Paladin get's skills WAY too late.

[Thanad]

Cover is a situational skill but that doesn't make it bad. The idea that skills are only valuable if they are not scenario-specific reinforces FF's overly scripted design philosophy. No thanks to that. Randomness (which we have far too little of in this game) is often the factor that spices things up but that also means that not every fight will feature every scenario. And some scenario will happen more frequently than others.

Situational skills allow for at least a little bit of job identity and gameplay moments that break out of the mold of FF's perfectly choreographed fights. If a fight goes well there are many skills that will never be used. There might be no res, no provoke, no shirk, no stun, no spell interruption, no invuln. Sometimes you don't even need big heals. See the issue of healers pressing 1 for the majority of an encounter.
Unfortunately that's the nature of FF's current battle design.

That doesn't invalidate the existence of skills that can be used in situations when a fight doesn't pan out according to its script, like when players make (repeated) mistakes.
Those occasional moments where you get to press your "oh sh*t" button make the 99 sleep-inducing runs where nothing happens more bearable.
I don't think the gameplay experience will really be improved if they cull the last traces of unique job flavour even further.

I'd much rather have have them create content that makes using cover (and healing lol) more meaningful again.


Also, that's your anecdotal statistics. Personally I both use cover and see cover used frequently enough. So whose anecdote is right?

Clemency is always useful, all the time. You must be running not that many dungeons if you don't need it or are blessed with competent healers. In later case i envy you. I have to spam Clemency regularly in dungeons.

[Tizzy_Tormentor]

Clemency is always useful, all the time. You must be running not that many dungeons if you don't need it or are blessed with competent healers. In later case i envy you. I have to spam Clemency regularly in dungeons.

I play Paladin a lot, with and without good healers, I make it a point to use Clemency as little as possible because I trust the healer to keep me alive, if that fails, I'll improvise, but I have never and probably will never spam Clemency unless the fight has gone properly tits up (like healers dropping and needing to keep myself and others alive) but if the healer is still standing, I'll trust them to do their job. I see Paladin's use Clemency when they are nowhere close to being in danger of dying, so I doubt you 'have' to spam it to stay alive, even in big pulls, its very rare I feel its a necessity.