Concerns about " Getting rid of unused and ineffective actions"

[Duelle]

My entire mentality when playing PLD is different to playing WAR. For WAR, my primary objective is to beat on the boss, however as a PLD, I am very spatially aware, dealing less damage on the boss, but keeping an eye on other party members, being aware of when healers struggle, and do what I can to assist with the toolkit that I have, which is how PLD should be, and I don't want to be turned into a WAR that has smaller hits but bigger shields.

You're looking in the wrong places for uniqueness. What makes PLD different from WAR is that a PLD can mitigate things with the press of a button, and the gameplay revolves around knowing when to press buttons to take less damage. The simplicity of our combos means that yes, it's a lot easier to be aware of the environment and pay attention to other things (which is why I roll my eyes whenever people complain about PLD combos).

WAR, on the other hand, is designed to mitigate things through actions. Hence why they have Storm's Path and Inner Beast. The self heals arguably fall into this category as well. They also have to generate a resource to spend on said mitigation (Wrath), whereas PLD does not.

The only way PLD would turn into a WAR would be by nerfing or removing defensive cooldowns and giving PLD a clone of Wrath stacks. Which is not likely to happen.