Make defending a success.
In my longest running 5e campaign, the permanent characters have become quite idiosyncratic. This is in part because our party spent the vast majority of their time bouncing off of and interacting with each other, and at least as much because our DM de-emphasized the rules in favor of clever roleplay. This resulted, for example, in my gnome warlock falling in love with (and playing meat shield for) the dark elf paladin.
I mention this because, at least initially, the player of the paladin struggled to find a way to make her PC stand out. She had never played a paladin before (she favors rogues) and couldn't figure out what to do in a fight beyond stand in the fray and swing, basically playing as a slightly shiny sword-and-board.
Her solution was to embrace her inner tank. Her character, long an enemy of bad guys with bows, started collecting each and every arrowhead that hit her. When she had enough, she made a necklace of the arrowheads, a symbol of defiance that dared others to shoot her- she would only add to her collection.
She began tracking the number of hits she took in a fight, marking a running total on her plate mail until she got a magical set that would do it for her. Again, this told her enemies that their best efforts to stop her would amount to nothing more than an extra tally.
She got so into this aspect of her character (she borrowed this quote from Planescape as her personal motto: "Endure. In enduring, grow strong.") that she occasionally had to be reminded that she was a paladin and could cast spells too.
Flash and spectacle in your abilities is great, but your character can be equally great by taking the brunt of the flash and spectacle with a grim chuckle and a stout shield.