Paladin. I dont feel I'm actually playing a Paladin.

[Dualblade]

On top of everything Touch said, in Final Fantasy Paladins don't tend to carry very religous tones in general. The most well known one, Cecil, carries none at all and would for sure be closer being the "royal official" type given what his standing was before defecting from the Baron kingdom, not to mention him becoming the King of Baron by the end.

As I said before as well they Paladins tend to be very similar to the Knight job in Final Fantasy, which given that its called Knight in other versions still holds true here.

[TouchandFeel]

snip

In the Final Fantasy series, Knight and Paladin are pretty much synonymous and in many if not most cases, were the same thing just Knight being the predominant name in Japanese and Paladin being used in other translations.

However, no matter the name assigned to the class, the concept was always supposed to be the same, that of a good and virtuous protector. An idealized image of the "knight in shining armor" concept. Even their "holy" abilities and power weren't often tied directly anything directly to anything religious or things like that but was merely a differentiation to bolster the concept of them being the "virtuous and good" side of the moral dichotomy coin. The defender instead of the destroyer. The iconic abilities associated with the class such as Cover and healing spells exemplify that.

Even when you look at the best known example of a Paladin in the Final Fantasy series, Cecil, you can see that idea of Paladin being the defender in his transition from being a Dark Knight to a Paladin. Cecil's realization that he is being used as a tool of destruction sets off a chain of events in which he decides that he must leave behind his past of destruction and become a defender, culminating in his symbolic transition from Dark Knight to Paladin.

It is this idea of the stalwart and virtuous defender that was the conceptual linchpin of the FF14 Paladin job, and if iirc that has been stated on multiple occasions by Yoshi-P.

Now if we were talking 2.X and maybe even 3.X Paladin, yeah I could see and agree with the sentiment that the feel of "holy knight/holy defender" wasn't being represented quite enough with the job, but that was a fairly common sentiment that resulted in SE doubling down on the "holy" aspect for PLD resulting in what we have now.

With 4.X, I would say that PLD now has enough "holy" in it to give Robin's dialogue from the Adam West Batman a run for it's money.

[Dualblade]

Eh, only in skills. PLD job storyline got nothin in 4.0. Was really glad to see the GLD story return though!

[VCassara]

Just notice that nobody ever said PLD is bad or his actions are bad (except for shield oath and Flash). As I said at the first post, I think PLD is a little above the other 2 tanks.

While I do agree that PLD doesn't need to be a holy warrior after so many nice replies with history, Final Fantasy research and evidences, I don't like the "agressive" job it has become. To me, Dark Knight is the Paladin FF XIV lacks, that's why I've decided to switch my main class.

My biggest concern is that the job has no internal mechanic like DRK, DRG and many other jobs. It's simple and has no identity, because the only two things that are exclusive to the job, which are cover and intervention, are all about pressing one button each.

I think that if PLD gets behind WAR/DRK one day, people will notice how bad the job design is. Until then, lets enjoy the PLD/WAR train, yay...

[Dualblade]

This already happened in 3.X though. PLD was behind both WAR and DRK from the start, and while some more minor buffs helped it catch up to DRK it was too late to change majority opinion on the job. Both the 2.0 and 3.0 job storyline were also considered lackluster ESPECIALLY the 3.0 one. 4.0 really helped the job, even briefly being THE best of the three tanks and only getting minor nerfs compared to the somewhat bigger buffs the other two tanks got. PLD also became more "holy" if you want to put it that way in 4.0 compared to 2.0 and 3.0. The only thing really missing is the PLD storyline...but again it was a good GLD storyline atleast which is again a step up form 3.0.

As far as identity goes its THE mitigation tank. The change to allow them to block magic alone helped alot on this front, and PLDs have the most options to protect teammates from incoming damage.

[VCassara]

This already happened in 3.X...

So PLD is at its best right now huh, I hit lvl 70 with rabanastre launch so I didn't knew what the job was like before that.

I've generated some confusion so I came up with this example to show how I see the job:

Let's use DRG as an example.
Remove all jump actions.
Remove Fang and Claw.
Remove Wheeling Trust.
Remove Blood of the Dragon
Now give cover and intervention to it.
Congratulations, you have built a FF XIV Paladin!

Can you see what I have done? I removed everything unique from the DRG and left its base class actions. It is empty with 2 additional buttons to push when needed. That is basically what Paladin is right now.
Some people may like it because it is simple, but I don't. All classes have something that makes them fun to play, I just hope to see PLD with something similar so I can enjoy it once again.

*Note that I said SIMPLE, not easy.

[Dualblade]

I believe whatever you want for PLD is simply not something you will ever get. Nor do I think anything I will say will make any sort of change in that mindset.

I'm out.

[VCassara]

I believe whatever you want for PLD is simply not something you will ever get. Nor do I think anything I will say will make any sort of change in that mindset.

I'm out.

I agree with everything you said. Not until next expansion. We will see.

[Reynhart]

Can you see what I have done? I removed everything unique from the DRG and left its base class actions. It is empty with 2 additional buttons to push when needed. That is basically what Paladin is right now.

Sorry, but what you did is just prove that you don't know how to use a Paladin.
Because your "built" PLD doesn't have Sheltron to have instant mitigation whenever it wants, nor Divine Veil and Passage of Arms to protect the party from big hits, nor Clemency to heal others, nor FoF, Requiescat and Holy Spirit to maintain its Physical/Magical rotation, nor Shield Bash to have a GCD stun, nor Hallowed Ground to cheese lots of mechanics...and, on top of that, he doesn't have a shield for the best passive mitigation.

[Cybylt]

The Paladin/Knight identity through FF series begins with Cover, and XIV's iteration expanded on this greatly with it being the most well versed tank in group mitigations. It might be more understandable if you stated what you think a Knight/Paladin's identity should be based around in your eyes because while you've claimed a lack of identity you never really put forward attributes you think that it should have.