@Devs: PLD/GLD and poor AoE enmity management. Intentional design choice?

[Ronik]

It's no secret that WAR is strictly superior to PLD for AoE threat management. Steel Cyclone/Overpower/Vengeance/Whirlwind are significantly better AoE threat tools than Paladin's War Drum/AoE Flash. One only needs to take a PLD into a stronghold to see this discrepancy in action. My question is, why is this the case? Is it an intentional design decision that PLD is a single-target tank only?

If we are meant to be the premier, specialized "Tank" of FFXIV, why is that we are so woefully inadequate in multi-mob situations? I can understand that you want WAR to have it's niche in AoE damage/AoE crowd control, but in effect this just makes Paladin a liability in Stronghold type situations. Since WAR can be an effective tank for BOTH AoE and Single Target, shouldn't Paladin as well?

I have prepared some reasonable solutions which I think address this problem. This may seem like wish-listing, but honestly I think this is a fundamental design issue with Paladins. Here are some changes that would go a long way in making PLD more universally useful:

» Give us Circle Slash back with a decent threat modifier and/or an Enmity/Accuracy combo bonus. We badly need an AoE weaponskill, and since this was already programmed/animated it would be a simple fix.

» Buff War Drum (Lower CD or increased Effect). As it stands, it simply offers too little enmity on too long of a CD. A single War Drum will almost never pull hate back off a WHM who was simply doing his job healing you, nevermind a DD who pressed an aoe button (or, god forbid, a BLM).

» Add a passive trait that has a chance to reduce the cooldown on [War Drum] or [Flash] whenever we successful block an attack. This would create some interesting options for the player: we could pop Divine Veil/Outmaneuver either for mitigation or to spam War Drums.

» Add a passive trait which reflects or inflicts some amount of holy damage whenever we block. This turns Divine Veil/Outmaneuver into potential AoE threat tools, and fits with the overall theme of Paladins.

» Make Phalanx AoE. Simple and effective. It could be argued that Phalanx is our version of Overpower, yet Phalanx does not have any special properties whatsoever. At the very least, shouldn't this be a high threat move?

Again, these are just suggestions, and there are countless ways to give Paladins improved AoE threat tools. Of course, it may be the developer intention that Paladins specialize in single-target tanking, but I find that notion to be problematic given the versatility and damage output of Warriors in comparison. If Paladin's have no AoE damage output whatsoever, can we at least have AoE threat so that we aren't forced to go Warrior in those situations?

Thanks for reading.