[Lunaryn]

I had better luck in the 30s with crossbow+holy bolts on WAR than I did with shuriken on NIN. It was kinda disappointing, particularly as I went to a lot of trouble to cap Throwing ahead of time. YMMV, but it's certainly worth the attempt. I'd say at the least get a couple of Beetle Rings +1 for swap-in. Marksman's Ring is also nice, and there are stronger equivalents to the Beetle Ring at higher levels.

As for expense, that hasn't been too much of an issue for me primarily for two reasons:

1) My main character has been leveling Alchemy throughout most of my time in-game. Bolt heads are a common, easy skill synth, especially for a Bastoker who also smiths, and tends to get the copper and tin for making bronze quite often while going after iron/darksteel in Zeruhn. Since bolt heads now stack to 99, they make for a good option for doing a number of synths in a row without dumping results.

2) My alt has Woodworking. Not very high, but high enough to make bolts easily, and to HQ Ash Lumber a noticeable amount of the time. My alt also is San d'Orian, and tends to maintain easy access to Carpenter's Landing.

3) I'm a packrat, I don't tend to throw out anything I think I might have a future use for. Bolt heads are very hard to sell now that they stack to 99, so I just hang onto them. Koren has over a stack of heads for just about every bolt type I use except Bloody (not high enough in Alchemy for that yet), and some I have over two stacks of... When I run short on bolts, I don't make a trip to the AH, I make a trip to the Woodworking Guild in Carpenter's Landing and make myself 6-10 stacks of bolts. So far, even leveling RNG to 35 hasn't significantly dented my supply of bolt heads.

[Pteryx]

Originally Posted by Armando

A tank's job is to allow a party to get as much EXP as possible by doing three things:
1) Keep the mob focused on him
2) Take as little damage as possible while doing #1
3) Do as much damage as accomplishing #1 and #2 will allow.

It's worth mentioning that for a PLD, part of doing #1 can involve making sure you take some damage, but not too much, in order to self-cure for hate. Fortunately -- or unfortunately -- Defense and VIT eventually have diminishing returns, so it's nearly impossible to take no damage at all when blood tanking.

Concerning Paladin subjobs, yes, Warrior is the gold standard. You can get through most of your career with just that. Other subjobs for Paladin worthy of note are Dancer (helps from level 40 on, most useful when there's no actual Dancer in the party; has a weaker and more conditional Provoke-alike called Animated Flourish, and provides MP-free means of self-healing and, from 50 on, a way to situationally get your MP back), Ninja (popular for damage-dealing purposes at 70+, especially 74 and 75, and can make a decent tank even with nothing Provoke-like at all if you know what you're doing), and Red Mage (a very capable situational tank if you know the hate generation tricks; requires a heavy dose of MP regen, but as Armando said can be amazingly enduring from the late 60s on). -- Pteryx