Not again...

[aleph_null]

A8S is a tossup imo. Paladin made you a safer on late-phase tank busters (though you can probably just have warrior cheese them with Holmgang/all their shit) and lets you cheese land mines. Dark Knight let you neuter his AOEs, which are just as dangerous. A7S is similar where HG will let you cheese a couple tank busters but the real threat in that fight is actually Sizzlebeam and his AOE stuff. Divine Veil was wayyyyy too slow to make a difference vs DRK's int down/Reprisal. I did both these fights as paladin, but I think my group would have gotten them weeks earlier if I bit the bullet and played DRK again.

My bad it was unclear but I was trying to say about pld being something to consider over drk since it also offers something useful, unlike in a9s-a11s where they offer little to nothing while lacking drk's aoe, int down as well as single target dps. Wasn't implying them to be better than drk.

I played Paladin though all of FFXIV and I really never switch main jobs ever. I level everything to level cap but I still play one main job. Paladin wasn't that good in alex due to so much magic damage that you could not do anything about. Still beat alex so yes it could be done but what it seemed like was that it really wasn't optimal because I was taking more damage and doing less.

No one would deny that a4s and a12s are terribly designed encounters in terms of magic/physical damage balance. No fight should lean toward one type of damage that far, especially when we have a tank that's really good in physical mitigation and another that's really good in magic mitigation. That'd just make one tank really good and the other really bad for the fight. On a slightly unrelated note, while I liked thordan ex, I also think that the fight leaned too far toward physical damage.