Job Recommendation: Paladin Tanking and Area of Effect

[Kitfox]

Why not make Rage of Halone a cleave attack? Treat it similar to Holy and Flare (max potency and debuff on the target, 50 or less on extras and no debuff, but same amount of enmity generation). It'll be like Overpower, but you have to do Fast Blade and Savage Blade first for the enmity and cleave (and still cost 60 TP). A non combo Rage of Halone could remove the 'final slash flash' effect.

Because for 50 levels PLD would have no options besides cleaving everything in sight, no CC from Sleep or Bind although they don't matter later in the game. You also lose a strong tool used for picking up a specific add from a group of mobs. This is a bad idea in general as it repurposes a tool used for something else with no replacement. Fixing Flash would keep the toolkit intact.

[Derio]

Just give flash an aoe damage with 50 potency in the next expansion.

[Xenosan]

I think the first order of business is making the shield more prominent, for 4.0 some ideas I think would be interesting

Aegis Boon: GCD, requires block proc, no recast, does not interrupt combos (ala 2.x Shield Swipe), radius damage, heals self & nearby members, MP restore (PLD's mini Assize). Like MNK's Meditation it operates on a faster GCD.

War Drum: OGCD Radius AOE + Debuff, 30 recast, shield block procs have a 30% chance to reset it's CD

[Kitfox]

I think the first order of business is making the shield more prominent, for 4.0 some ideas I think would be interesting

Aegis Boon: GCD, requires block proc, no recast, does not interrupt combos (ala 2.x Shield Swipe), radius damage, heals self & nearby members, MP restore (PLD's mini Assize). Like MNK's Meditation it operates on a faster GCD.

War Drum: OGCD Radius AOE + Debuff, 30 recast, shield block procs have a 30% chance to reset it's CD

While these old abilities would be nice additions, I'm afraid of serious skill bloat if they keep introducing more abilities.

[Raim]

Wish they would focus more on revamping current skills than adding more in the expansion. If it has to be trait based they should at least not make it something introduced only at max level.

[Dzian]

But then it wouldn't be Flash would it? Flash is a traditional spell throughout the FF series whose sole purpose is simply to blind the enemy (in other words, it's a debuff spell, nothing more). Be thankful it's an enmity builder! It saddens me that there are so many so-called 'Paladins' here who are more interested in causing bloodshed than actually trying to protect their party members, all because their 'damage numbers' aren't as high as someone else.

Really, you want to do damage? Be a DPS. If you're a tank, then you should be tanking. If you're a PLD, your gimmick is high damage mitigation/debuffs and abilities that specialize at single targets. It's as simple as that.

Side effect of "balance" originally what paladin lacked in dps they made up for in mitigation. The issue is mitigation doesn't matter.

Virtually Every mechanic that exists is a dps check of some forms. You simply so not need to mitigate or heal. Which is why healers spend so much time in cleric stance and why tanks will pull everything in a dungeon. Because the incoming damage is a joke.

Any boss ultimate for example only has 2 outcomes. Either you pass the dps check and sail through the ultimate with hardly a scratch thus any defensive buffs used are laughable. Or you fail the dps check and you wipe. No amount of healing or defensive buffs will save you.

Even the shield mechanics are dps checks. Leviathan for example if you fail to kill adds fast enough the barrier won't have enough power to protect you. Only thing that matters is dps.

Mitigation and healing are a joke. Dps is all that matters. This is the big problem.

So while I disagree with giving PLD more are damage. I can see in the current game why many feel it's needed.

I however would much rather see mitigation and play a much bigger role and an increased diversity between jobs balance essentially makes them all the same. For example currently a tank buster hits every tank for roughly identical damage there is no difference between them

[Silkerin]

As it was said before, adding a small potency to flash as trait would already help a lot, even 50 potency would be nice; and/or even changing circle of scorn a bit to reset cooldown everytime you block a hit?

Now for future expansion would be nice to have something like a holy smite as a magical aoe to use, working kinda like clemency and holy, eating a lot of mp, meaning you can cast like at most 2/3 times from full mp and doing either ok damage or huge damage, not sure where the balance would be better, with uninterruptible cast of course, maybe some additional effect as well?

Like mentioned, a buff like radiant shield would be great too, again costing a lot of mp to activate * and not being a sustained skill like dark side * and during its time activated you get that radiant shield effect, but only when using shield oath; when using sword oath it gives a blessed blades effect, either giving additional damage, or adding a potency to your skills, kinda like sword oath, but instead of adding an extra hit to your auto attack it adds to the skills used, and maybe even making it an aoe buff, giving the benefits to allies around, but with very reduced effects, adding some more utility to its kit.

[Vaer]

Change Shield Lob to bounce/cleave between targets.

Currently
Overpower 120 pot, inc. enmity. 130tp 8y range 8y radius, front cleave, Lv.12
Shield Lob 120 pot, inc. enmity. 120tp 15y range 0y radius, single target, Lv.15

Change the radius, maybe nerf the damage and increase the tp cost to make up for the fact that it doesn't have to be aimed and it's a ranged ability. If needed, it can revert back to a single target ability in Sword Oath to keep PLD AOE dps down and in case you need an off switch because you don't want to hit more than one target for some reason. The offswitch could be added at later level as a trait so in the cases where you only have Sword Oath for a couple levels it isn't a drawback.

[Silkerin]

Change Shield Lob to bounce/cleave between targets.

This would make so many people that use captain america themed glamours happy XD

[Alahra]

Change Shield Lob to bounce/cleave between targets.

This would mean that Paladin no longer has a single target pull ability, however, which every tank has (Tomahawk and Unmend are the equivalents for WAR/DRK). DRK does have something that works like this though, in Abyssal Drain, so it's within the realm of possibility that PLD could get a "Shield Ricochet" ability in the future.