The elite of the Sultansworn bend the knee to the sultanate of Ul’dah, swearing a solemn oath to serve the nation as its sword and shield. Clad in brilliant silver armor and called paladins, these men and women were once the pride of the nation, held in high esteem by nobles and smallfolk alike.
But their glory days are no more, for as the sultanate’s power waned, so too did the prestige of the paladin. They are now but a shadow of their former selves, and the sultana must needs turn to sellswords for protection.
In these troubled times, command of the Sultansworn has fallen to a young paladin named Jenlyns. Desperate to restore their honor, he has resorted to recruiting outsiders and training them in the legendary battle arts of the paladin, once a closely guarded secret.
Patch 1.21 saw the introduction of jobs to FFXIV, which allows you to become one of the traditional jobs from the FF series after completing a quest.
A Gladiator can become a Paladin by equipping the Soul of the Paladin item after completing the first quest. The details for this quest are below.
| Quest | NPC | Location | Conditions |
| Paladin’s Pledge | Lulutsu | Ul’dah Merchant Strip, Gladiators’ Guild | GLA 30 |
For each quest you complete, you will be rewarded with a new ability, while the latter quests will also reward you with artifact (AF) armour that is shown in the screenshot above.
Introduction to Paladin
Paladin is a tank job which uses defensive tactics to hold enmity. It is still capable of dealing decent damage however this should not be your main priority – you should always focus on defense before offense.
Paladin Attributes
As a Paladin your main stat is Vitality (VIT) as this increases your HP and allows you to survive big attacks from bosses. You should be focusing on equipment with this stat. It is also worth looking at equipment with Strength (STR) to increase your damage and the percentage of damage mitigated by block and parry as this will be useful in boss fights.
For secondary stats you should be focusing on the likes of Direct Hit Rate, Determination, Critical Hit Rate and Skill Speed in addition to simply boosting VIT. However you’ll find Skill Speed is generally not worth it.
Skill Speed and Critical Hit Rate are self-explanatory in what they do. For the other two, Determination is used to boost the damage dealt by all attacks and the amount of HP recovered when healed while Direct Hit Rate is Stormblood’s replacement for Accuracy. Instead of a simple hit or miss effect that Accuracy could give, having a low Direct Hit Rate for a fight will reduce damage dealt so it is important to improve this stat.