ShiKage's Big Bang Paladin Build

Ground Smash is simply a throw away skill for left over points. It's usefulness will be more or less useless and short lived.

No, that's definitely Slash Blast. It's completely replaced by Ground Smash as soon as you can (lv.35-41) and used until level 7x.

Believe me, once you try Ground Smash you'll never want to use Slash Blast again. It's decent on paper, absolutely useless in practice.

Anyone who's played a Dawn Warrior in GMS will be familiar with Soul Blade, which in 2nd job completely replaces Slash Blast. It's the same issue - you have a short ranged attack that hits more mobs for less damage, or a long ranged attack that hits fewer mobs for more damage - the longer range almost always comes out on top.