I posted my thoughts about this in the gladiator section:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ll=1#post15660

1. They need to get rid of the Sentinel class and just incorporate all of its skills into the gladiator class.

2. Create new mage-specific shield skills and incorporate those into the THM and CON classes
2b. Create mage specific 2-hand staff only skills and incorporate those into the THM and CON classes

3. Create weapons and shield sheathing/unsheating animations while running so my char doesn't stop in her tracks all the time.

4. Lower the stamina cost on Guard, and slightly increase its base duration, and hasten the animation.

5. Make more variety in the sheilds so that the player has a choice of optimizing for block, wield, or def, and make all the choices have good reasons for someone wanting to optimize that way.

6. Enable block animations for shield skills

7. When a successful block (or parry or evade, for that matter), show it in the chat log in bold, bright, capital letters.