So, after the patch, how goes it with Paladin?

[Dhex]

In the event that you don't need to save Sheltron or Bulwark for anything specific, it's not that hard to get very good overall usage efficiency with Shield Swipe. You Sheltron on the pull to force one in your opening enmity rotation, you Bulwark to force 2 more Shield Swipe procs, and then you Sheltron again to force the next. If you get a natural block during any of this, you can delay the CDs accordingly. You are also forgetting that with time and better shields, PLD's natural block rate is going to increase. In that manner, Swipe scales better than its equivalents because Reprisal is parry based and parry rating rating has horrible returns + is eating up stat budgeting that could go to crit. Block rate is not costing PLDs stat budgeting on their gear.

Utilizing Bulwark does not make Shield Swipe 100% reliable. Shield Swipe being ready for use every 15s is entirely based on RNG proc timing - this is not a debatable point. It's fact. You can, at best, Sheltron proc - wait 10s Bulwark ?RNG? proc (maybe) wait 15s - wait 5s Sheltron or if RNG proc'd wait 15s leave Sheltron alone. Again - without some extreme luck you will never see perfect back-to-back-to-back use of Shield Swipe. It is a very small unreliable gain to potency and damage potential. Additionally I need to stress that Sheltron =/= Instant Shield Swipe as you still have to weather at least one Auto-Attack to activate it. All of this means variation to the potency gains from Shield Swipe. Also you throw away Sheltron as a mitigation tool in any fight where it can be used to mitigate Physical tank-busters by doing this. Yes you can fiddle with cooldown timing but it won't change anything - you can't force luck with procs. Your little argument ignores the key point being made; the damage will vary depending on unreliable proc timing. This is not a reliable change to Paladin damage. This is not a fix.

Arguing about stat budgeting in regards to Shield Block & PLD is utter nonsense since there is nothing else for us to equip in our off-hand slot so thanks for that inconsequential tidbit.

If you want a good reminder of what is wrong with PLD I suggest you try Ramuh EX - this is an example of a fight where Paladin's toolkit is extra useless and it highlights the key deficiencies we labor under.

Divine Veil is redundant? What does that even mean? It stacks with other shields and is really, really good for mechanic damage.

Divine Veil is redundant because there are already two healer Jobs with AoE shields - if a heavy raid-wide buster is coming healers should already be putting out shields and have already determined the amount of AoE healing required to maintain raid health after the mechanic - if they couldn't do it Paladin & Divine Veil would be a 100% necessity to clear the fight. Divine Veil lets the raid "mitigate more" than it could without it but it does not provide such a significant barrier that the required healing is reduced - meaning the same amount of MP and the same number of GCDs are being expended by your Healers to top off the raid. It at best becomes a skill that is 100% situation reliant for use making it impractical when most raid-wide damage is heavily scripted - this makes Divine Veil a dead zone on the hotbar reserved for a very specific emergency. At best you might save a wayward DPS that stepped in something right before a raid-wide attack; of course assuming your healers take time to proc the shield at all. It's a superfluous skill that is a waste to the toolkit at best.

A lot of other classes also suffer from having largely irrelevant cross-class options. PLD is not alone in that aspect. SS has always been a very good skill. Redundant? Why? Because you expect healers to cast it on you during downtime when they often have more pressing matters to attend to?

Stoneskin is 10% of your max HP. Even if you're in full VIT, with food, and a VIT bonus allotment that is still less than a 2,500HP shield. SS is a spell - thus it can be interrupted further wasting GCDs - Clemency also easily outweighs your Stoneskin shield - so the only situation where utilizing Stoneskin is viable is when you're capped HP. Think about the nature of that - because if you're low on HP and have no healer attention then you best be refilling your HP via Clemency (good luck with interrupts) not mitigating what equates to roughly an Auto-Attack. If you are capped HP you already have Healer attention/Regens/Fairy and should be focusing on your damage output and completing the main goal - kill the monster/push the phase. Stoneskin becomes a redundant, even useless, spell. If you're using it to shield other players you're deliberately squashing your own Damage/Enmity output for even smaller inconsequential shields. If you're using it as an OT you're deliberately squashing your own Damage output; which by-in-large is what most raids need from an OT slot.

CNJ contributes nothing practical to a PLD.