While I will not say that PLD has become useless or anything harsh like that (believe me i love PLD) its come to my attention that they've become too obsolite in comparison to other jobs like ninja and monk when it comes to tanking. So here is a new job ability suggestion, please discuss it for your consideration. I'd love to have some feedback especially from developers/mods of the forum. You could tweak this idea any way you see fit, but this is what i've come up with:
New PLD job ability:
Fortify:
In Game Description: Reduces all forms of damage by 50%, and increases enmity (VERY similar to sentential)
Details: Reduces all forms of damage taken by 50%, and instead of losing enmity with each time you’re hit, you gain it. This move could also generate a sum of hate just by using it on yourself
Target: Self only
Duration: 2 minutes <___________________________
Recast time: 3 minutes <````````````````````````````````````````````` These are the parts that make this so appealing.
Optional additional features: Reduce attack or STR for that same period by a certain amount.
Recommended level to learn at: PLD lv. 80, but anything 75~99 would work
Or if you’d like, for the enmity, another way to consider doing this would be to allow pld to absorb hate from all the party members while its in effect… to some extent. For instance, while the rest of the party is pummeling on the monster, an amount of hate is generated each time they strike the enemy. My suggestion here is to perhaps make it so that half the hate generated from a normal ‘auto attack’ attack be instead contributed to the paladin’s enmity while this job ability is in effect, instead of above mentioned enmity idea. (Also you could tweak this idea to include hate from weapon skills too, it'd be nice to get this to work for full alliance hate though i'm not sure if thats possible)
Another maybe not so popular suggestion to PLD may be to give them a late job ability that mimics the basic points of white mages cure+stone skin job ability. (I forget which one is which lol so I wont say the name). Of course you’d have to call it something else, and weaken it a bit perhaps, and take away its hidden effects (or keep them, I don’t see why not), but giving PLD the ability to bestow stoneskin with cures might be a good first step in trying to give PLD the edge with tanking again so that its easier to rival that of a NIN’s abilities.