ARR was better

[Sigiria]

just made sense lore-wise that to be a Paladin a Gladiator would need to learn White Magic

I mean, it might have made sense if paladin had any healing spell at the time, or any spell at all...

[Sacae]

I mean, it might have made sense if paladin had any healing spell at the time, or any spell at all...

They could use Cure 1, Protect, and Stoneskin 1.

The first was useless, Protect made prepulls a few seconds faster, since the PLD could Protect while the healer used Stoneskin II.

Inbound Stoneskin I to be fairly useful on PLD in ARR and HW, though. An on demand shield was pretty nice in some niche situations. The one that immediately comes to mind is the black pegasus in Sohr Kai. That thing actually hit pretty hard at launch, amd you had just enough time to get a stoneskin up after it became untargetable for its charge attack.