Paladin quests from level 30 to 40.

[Duelle]

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.

I'm not seeing where this idea of brokenness comes from. The job has a foundation in swordsmanship and use of a shield. Abilities that involve either or, and defensive cooldowns that have to be there because the job is a tank. The only things I could consider out there would be Clemency and Divine Veil, the former an ability I did NOT want to see because I liked the idea of PLD being a knight despite the individuals that were irrationally asking for potent heals on a tank.

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.

Actually, it's just that SE was too lazy to change the GLA description from 1.0 to 2.0. The GLA description was worded that way because it used to have traits that boosted damage dealt if you didn't equip a shield. This was back when traits could be swapped in an out depending on what you were aiming to do with the class.

stuff

See, the thing with that is that the writers went out of their way to paint the Heavens Ward as cronies of the archbishop. There's no way in hell you'd join them because of that alone. The fact you fight and kill them at the end of the MSQ means you can't have an adversarial relationship with any of them, either.