Paladin's shield has become a bit too passive imo. You have the standard shield bash and a counter move with a largely useless effect on serious battles (full resists).

If sam becomes a tank, I'd like it to rely on parry much more with parry boosting stance that allows the samurai to parry every direct damage type possible (including magic?) and then reactive/counter skills triggering off a parry for enmity generation. Sam should also have a very flexible combo web with multiple paths and letting him go back and forth along the combo lines for different effects. Like having damage type debuffs that a samurai can use, depending on party composition. e.g.: sam joins a df light party, he meets two caster dps, decides to use magic defense down combos.