Where to start in End-Game content? (Paladin)

[juniglee]

A good starting point would be Ifrit Hard Mode. This allows you to get the second best main hand weapon in the game behind Curtana. As you farm for it, you gain Philos and Mythos too.

Run some WP from time to time to alleviate the monotony of it. You do need Darklight to tackle the harder content eventually. Ultimately, decide the pace of how you want to play. By the end of your farming, you should have a full Darklight gear at minimum, and maybe a Relic weapon.

[Yunnie]

A good starting point would be Ifrit Hard Mode. This allows you to get the second best main hand weapon in the game behind Curtana.

I personally would NOT waist time farming for ifrit sword. The difference between ifrit weapon and GC weapon is bearly noticable (considering you have decent gear). What's more important is getting your defense and vit up ASAP. After doing daily roulette, the only dungeon you should farm is Crystal Towers. Get your darklight and warrior of light armor. Then tech up straight to Garuda as an off tank. The difference between GC weapon and Garuda weapon is huge!

[JonBigwood]

Hi, at first I would do the main story DR, lot of easy philosophy tomes. Also hard DR, or if you don't feel too confident, easy DR until you do. Best not unlock Pharos S at first.
Start the relic quest soon. Do the quest at the same time, acummulating tomes and buying gear. You'll be geared enough when you arrive to Titan.
Unlock CT as soon as you can, it gives many tomes, is easy to do and has good drops. You maybe can skip main story and easy DR then. Depending on the drops, decide the buys and vice versa. You probably might save some DL gear buys. There are HQ gear in the market that may be not expensive and useful (HQ ilvl 55 ring and shield.)
Dailies and quest will take enough time a day. I don't think you need to farm Ifrit and Garuda HM for the weapon as a tank, since once you beat Titan you'll have the relic and you'll have the Company ilvl 55 one to start with. (Be 2nd Lieut ASAP)
King Moogle drops a good weapon if you get tired of trying Titan. But for a tank I think Titan HM is probably easier to play if you have enough gear and HP.

[Maelwys]

Honestly? I've got more Phil Tomes now than I'll ever know what to do with from running CT.

My recommendation would be to farm the low ilevel dungeons (WP/AK) and Dailies and grab a primal weapon from Ifrit or Garuda, then once you have some i55 armor drops and a little bit of Darklight, run CT.

The minimum ilevel for CT is 50, which isn't hard to get. In order to be a decent tank it doesn't take very much in there, as long as you're not planning to "main tank" any of the bosses you can get by with quite low ilevel gear. As long as you're comfortable doing HM Ifrit you're probably good for a Crystal Tower "Off Tank". You'll get one piece of i80 armor per week and plenty of Myth and Phil (my recommendation would be to grab the Body or Head from CT, buy the Darklight legs with Phil, and at least the Hero's Ring of Fending from Myth). By all means if you manage to get Titan HM cleared, grab your relic weapon first... but a decent Primal one is probably perfectly fine.

[bob13bob]

Dont' bother farming the primals. Just do each one once on your way to relic weapon. they really are not farm efficient. my link earlier lays out a process.

[Kelberos]

Once you get a couple of DL to hit iLVL50 - just join a static or guild and ask if you can OT CT. As an OT theres nothing that you cant handle. (i think)

I personally would go for the Relic Weapon first as you can obtain armor/acc via Philo, Myth, Ultima (eventually) and CT.

[Kyana]

Should I start farming Castrum for Phils and get full Darklight?
Should I start working on getting my Relics?
What set of accesories should I start with? Darklights or dungeon drops?
Allagan or iLv90 sets? What should I aim for?

You can start your relic quest and do the first steps but it would be wise to upgrade a bit before starting with Garuda and Titan.

What I would do:

Run dungeons for tomestones AND gear upgrades.
Run duty roulette for more tomestones if you want. You can limit the selected dungeons by not unlocking them.
Once you have gathered more party experience, watch a video or read a guide about the hard mode primals. It helps if you roughly know how the fight works when you attempt it for the first time. The rest is practice.
Since you are tank, your damage is not THAT important, but it would be good if you at least had Ifrit or Garuda weapon for the fight against Titan.

You can also buy or craft ilvl70 gear and meld materia in it if you want. (HQ and with materia it's better than DL)
And you should run Crystal Tower for more tomestones and ilvl80 gear, which is quite good btw.

For Coil, a good start is having relic and ~ilvl75.
By the time you can start doing Coil you will probably have some tomestones of mythology which you can spend on a few pieces of ilvl90 gear.

Allagan or myth gear doesn't make a big difference.
Don't wait for Allagan drops if you have tomestones of mythology to spend.
Get the mythology items for the slots which drop in Coil T4-5 first, because it will be some time till you get these drops.

[Asteldian]

My pally is 49 but I am lucky in that the wife was away for the holidays so I fate farmed my war to 50 then did low lvvl roulette for tomes (very inefficient but as I was not doing any real content while the wife was away I had nothing better to do)
As a result I have belt and hands dl, enough tomes to buy the legs and I crafted the chest (only costs about 45k to make 2* gear) in addition I have made two gryphonskin rings which I believe many meld with vit and parry which leaves it only 2 vit short and I believe the str and dex makes up for parry shortcomings.
As a result, when I reach 50 I will already be fully dl'd or equivelant so ready to progress story and go for relic.

If you have the gil, making or buying 2* gear can get you ready for all the content pretty darn quick. If you don't, then the suggestions above from others is definitely a good way forward