Paladin doesn't need an AoE damage weapon skill, though an increase to war drum hate would be nice. If you were to fix block rates and the outmaneuver trait return for MP to be useful, paladin could "tank" multiple monsters through others by using heals more often and cover, since the presence of multiple monsters usually means they won't be hitting for numbers that are spectacularly lethal to others, and those two abilities (Succor and Cover), in addition to rampart, and I guess flash blind and shield bash stun, are fine for a paladin's supporting CC in crowd fights because they generally have their numbers reduced fairly quickly.

While paladin does need a lot more defense and block rate and block power, just because, you shouldn't also give him the defacto-perma hate on everything through an easily spammed weapon skill and hate stealing tools like Warrior has gotten. Paladin doesn't need to always have hate on trash or crowds because he has the tools to help others in harm's way, and the tools will become better once you fix the paladin's primary problem, mitigation through blocking and MP recovery from outmaneuver, though if they want to make cover a faster cooldown that's fine too. Warrior doesn't have these tools, and he can't help others outside of Collusion.

In general though, it should just have higher defense and take less damage than others, period. 10 VIT from the jobstone isn't anything at all, and the AF is actually worse than crafted items in DEF values. The boots are also terribly statted and don't enhance anything, could probably raise that block rate up to +10 or 12. Maybe bring back damage cuts on Gallant Surcoat, either a flat -5%, or something like how the Creed Cuirass +1 and 2 did in XI, where the damage taken reduction scales up as you generate more and more enmity on a target, to a cap of around 10%. This would help with bosses more heavily than most trash monsters (due to their speedy deaths and lower enmity figures, or in the case of a flat percentage, lower damage values) which is where I think paladin needs the most help.

A 60 second recast on Spirits Within would be cool too.

Any testing or answers on what "Enhances Cover" does on Gallant?