Hi Rowan, it's Ritz. Didn't know you posted on the forums.

I think any true research would have to be done by a legacy player at this point in time because there's a tradeoff between cross-class skills and job stats/skills. Additionally, level 50 relic and AF gear is paladin-only.

The general consensus is that classes are for solo and jobs are for group content. You can do a lot of cool things with cross-class skills that could make soloing in things like story missions easier. Here's a link to the available cross-class skills gladiator has access to: http://xivdb.com/?skilltree/Gladiator

Although jobs are usually for preferred over classes for group content, here's a situation I could maybe see gladiator being more beneficial than paladin. You are in an 8-player group with 2 paladins/gladiators and only need 1 tank. The paladin only has access to the typical paladin skills and some cross-class skills from marauder and conjurer. The gladiator has access to all of those skills plus several other cross-class skills. Gladiator could do drastically more burst DPS by using a skill combo such as Fight or Flight, Straight Shot, Raging Strikes, Internal Release, and Blood for Blood. Additional DPS skills are Mercy Stroke, Impulse Drive, Quelling Strikes, and Invigorate. Mercy Stroke could help DPS during the last 20% HP of an enemy. Impulse Drive could allow for sustained DPS with much less enmity generation. Quelling Strikes could help the main tank maintain enmity if you DPS burst with Quick Blade, Savage Blade, Rage of Halone combos. Since a DPS gladiator wouldn't use flash and drain TP faster, Invigorate would help with TP management. I don't see a scenario like this happening often if at all and have no end-game experience, but maybe it could happen in a Titan hard mode duty finder group or when you have a static group that has 2 tanks with no secondary classes/jobs.