tidesages are not shown to have.
In truth a tidesage is a hybrid mid of priest, shaman and mage, but the fact remains each class falls short for one reason or another. I just find shaman is the easiest to see it for, but frost mage and shadowpriest are perfectly viable as well. I mean the NPC in the unlock line isn’t wearing the typical cloth robes etc and she confirms she is a tidesage, so I see the “they’re cloth” as a weaker inference. Most of them wear cloth, yes. But none of them cast polymorph. Do you see my reasoning here?
Ultimately whether a tidesage is a frost mage, priest or shaman or even monk is okay by me because to insist one of these “can’t be a tidesage” opens up as to why the others are despite the fact they hold not consistencies with the depiction of tidesages as well. I mean yea mages chuck frost magic around, but tidesages use water magic, not frost. They’re also clearly priest like figures and play that role in their community. You have to suspend a lot of disbelief with a mage for that to work.
We should get customisation tools for our kits, to help manage this. I mean the tidesage, whom uses offensive water, wind/lightning and void magic, that would be so awesome to play as in my opinion!