Yes, and I acknowledged this.
I think you misunderstood. I acknowledged that TWF was better in some situations than PAM. You're the one who brought up TWF and paladins, I was just pointing out that in many cases PAM was better for paladins than TWF. The primary reason to go TWF over PAM on a paladin are either because you're a DEX paladin, or because you simply can't spare a feat for PAM.But I never was saying TWF was better or worse than PAM. I said that TWF as a Rogue ir Paladin was a good to great choice on its own.
You can keep trying to shift the goal posts and I almost fell for it... But two weapon fighting stands on its own merits.
The person I was responding to was specifically contrasting using TWF without advantage (presumably with an ally next to their target) against making one attack with advantage. What I was pointing out was that generating advantage would in most cases still use your bonus action, so you're actually better off with TWF where you have the possibility of hitting twice. A single attack with advantage using BB might be better, but that requires you to get the cantrip, and you might not always be able to generate advantage, and yes, it requires you to be in melee. Plus, in the cases where you can generate advantage without using your bonus action, TWF is still better.The easiest way to get off sneak attack is to have an ally next to the enemy (well, a creature that isn't friendly with the target). You don't have to have advantage for sneak attack.
We'll see.
DEX builds, characters without polearm or shield proficiency, and those who don't have a feat to spare. I covered all that.PAM may be better for some builds, sure, but not all builds.
Rogues are also a special case, since they can't make Sneak Attacks with any of the weapons that qualify for Polearm Mastery.
I assume you're talking about range here. This is a fair point, I usually think of TWF as melee, but thrown weapons can give you some extra range.PAM does not do anything about getting better when 5 or 10 feet reach won't cut it.
As far as I know, though, paladins can't smite with thrown weapons. (I'd be in favor of houseruling that they could.)
This is true for any sword-n-board paladin build. This isn't an issue specific to PAM.PAM with shield also means, except for Paladin using only smite spells (or managing to engrave a focus on shield), Warcaster becomes mandatory just to be able to cast.
Also, paladins can start with a holy symbol engraved on their shield at 1st level. The real problem is that you can't cast spells with somatic but not material components. Warcaster, as far as I'm aware, is the only way around this limitation.
There are some decent staves in the DMG, and any weapon can be a +3 weapon (which, by the way, won't require attunement, letting you attune an additional magic item). If this is really a problem, talk to your DM about homebrewing a magic polearm for your character. Heck, take a magic weapon that already exists and apply it to a polearm instead.PAM needs a category of weapons that is, sadly or not, slightly to significantly, depending on campaign, under-represented in magic weapons.
I'm not knocking TWF, it's a nice, featless way to get a bonus action attack. The only point I was wanting to make was that, for paladins specifically, PAM was a better option, if you could spare the feat for it. If you can't, TWF is great. And for rogues, TWF is great.