Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
I don't see why Paladins can't follow paths other than the sword-and-holy-board defender.
I would have agreed to this--if we had no armoury system and instead did advanced class progression for each job. You can then justify PLD having a tank skill set and DPS skill set. That ship already sailed, though.

Any balancing tension from patch to patch comes first from the rigidity given to the jobs by their original development, even if player biases may ingrain these distinctions later. In either case, this "take it or leave it" mentality is not ideal (this job will work for this and never for that, so just level a Warrior, BLM, and MNK already).
The mentality is there because people can change jobs, which is the easy way out without dealing with the problem. It's one of the downsides of open choice.