PLD is just boring

[Bravely_Default]

It would be a different mechanic as Dark knight can turn on Darkside while in grit and the warrior has a 10s cooldown in his switches. The paladin is supposed to be the sword AND shield of the people not the sword or shield. if we could swap stances on the fly it would give us more resource management options instead of just being a complete TP drainer and it would make fights much more then just FB->SB->RA spamming in between damage mitigation and the other OGCD skills. it would also be much easier to implement instead of having to tweak the whole tool kit and watch for what would need to be balanced afterwards in every skill.

[Disc]

Eh, I'm just not keen on being able to stance dance as freely as DRK and WAR. I like that the tanks stances are different, I think PLD just needs a little extra adjustment around our stances to differentiate them a bit in a way that you can feel rather than math (and also a bit of damage boost in Shield wouldn't go amiss .)

DRK incurs just as much of a penalty when trying to stance dance. Applying Grit takes one GCD & enough MP for one Dark Arts use. You run an extremely high risk of losing DPS on DRK if you pull Grit back within 30 seconds, and that's before considering potential healer DPS lost. I'd be willing to bet 99% of DRK have no idea how many of which attacks need to get through to make up for it, most still think Blood Weapon grants an extra attack.

[Freyyy]

, maybe make Spirits Within do more damage the less health you have by default and Sword oath reverses it back to how it is now.

This wouldn't solve the current Spirits Within issue. It would even make it worse because while tanking you pretty much have to be topped off by healers most of the time, so waiting for you to be at a very dangerous health state just to use SW at max potency would be very reckless and a DPS loss anyway since you're delaying the CD, hoping that your healers will not top you off too fast. They should honestly just get rid of this weird shit. SW should do 300 potency everytime.

[VargasVermillion]

What do you mean defense? Currently any attack in this game can be survived by all 3 tanks, making this supposed 'defensive' capability PLD has moot. What they should of done was just focus on making a sword and shield tank fun, focus on the fun first than balance difficulty but they were so adamant about making an easier tank that it definitely shows.

Even worse is that PLD is supposed to have higher support capabilities yet all this support i can see will only be used on 1 or 2 fights that literally need to consider PLDs specific abilities to be useful prime example was how specific attacks on shiva had a high crit chance just to make awareness relevant and that wasn't even a PLD exclusive ability.

Divine veil and clemency sound awesome on paper but one is too situational again and the other would only be used if your healers are making mistakes which shouldn't happen in the first place or solo content. PLD is the worst designed class in the game imo.

[Jpec07]

I [...] don't see how the job is a mess or terrible, simple sure, boring maybe. But those are like the opposite of mess & terrible.

It's functional right now, barely, but I feel like its toolkit problems are a result of a lack of identity and vision on the part of the developers. They don't know what they want Paladins to be, and so as a result, we wind up with an excessively generic tank (I've been cooking an essay on this for two months now--I'll get around to posting it sometime before Christmas). The job itself isn't awful--again, it functions--but I think SE needs to figure out what a Paladin/Knight is supposed to be sooner than later, or else anyone who's chosen that as their job will suffer.

[Disc]

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They have a very obvious vision for what PLD is meant to be, Yoshi-P has even stated it's meant to be the defensive tank. The problem is that current raids have no use for a tank without an offensive focus to pass some of the checks put into place to slow the world firsts. SE shot themselves in the foot with Alexander.

[Bravely_Default]

The problem with this is that the paladin is as good as a PHYSICAL defence tank as the dark knight is a MAGIC defense tank. the dark knight has greater DPS options while MT to boot.

[VargasVermillion]

They have a very obvious vision for what PLD is meant to be, Yoshi-P has even stated it's meant to be the defensive tank. The problem is that current raids have no use for a tank without an offensive focus to pass some of the checks put into place to slow the world firsts. SE shot themselves in the foot with Alexander.

You also can't have a tank that can survive more things than the other tanks or it would cause unbalance yet again. You can have one that does more damage but not defense as that is the most important part of a tank is weather or not they'll survive the next hit, putting more support bonuses on PLD would help but the best ones are already given to other classes except for hallowed ground.

[Jpec07]

Yoshi-P has even stated it's meant to be the defensive tank.

That's like saying water is supposed to be the wet drink. Sure, water may be the wettest drink, but you're going to want something more when you're dining. There are flavors to consider, textures, and other factors that make other beverages appealing. This doesn't make water any less desirable, but when paired with pasta primavera, you're likely going to want some white wine instead (especially when wine is also a drink that has water in it, and so therefore also wet by its definition).

Tanks are defensive by their very nature, so saying Paladins are supposed to be "the defensive tank" doesn't really stand to scrutiny. It's redundant, and not really distinct at all. There are things about Paladins that can be made appealing, but right now it doesn't really pair well with anything.

And I think a lot of people have a problem here: we want the job to be interesting and unique, and we come in with a love for the idea of a tank with a shield, but then we find out that SE slapped that shield onto the most generic job in the game, and we are disappointed.

Mayhaps PLD should stay as it is, and SE should develop a Javelinier/Spartan job (as just one possible idea) as a more involved "tank with a shield."

[Archaell]

Maybe we could use the overpowered warrior offtanks to fix our dps/enmity problems.

Change cover to: Take 50% physical + 50% magical damage intended for other party member, take 50% of their enmity and increase their damage by 50%.

When you cover somebody - damage type should not matter, they should have more room to attack and the monster should get pissed. ^^

tl;dr I know it is overpowered. Just a thought tho.