Paladin quests from level 30 to 40.

[Jpec07]

I agree. I love Pld to pieces, but SE really hasn't given us a solid grasp on what we are or what we're supposed to be. Even our ability kits are confused. Our Gld abilities and weapons stats had us all set up to be one thing, but our Pld abilities pull a 180 and take us somewhere else. It's part of the reason why a lot of the Pld kit is considered to be broken, and is still broken despite numerous patch jobs that SE has thrown at it.

A lot of us actually theorized that the original plan for Pld's was to have a branching job system, similar to Arc > Sch (healer) / Arc > Smn (dps). In our case, it would have likely been Gld > Pld (tank) / Gld > Drk (dps). Drk was the most likely option, because it traditionally opposes Plds in most FF titles; though, Sword Master, Viking, Mercenary, Mystic Knight / Red Mage were other possible options. There was a lot of evidence pointing in that SE was going to take this direction with Gld, but they never did. Some of us theorize that it didn't happen because of the backlash they saw with Sch/Smn having incompatible skill points, but we'll never really know if this was their actual plan or not unless they outright tell us.

Personally, I'm a little disappointed that they didn't do something like this, or at least make substantial changes to Pld to compensate. As you've pointed out, there's a lot of things about Pld that just don't fit.

See, GLD->DRK would have made a lot of sense if they'd made DRK a DPS job instead of a tank--they could have made it so GLD+THM = DRK, just like how GLD+CNJ = PLD.

I also have a strong distaste for the Paladin storyline in general, because there isn't anything compelling about it at all. We have so many examples in literature, theater, film, and television of lawful good characters who are written in interesting and compelling ways that aren't the least bit stale that it makes me really sad we got what we did.

I also feel like they REALLY dropped the ball with the Heavensward story. Half of MSQ is a huge buildup to the Knights of the Round Primal, and we could very easily have had some amazing storytelling within the Heavens' Ward and/or some of the other knightly organizations in Ishgard. But instead we follow Constaint around on what effectively amounts to a sideshow with the most obvious plot twist ever.

I also happened to really like the DRK storyline in Heavensward. I thought it was well-written, the characters had a realism and depth about them, and certain plot elements struck very close to home.