Economy Collapse?

Many people believe all the players unable to get to X rating in S4 will simply stop playing. I highly doubt this will be the case. Many arguments are :

"I'm in honor blues and greens and I get stomped by full S3 people they aren't skilled they just started earlier. How am I supposed to compete against them if I get LESS points for fighting them?"
True, you probably aren't much of a challenge in your current gear situation, but you will eventually catch up to them through the purchase of non rating restricted S3 pieces. Just like you don't move from SSC to BT instantly, you do have to acquire intermediary pieces just like all those S3 teams did through S2/etc. That is, unless you are carried by your teammates(also applies to raids). If you must, consider full S3 gear an "attunement" to S4 loot. Not completely true, but for the purposes of the people filing this complaint, valid.

"Theres no reason to play S4 if I can't buy a majority of the S4 rewards"
First of all, two of the pieces do not even require ratings, second you can still purchase most of S3. You can also begin saving for the next iteration of arena in WoTLK if you don't think blizzard will reset arena points. Personally I'm not sure about that, but they did not reset honor for TBC so we'll see.

"All the sub 1500 teams will stop playing and there wont be 2xxx teams because there are no bottom level points being fed into the system."
Not true, people will play 10 games just to get their leftover pieces, offspec S3 pieces, or just out of boredom. Note that with gold being so easy, more and more teams will be feeding rating into the system, as there isnt much reason to continue playing a sub 1400 team each week.

"I'm quitting way to put PR onto everything in the game GG Blizz owning casuals."
Can I have your stuff? Seriously S3 gear isnt even that bad. Yes S4 will be marginally better but WoTLK gear reset is coming soon anyway. For leveling/grinding/dailies, you may kill 3-5% slower than a S4 geared player, but adding travel time to and from quest areas, its really a marginal difference. It would be better to complain about someone getting lucky crits than to complain about the marginal gear difference from S3 to S4.

"My friends suck at WoW or play weird offspecs that aren't suitable for arenas so I can't achieve X rating."
Learn to play better. There aren't that many dysfunctional class comps in arenas, and its not even a problem past 1800ish. Now if you're a prot warrior/paladin in arenas, well a respec isn't that hard to do. Should you have to respec to arena? Well, frankly yes, you do it for raids anyway. Why is the arena any different? Besides, you owe it to your "terrible/offspec friends" to put your best foot forward with respect to arena success, and that does include speccing properly. Also if being on a different arena team is going to kill your friendships, get new friends. If you like to play with them, then feel free to team hop. Unless your "pro" team passes 1650, team hopping isnt particularly detrimental to you or your "pro" team. Even then your "pro" team's members will bring up the average queuing personal rating, so you can get as high as 1950 in a theoretical 3v3 without your team-hop PR of 1500 affecting the team. Of course you will get less points per week if your TR is beyond ~1650 depending on W/L but thats your choice.

As for spec, I've played ret and holy to over 2000 in every bracket and gotten gladiator in S1/S2 as holy in the most complained about brackets(2v2,3v3). Many will claim the class is gimped but 2000 is not that hard to do. It may require more skill than other classes, but that isn't something to complain about really. So for the spec problem for paladins, I'm just going to have to prescribe some over the counter L2P.

"Oh yeah, I've killed Illidan, where is my 310% mount?"
If you were in the raid of the first 0.5% Illidan kills before Sunwell was released, then I will concede you deserve a 310% mount. The rest of you rode on the backs of nerfs/ez lewt/guides. Illidan was the hardest content at the time, but to parallel the actual arena system, you have to be one of the select first people to accomplish the feat.

"You realize 5 people can currently do absolutely nothing and get epix through arenas while its not true in raids?"
Yes and you realize the top of the arena system are inherently better at raiding than a vast majority of raiders? Arena requires strict attention to environmental effects, positioning, cooldowns, abilities and counter abilities, damage that is not controlled by threat, and prediction of damage based on the situation at hand. Constant evaluation of those factors drives arena success. Raids only have watered down portions of these mechanics, making good arena players exceptional raiders. The opposite is almost never true. Also, S4 fixed this and most players are still crying up a storm, seriously just pick one.

"Okay you convinced me. I suck at WoW and will never get beyond 1550."
Good. Realize that as time goes on ratings will be easier and easier to get. You may be a 1520 team now but in a few months you'll be at 1600 or higher. Early in the season lots of bad/poorly geared players get knocked into the 1400s. They will move up past 1500 as ratings settle down and they start fighting equivalently bad/undergeared players. S4 gear WILL be availible to a majority of players. People under 1500 that fail@arena inherently boost their own rating the next week by purchasing another charter.

Situational awareness & watered down lemonade

Its surprising how many paladin tanks(and tanks in general) lack this basic ability. If a monster runs by you and spirits of redemption start appearing everywhere, can you really blame healers for your subsequent death? Too often this is what happens. Some tanks dont even have raid frames and complain about not getting healed when only five raid members are alive. This is just plain unacceptable. At the very least raid frames should be open to track debuffs and aggro gains on raid members.

In a recent trip to help out a black temple run, the paladin tank died shortly after 3 priests died to whirlwind from a loose add that ran straight past consecrate and was not picked up. The pull consisted of five monsters. I was boggling at this epic failure, as you don't even have to be looking behind you to see a mob sail clear past you into the healer crowd. Shortly after 3 healers die, the paladin tank in question says "wow i didn't take too much damage, this wipe as a healer problem." This is a common fallacy among most raid wipes.

How he should have approached the pull : SoR, AS to hit 3, JoR/Reseal on the fourth, and melee attacks on the fifth. Doing this ensures you have threat on each one. Too often paladin tanks focus all their abilities on the primary damage target when taunt can actually provide a threat increase and misdirects are availible.

Another failure I had the displeasure of witnessing was a paladin tank that did not know how to tank adds for Dragonhawk. He simply could not deal with having to tab to different monsters. All he understood was spamming consecrate and seal/judging. Not even a holy shield inbetween. Such a lack of complicating mechanics leads very terrible players to rise to higher levels of instance progression by virtue of their class, but actual player skill is incredibly low.

Just because paladins are easymode tanks doesnt mean you can faceroll your way through trash. One loose add can easily destroy your healers. Ranged taunt and JoR's 10 yard range provide more than enough reaction time to pick up loose adds. Its really sad to see the extent of player failure when playing such a watered down version of a role.

Retribution has this problem as well. Tunnel visioned retardins are extremely prevalent. Ret paladins do not have to manage that many globals, and have bof/bop+cleanse to support their group in pvp or instancing. Repent and HoJ are useful for the primary target as well as secondary targets as a temporary CC to alleviate healers with aggro, or for keeping enemy healers out of the fight. Another good example is paladins who mash a castsequence to CS/Judge/Reseal/(Consecrate). This leads to lost DPS if you mash it and judge in a global(making you unable to reseal) and melee swing in that time.

So to all paladin players - Please, please, take your job seriously even if it is easymode. Your failures only contribute to lolret lolprot (and lolholy but thats somewhat rare). The more you suck the less people will accept the class in non holy roles.

Invulnerablility vs Near Invulnerability, Mass Dispel

Straight to the point : A trend coming around with newer abilities intended to improve survivability is to grant partial resistance to damage instead of immunity, so that mass dispel cannot be used against it.

Shamanistic Rage
Pain Suppression
Focused Will
Natural Perfection
Barkskin

These abilities/effects were introduced post TBC and are engineered against mass dispel. Is PS+SR/FW/NP/BS invincibility? No, but its damn close, especially because you'll be healed up right after and realistically will not die. Being able to grant near invulnerability to OTHERS versus being able to make only yourself invincible seems like a flawed and outdated mechanic. Yes you are still vulnerable to interrupts/stuns/debuffs, but having a shorter cooldown and practically guaranteed duration makes up for a majority of the downsides. This is beyond that self immunities generally arent useful for saving teammates, a huge restriction in use. In many cases non immunity is BETTER than immunity, this should never even occur, and is only true due to mass dispel. This was originally envisioned to counter paladins, as 10.5 seconds of undisturbed action was considered OP. Note that these abilities in 1v1 are not inherently overpowered, but a combination of the two guarantees far more than Divine Shield can in most situations.

The counterclaim to mass dispel not being overpowered was it only MIGHT remove divine shield, it has a 1.5 sec casting time, and you can hammer of justice it.

None of these are true anymore, in fact, running to the priest to try to hammer of justice will result in a trinket->MD->fear, or a resist and a lol. Not to mention this is a complete waste of time better spent looking for LoS cover or healing.

Divine Shield should be updated to be in line with these changes. Mass Dispel should remove a portion of divine shield, but a lesser effect should remain. Either mass dispel makes the paladin immune to only the next X hits before fading, or it reduces their damage reduction to Y%. Why? Because in no case should a partial immunity be better than full immunity. Because paladin survivability is at an all time low, and other healing capable classes have been buffed to ridiculous levels in that regard. Because mass dispel no counter except twitch reflexes and a really good connection, and pre-conditions positioning to even consider countering. Because paladins currently have no reliable defensive measures or mitigation, while retaining a poor health pool. Because Divine Shield needs to be updated to TBC standards, instead of a second 5 minute trinket with forbearance.

Seal of Blood, again and again and again

CM's are an interesting lot. They're supposed to relay concerns, but don't tell you much about how they went about wording them.

A good example is seal of blood. This seal is balanced against command down to a few percents of damage, IF the users do not have any haste or extra attack abilities. Thus it is a "flavor" seal much like SoV(which typically does less than SoR unless used in unreliable conjunction). Now when a CM wrote regarding "Any plans to give seal of blood to alliance," he stated "None so far, not a concern." Did he present the overwhelming evidence of a 10-20% TOTAL dps difference between the seals at high levels of gear? I highly doubt it.

Devs of course are not entirely retarded, but its unlikely they remember how the mechanics of SoC were originally coded with regards to how the damage is applied. It doesnt work on instants and it was recently nerfed along with rogue ppm abilities to not scale with haste. I highly doubt any CM actually went to the trouble of laying down the REASONS that alliance want seal of blood, rather than presenting it as some sort of factional I WANT THIS whine. The math is there and it clearly shows that SoC is at a large disadvantage in fights where there is haste or windfury. Good thing death knight is coming soon.

Tanking Mechanics, Revisited

Protection Paladin tanking, notably Holy Shield, is flawed in design.

Protection Paladins require the monster to be MELEEING them to generate sufficient threat.
To generate sufficient sustained threat, they must take enough damage and continue to be melee'd.
Feral Druids and Protection Warriors must TAKE DAMAGE to generate sufficient threat.
to generate sufficient sustained threat, they must continue to take damage.

This basic concept is fine until you factor that Paladins have no way to pull casters to them barring LoS, and cannot interrupt spells to force caster mobs to begin meleeing them. Sure their spells will require damage to be healed and thus feed them mana, but a very significant portion of their threat is from actually blocking attacks. Warriors can interrupt spells or reflect them, and intervene away from melee monsters to either a caster or a healer. Feral druids can also temporarily avoid melee damage while cutting out a caster by Feral Charging. All tanks have a long cooldown stun.

The problem is compounded with the fact that paladin tanking is absolutely shut down by many more things than any other tank.

Silences, Mana Burns, Fears, Knockdowns, and spellcasters all affect paladins to a greater degree than other tanks, by virtue of either base mitigation values, or ability use. Very few fight mechanisms specifically target rage(RoS), but many target mana under the idealogy that actually 10k~ mana healers/dps will be getting hit by it. An oversight, perhaps, but a very large one.

As a more minor note, Holy Shield should most definetly be taken off GCD. Paladin cooldowns overlap in an irritating manner ( 8 sec, 8-10sec, 10sec ) and as an extremely important tank mechanic, I don't think holy shield should be a holy spell, nor take up a GCD. This is not outside the realm of possibility, as Warriors already have their block ability off GCD.

Why play a paladin? Or Why not.

Q : Why play a paladin?
A : Like a buffet, a paladin can give you a perspective of every role in WoW. However, like a buffet, the quality of your experience will pale in comparison to what other "more specialized" classes can do.

A paladin gets to do everything in the game. They can heal, tank, and dps. Some will tell you that because you have no "forms" you can do this all at once. Very much false. Attempting to perform a role that you are not specced for is futile, and druids(the only ones who really try to push this point) need to cry more.

As a paladin you get your watered down healer with two heals. Your itemization is awful, people will claim you are OP while arena numbers show otherwise, but at least your peers will accept you for who you are. That is, until you try other specs. The biggest downside of a holy paladin is you're never sure if your friends are loyal to you or just because of what you've specced. And maybe that healing as one is a two button chore.

As a paladin you can also be a watered down tank. You have terrible tanking mechanics, strange scaling with practically no 10 man gear to assist you(spell damage tank plate?). Everyone loves you because you can run their alts through farm content easily, but when push comes to shove they'll blame your class before they'll blame healers for MT deaths(you). This is okay, because you'll need a lot of badges to supplement your poorly itemized pieces as warrior gear doesn't really help your threat. Your badge gear has lolspellhit, even after the change of taunt to melee hit(warrior change that trickled off to paladins). The advantage of prot is it shows you who your true friends are, as you aren't holy and therefore don't implicitly make their game experience more fun through healing.

You can also be a watered down dps. You can mash a button to deal damage like any other class, but have no viable way to competitively DPS without a non-retarded shaman in group. Like many other hybrid dps'ers, you have no aggro dump. This will prove frustrating when trying to pug to get gear, but divine shield will save you from the horrors of awful pug tanks. That is, assuming a pug will even take you over a green geared 6k HP mage that isnt even 70. Also, every player will tell you that you rolled a healer and are foolish to want to dps. Those players will also typically be shadow priests, balance druids, feral druids, enhancement shamans, and elemental shamans. LOLRET lrn2reroll.

So, while a paladin CAN be one or two more things than other classes, he is at the bottom of the barrel for functionality in those roles.
1 Role Classes : Mage, Hunter, Warlock, Rogue - Top of their role, game philosophy and scaling makes these classes the highest DPS. Warranted, as they can only deal damage. All these classes have aggro dumps.
2 Role Classes : Shaman, Warrior, Priest - Utility based classes, can perform well in either role and are exceptional in both. Note that the warrior is the only 2 role tank class, and thus is the prime tank.
3 Role Classes : Druid, Paladin - Mostly frowned upon due to weak offspec performance, doomed to heal barring some gimmick fights(druids on Brutallus, Paladins on felmyst/hyjal trash).

It should be fairly obvious then, why druids and paladins are practically the worst in their roles. They "can" do more but have to respec to do so. Unsupported by gear specifically tailored to them, the 3 role classes quickly fall short of their 2 role counterparts. Is this fair? I dont think so. If I am doomed to have to respec every time I want to do something different(just like any 2 role hybrid), why should my performance suffer so greatly? In a raid environment I can still only be one role. I should be able to compete(with individual class flavor), against other 2 role classes.

Some would argue that this would be fixed if priests and shamans could tank. A flawed argument, as tank classes were from the getgo advertised as paladins,warriors, and druids. Even then, tanking is just a necessary spec to include just for PvE functionality. The entire concept of aggro makes little sense, Ragnaros should not be so retarded as to tunnel vision onto a tank instead of one shotting cloth with his ranged attack. If priests want to tank, by all means try. I suspect a shadow priest could manage to run at least a few heroics with an overgeared group with CC. Rogues, shamans, and moonkins already tank, its just a matter of exploiting the hit table and gearing appropriately.

In conclusion, if paladin spec viability is really to be gimped because we can "do more when spam respeccing," then a tree should be removed. Or two trees merged so that we can do poorly in two roles but perform them at the same time.

BEASTCOIL!!!!!111!1!1

Seriously.

Hunters may get instant cast fear beast which can apply to hunter pets, druids, AND shamans.

Meanwhile paladins get a fear with a cast time, unsupported by pushback resistance beyond conc aura, that has pitiful range and shares the holy tree.

This is balanced how? I'm not against hunter's getting beastcoil and support this buff against druids and shamans. (Hint, both classes gain mobility through animal forms). I'd just like to understand how our "warlock counter" is anything more than forcing an earlier spell lock. And how its range is pitiful. And how its got a duration with no pushback resistance. As a general rule, spells that have COOLDOWNS are very powerful and tend to be instant.

Lets look at a few instant offensive spells with no cooldowns :
Ice Lance
Corruption(typically)
All Curses
SW:P
Moonfire
Insect Swarm
Faerie Fire

Few of these do anything immediately, and are of practically no consequence if spammed.

Some offensive instants with cooldowns :
Death Coil
Fire Blast
Frost Nova
Psychic Scream
SWD
BEASTCOIL!!!!

Powerful, fairly overpowered if spammed. High mana cost to boot, typically.

Offensive cast time spells with no cooldown :
Polymorph
Cyclone
Mana Burn
Fear
Mind Control

Powerful crowd control moves. Devastating but only useful when not being attacked. Many tend to be supported by pushback resistance talents. Basically force interrupts to be used.

Now, some offensive spells with cooldowns and cast times.
Turn Evil.
Hammer of Wrath.
Soul Fire.
Mind Blast.

Worst of the worst. Not useless, but not on the level of other spells of its caliber. A skill with a cooldown AND a cast time is a failed concept. Dev's learned this with pyroblast. Soulfire is on a cooldown because of the potential abuse with seduce and soulfire. Mind Blast cooldown exists to prevent shadow priests from instagibbing people at long range. Spammable mind blast would be absolutely ridiculous combined with SWD. Its high damage is balanced against its high threat, so the cooldown seems more like a pvp consideration.

As we can see from the above examples, spells with only cooldowns allow for powerful abilities that must be used situationally and saved when necessary instead of used on a whim. Spells with cast times improve the class's functionality while not being focus fired, and give them the ability to adversely affect their enemies. Putting both restrictions on a spell, a cast time, and a cooldown, implies the spell is so powerful that it should not be useable while focused and is so strong in effect that it cannot be repeatedly cast.

I dont think the paladin spells fall into these categories.

For one, Hammer of Wrath costs an enormous amount of mana. It is also restricted as a 20% health or below move. It exposes the Paladin's holy tree(if you're fast). It rarely kills a 19% target unless they have terrible gear. If it had no cast time, it would still be fine. If it had no cooldown but a cast time, it would be fairly strong but easily blocked by interrupts/silence, crowd control, and healing on the target. It would likely have to be increased to 1 sec cast time. Note that it will still take on average 3 casts to kill a 19% player. This is a large sum of mana, and requires the paladin divert his attention from healing and possibly become school-locked. Requiring that hammer of wrath 1)finish casting, 2)have the target below 20%, 3) have enough mana to cast the spell and expend the mana doing so 4) not be on cooldown is a little too much for such a mediocre spell.

Turn Evil affects one class, and even then only their pet. It exposes the holy tree. Being able to use it instantly is only detrimental to warlocks, who have the benefit of being able to by themselves completely lock out a holy paladin from play. Its only use is to cast freely during the fear, and after the first spell lock, additional fears are relatively pointless. Examples:

No cooldown - The first TE could be spell locked. A recast on TE is insignificant, spell lock is still cooling down. A TE cast AS spell lock cools down can buy a few seconds, but the warlock knows when this can occur and can position to counter it. This is where some marginal drinking benefit could come into play. However, leaving combat and 4 sec drinking would make this fairly useless unless combined with say, a banish that did not resist somehow. A 2nd TE would last 5 seconds. With the drink change it is unlikely that the paladin would get much benefit from drinking if undisturbed by any other players. Spell lock is still useable on any cast and the warlock loses very little in combat options.

No cast time - A viable crowd control move against one class for ten seconds. TU can still be dispelled, and warlocks are a class that arguably has the most control against a paladin anyway. However the warlock can be assured of being able to spell lock the paladin after these 10 seconds are up.

See? Improving Turn Evil would not make paladins overpowered. In fact, it only put them in line with other abilities, but even then against only one class, and beyond that, just their pet.

Uncrushability

This is probably the most annoying mechanic about paladin tanking. Low end paladin tanks have awful mitigation(55-58%) while druids can easily approach 70% from armor. This is in addition to paladins having to gem avoidance or gear for shield block rating to reach uncrushability. Even with nearly full badge/ZA gear my tank is still edging on crushability. If I decided to use an arena shield I would fall into crushability. Should this really even occur? I have SBR on my shoulders,ring,and gloves, and shield. I should not have to sacrifice so many itemization points just to become uncrushable. I already hybridize my gemming to obtain socket bonuses while including avoidance, but I'd much rather just be gemming stamina. Not only are Stars of Elune dirt cheap right now, they're the most effective gems when your healers are competent/geared.

Redoubt should really add 5% passive block, even 10% would not be overpowered. Paladin gearing is far too complicated for being a watered down warrior tank. If we are to be "specialized" as AoE tanks but "capable" of raid tanking, then additional passive block does not seem out of the question. Being presented with a clear upgrade but being unable to use it because of becoming crushable is absolutely ridiculous. A gem option to add SBR would be fine too, but would just be smothering the problem instead of fixing it.

Some people argue that crushing blows are not the end of the world and that uncrushability doesn't matter until post/late kara. While this can be true, crushing blows still :
1)Increase the overall damage you take, costing extra healer mana.
2)Drastically improve monster capacity to RNG gib you. Back to back crushings can drop you faster than progression geared healers can heal you for.

Tank gearing is about smoothing incoming damage and being able to sustain as much damage as you can before dying. Dodge, parry, block, and miss change serve to reduce mana consumption by healers.

As a paladin, you have the lowest baseline mitigation (6%) against physical damage, which comprises most of the damage a tank expects to take. You also have poor hitpoints until your gear starts to reach T5-ish level. These two factors make crushes extremely dangerous for paladins, moreso than even druids that cannot avoid crushings.

Bandaid fixed in prot, what about ret?

Its a well known fact that ret paladins need more stats to function than other melee classes.

A naked warrior has 1200 more HP than a paladin.

For protection, we get 16% Stamina to counteract this imbalance(as well as gaining no stats from our ranged slot).

While this is indeed fantastic for protection paladins, ret paladins are left with very mediocre hit point pools. Not only is our base hp lower, but we devote item points toward int which drastically cuts down our stamina.

Comparing Warrior to Paladin 5/5 Vengeful we have :
+16 Str
-54 Sta
+119 Int
-252 ArP
-31 Crit Rating
+45 Resil

The paladin set is fairly well itemized, and the problem is not really the set itself, but a combination of that and the base totals for our class. Starting with a 1200 hp handicap combined with another 54 Sta + 3/3 Vind puts paladins over 2000 health behind warriors. As a melee class with the least defensive options versus magic, this is particularly devastating as plate is useless against spells.

A geared out paladin expects to have about 10000 HP, while a warrior will have something like 12500. a 25% increase in health points is fairly large in terms of survivability, and warriors sacrifice very little to obtain this. I would say a STR->INT conversion at this point is necessary to allow ret to function properly in PvP. Even if it scaled to some ridiculous level where ret paladins were getting to 9k mana, there isn't much of a consequence to game balance. Ret paladins still have no active regen, and their HP/sec while healing doesnt make a larger mana pool ridiculously overpowered. Even better would be to allow retribution to regain mana when dealing damage as a function of damage dealt or max mana.

Bottom line : Because paladin damage and healing are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE, deriving additional int for free and gaining other stats does not drastically improve paladin hybrid function or power. When a paladin heals his teammate, he is unable to move. This is compared against say, a druid that can heal his teammate while moving(albeit for very little), or to a lesser extent a shadow priest that can swap out to heal while dots tic(and heal from VE). With no closer move such as ShS/Intercept/and Sprint/Dash to a lesser degree, the paladin loses more damage than just his swing timer as he attempts to catch up to his opponent.

History Lesson

Taking a trek back in time, some ridiculous paladin "fixes", nerfs, bugs, and stuff that just doesnt make any sense.

Seal of the Crusader - This one is huge. SoTC used to be the damage seal, provided great baseline physical damage to any paladin, and only did as much overall dps as Windfury with NO burst whatsoever. It was then nerfed to just forcibly change your weapon speed so your autoattack dps remained the same. The recent SoTC/CS ptr change is simply doubly logged as a fix to this change, all that occurs now is SoTC adds 40% CS damage to make up for the 40% swing speed reduction(fuzzy math but I'm too lazy to work the numbers). Why shamans and blood elf paladins have better baseline melee dps than "melee hybrid" alliance paladins, I have no clue. For all the naysayers:

10 swings pre nerf-
Windfury Weapon - 20% chance for 2 attacks at additional AP = 14 attacks every 10 swings. 4 of those have additional AP
SoTC - IIRC 40% more attacks at additional AP = 14 attacks every 10 "swing timers". Each swing has additional AP.

So less burst for slightly more sustained DPS. This seemed balanced to me. Both moves were baseline, heck SoTC was purgeable and that was a huge problem in paladin vs shaman fights. Being different, but having the same overall effect was fine with me. Then SoTC got nerfed and paladin dps went to the pisser.

Spell Critical/Illumination - Pre BC it was way too hard to stack spell crit, and itemization for paladins was horrendous(and still is, sometimes). When TBC hit and spell crit was being stacked everywhere, and illumination became too strong with a shadow priest. Solution? Nerf illumination. Unfortunately our PVP sets didnt get re-itemized with this nerf and continue to have ZERO mp/5.

BoP+Judgement - Since judgements induce autoattack, you cannot judge while bop'd. This is a rather silly change and they say its not fixable. Not fixable? Are you kidding me?

CC+Judgement - For a while now, casting a judgement at the same time as eating a CC has resulted in a lost seal+mana, but no judgement effect.

BoS+BoF Nerf - I was fine with the BoF nerf, but the BoS one was ridiculous. With paladins still having no hot/instant heal worth a damn, BoS was one of our only ways to mitigate dot damage on our teammates while being CC'd. Against a mage BoS still required significant blessing swapping. You could freedom to remove a root(cleanse versus winterschill... yeah good luck), but would have to apply bosac immediately, leaving your teammate open to snares once more. With the changes to allow all buffs to be seen by enemies, the BoS nerf needs to be undone. Its very easy to tell who its on, and who you can snare at will.

Mass Dispel - Again, Paladins are no longer the PvP healing juggernauts they once were. I dont think this one even needs an explanation.

Aura Removal - Cyclone used to cancel auras permanently and it was working as intended. Are you kidding me? This one eventually got reverted but it sure took a while.

Reckoning Bombs - The infinite charge reckoning bomb was admittedly broken, but the current incarnation is relatively useless outside of pve server aoe farming. Single target threat typically isnt a large issue for paladin tanks, and paladin kiteability makes the current reckoning very useless in a pvp situation. Being able to save up damage while kited was a key benefit of this talent, much like a warrior that gains rage from second wind/damage while kited. When he arrives at the target and gets his few seconds of damage in, those seconds are quite lethal(HS/MS/WW). This talent may see more use in WotLK if the higher ret talents prove useless. A reckoning/CS/sacred duty build would be great for arenas.

Divine Purpose - This talent needs a rework, as crit damage reduction is capped at 25%. It was a decent bandaid when paladin ret gear had no resilience but now this talent needs to be in line with the druid and priest talents that were changed due to the reduction cap. Changing it to say, an on crit buff that increases damage dealt by 5%, and damage taken by -5%, stackable to 3 would be fine. Paladins suffer greatly under focus fire, and have very few escape moves. Alternatively, this talent could be the new reckoning, perhaps offering 5% damage mitigation, stackable to 3. On swing, uses all charges for extra attacks. This would allow a focused paladin to choose between defense or offense, with consequences in each. Its current incarnation leaves much to be desired, as crit damage reduction is not nearly as valuable as the mana burn/dot reduction that I'm fairly certain this talent does not provide.

Seal of Command - Should not be PPM, nuff said really. Weapon speed drastically affects SoC performance, as slower weapons not only increase the proc rate, but increase proc damage as well.

This list is not comprehensive, but its a good outline of the crap this class has been through.

Utility

Today's river of tears focuses on utility.

All paladins bring a blessing and an aura. Beyond that they bring whatever mediocre function they have based on how many talent points they placed in whatever spec they chose to be doomed with.

Holy : Half of these talents have nearly no effect on your healing. Some of them just straight up dont belong (Holy Strength?). You're competing against Chain Heal/Earthshield, Hots/NS Heals, Circle of Healing, and of course the standard 1.5/3.X sec heals. Your utility is your blessing and your aura. Most of the time your aura is useless/inconsequential. You don't have Innervate/Rebirth, Mana Tide/Windfury, or an incredible assortment of heal spells that can be chosen for different situations. You have two heal buttons and a third you'll never use. Mana that tends to run out slower but no abilities that help you use it in as effective a manner as other classes.

Prot : MT or bust. Even then you're going to need a warrior to thunderclap, and someone to expose/sunder. Melee dps on an unsundered boss is ridiculously poor. If you choose to be an offtank, you'll find yourself being completely useless except for clearing trash. Your healing ability is gimped and all you can do is tank. Your dps is below awful and the group should already be LF Feral Druid. Its never advisable to turn a healer into a tank, most additional tank situations require as many healers as you had before. So a progressing 10 man group is sometimes going to have 3 healers + prot paladin healer on single tank bosses if the prot paladin is offtanking. This will place a lot of responsibility on your 5 DPS members. JUST GIVE IT 120% GUYS, MAKE UP FOR THE PALADIN SHOULD HAVE REROLLED DRUID! I see a lot of prot paladins rerolling deathknight if their tank tree allows for decent dps as well(as a DPS/Tank hybrid, I assume so).

Ret : After fighting the stigma of a thousand years of RETLOLOL you can bring your 25 man raid group 3% critical, judgement refresh, and a weaker ferocious inspiration(with shorter range to boot!). As horde your grass is very green, and you'll find that your dps can rise to respectable levels with seal of blood. As alliance, you're going to find yourself rationalizing your raid spot with the said utility, when its likely an additional heroism would do far more for your raid's dps than your 3% critical. Your grass is also decaying and being used to fertilize the horde grass.

Basically, people are trying to find the least awful spec to bring paladins into raids for, and they're all fairly bad. Some guilds just have paladins outside buffing the raid so they can stack 5 resto shamans and a few holy priests. In the name of progression, all things can be rationalized away.

@ ALL ROGUES I OWN YOU RET FTW

NO REALLY I DO, I MEAN A ROGUE JUMPS ME AND ITS LIKE HAMMER OF GG CRITS ALL OVER CHEAT DEATH HAMMER OF WRATH BOOM I WIN.

Why does every 1300 rated oathkeeper scrub ret paladin think he's beating rogues by virtue of his amazing pvp skillz? A rogue with all his cooldowns WILL BEAT a ret paladin 1v1. Make no mistake about it. A rogue has total control in that fight and you will oom and die, assuming equal gear and proper play.

Classic Ret vs Rogue pvp :

Cheapshot
Kidney->You Trinket
Evasion->You HoJ->They trinket
You repent, try to get some heals off with 5x wound on you. (Reversing this order is equally fruitless, a smart rogue will not trinket repentance).
You judge the rogue with whatever you want to try to keep him in combat(usually justice).
If JoJ,CloS->Sprint, or just Gouge re-stealth, wait as long as possible before...
Sap->Bandage->Restealth. (Drinking is pointless. Once you sit, SHS->Sap).
Cheapshot -> You have to divine shield here, or you eat Cheap->Kidney->Gouge Restealth.
Sprint/CloS(depending on delay)->Vanish. Nothing you can do about this as a paladin. There is a slight chance you can JoJ/HoJ the rogue but its unlikely they'll still be in 10 yards after your Divine Shield global.
Sap/+Cheapshot->5PT Rupture->Mash Hemo->You Lose. Somewhere in there you'll get your second HoJ, depending on spec. However you wont actually deal enough damage to kill a rogue in the 6 seconds. The rogue also can still blind you, but it is typically unnecessary.

Tips for beating bad rogues :

JoJ works through CloS, like all other debuffing judgements. Unresistable. CloS does REMOVE it, though.
Sword and Board through evasion, your overall damage is reduced by an average of 70% against a rogue with evasion up.
Healing resets your swing timer. When you Divine Shield try to get your last swing in and then start healing.
Your only real hope is he screws up his restealth chain, you land a HoJ, and do a ton of damage(LOLRNG). Then you live till your forbearance wears off, and you do bop+bandage before wound stacks too high on a re-open from restealth. Repent is up and you use it to keep him from restealthing on your BoP, then try to finish him off toe to toe.

This post isnt to say paladins cannot beat rogues. They simply cant beat a competent rogue with cooldowns ready that has equivalent gear. Note dwarves have a slight advantage in this matchup, but it typically isnt enough. For most rogues, it simply means they need to restealth one more time.

Ret scaling, Leveling up

Everyone always talks about how ret is a "gear dependent spec". And they're right. Whats unfair is how ret scales entirely on gear and has very minimal base damage. To simplify I'm only going to examine physical dps, as casters get new ranks that obviously scale well for leveling.

Examples :

Rogues - Sinister Strike - Weapon damage + X, Eviscerate - High damage but doesnt scale well, great for leveling.
Warriors - Heroic/Mortal Strike - Weapon damage + X
Hunters - Multishot - Damage + X, Pet Damage, Aimed shot - Damage + X, Steady Shot at 62+.
Druids - Claw - Damage + X, Mangle - Damage + X
Paladins - No inherent base damage on their primary damage abilities. For secondary abilities, they have Judgement of Command, which does awful base damage, doesnt scale at all with gear, and has a DPM of something like 0.5 compared to using Rank1 SoC. Stunning the target beforehand also has a mana expenditure and only increases the DPM to 0.33 or so. Spammng judgements also breaks FSR regen which can be used by paladins to some effect. SoC procs have a "base" damage through JoTC and the 20% coefficient SoC gets, however you spend tons of mana doing this, and it really isnt a base damage value since you need to apply a judgement to possibly add at most 40 to your RNG damage.
Shamans - In the same boat as Paladins, no base damage on any primary damage abilities, besides shocks.

Basically this means that an undergeared rogue/warrior/hunter/druid is always going to beat an equivalently undergeared paladin/shaman in physical damage simply by virtue of free damage granted by their class. For leveling this is huge. Base damage is meant to smooth out undergeared fights, and is why ret/enhance leveling is so frustrating unless you constantly slot upgrade your gear as you level. What this means is ret will underperform any competitive dps situation, preventing many from getting groups as ret, making it very hard to gear up. Without gear they'll never get to the point of meaningful damage, and thus the spec is in a catch22 situation. Arena is pretty much the best way to get around this, and it is quite unfortunate that the only viable way to gear for PvE as ret is to arena.

TLDR : With gray weapons, completely naked, paladins will be dead last in damage in any fight. That gap lessens, but other classes maintain a huge lead in damage until at least high end blues/full epics at 70.

Ret + Rogue

Its late in the season so its not really a feat, but i picked up shoulders yesterday after a long night of 2v2 going from 1500 to 2008.

Ret Rogue is really only weak to druid lock, unfortunately a very popular 2v2. Other than that it has a fighting chance against most other comps at the sub 2k level. Not sure if player skill can change the awesome powers of the random number generator at high level play but 2v2 is not where paladins should be anyway.

Holy and Arenas

A lot of people tout the holy paladin's effectiveness in arenas. In particular, their staying power at healing and unkillability. I'm here to debunk most if not all of this nonsense.

Cleanse : A complete lack of MP/5 on our PvP gear makes cleanse total garbage in 2v2/3v3 endurance fights. When using it constantly against an increasing number of garbage or resistant debuffs, it fails to do much more than waste mana and globals.

Illumination : Is not active regen. All other healers have a way to restore mana actively. Watershield/Mana tide, Shadowfiend, Innervate. Paladins have the lowest mana pool availible of any healer in arenas. Each mana burn removes more potential healing from a paladin than any other class. Cleanses, Blessings, Judgements, and Seals get no benefit from Illum either. This makes paladins a much better target to mana burn/drain among the healing classes. There is simply less mana that needs to be removed before they are rendered useless.

Plate : Plate is fantastic until you realize that warriors have more defensive options than Paladins do and still die very quickly to coordinated burst. Sure warriors and rogues dont do a lot to you, but they can interrupt your casts far more easily than any other healer. They also provide the critical healing debuffs that ensure your demise. Attacking a paladin ensures he will not be healing and leaves it up to his remaining healer(or rarely two) to keep him alive. This means your solo heal viability is nil against a competent team coordinating interrupts. Assuming no heals, your time to live is higher than a priest. Factor in other abilities such as PS/instants, and this all changes.

Offensive/Disruption moves : Paladins dont have any worth a damn. HoJ is all we have. JoJ is maybe a half, but makes the target immune to fear. It is extremely frustrating to not be an actual threat when nobody is taking damage. For example, a priest on a 5v5 team taking low damage or benefitting from heroism can quickly mana burn/dispel the enemy. A druid can cyclone/root/feral charge. A shaman has shocks, earthbinds, grounding. A paladin can expose himself to CC by moving to the enemy to HoJ. Thats it. A holy paladin left completely alone contributes nothing but health points and freedom/cleanse/bop to his team. All other classes have disruption/prevention moves that give them more options in combat besides just heal spamming.

Inability to prevent damage : You see a burst coming on your warrior. The ele shaman is bop'd, target is nova'd with 5 winters chill and freedom was just dispelled. Suddenly the warrior intercepts over to your warrior and heroism goes off. What can you do in the next 3 seconds to prevent your warrior's death? A shaman has ground+shock+ns heal, a druid has the option to FC/ns heal and maybe cyclone, a priest can PS/shield/renew/mend. A paladin HAS to wait for damage to occur before he can do anything about incoming damage. This means you expose yourself to counterspell before any burst begins, and typically results in a loss at higher levels of play.

Mobility : Paladins have poor mobility because they have few instants. While repositioning a paladin can only cleanse and buff (holyshocklolol). A shaman can purge, shock, drop various totems, and earth shield while moving, priests have many instants, and druids have speed increases/feral charge/tons of instants. The problem is not paladins moving slower than druids and shamans, it is that paladins have far more to lose while moving than any other class. Moving means the enemy knows exactly when you will start a heal and makes your actions too predictable. It also means you sacrifice practically all of your healing power, which is pretty much all you're there for to begin with.

Do or Die : Paladins are often put into do or die situations. If you try to fake out a spell interrupt, the lost time wont allow you to finish off a holy light. Your ability to prevent this situation from occuring is practically out of your control, as you have no way to prevent damage. At this point you have to divine shield or lose a team mate. After this you are forced to play entirely defensively as you can be quickly focused down and killed.

It is unsurprising then that paladins are good in 5v5, where you have a backup healer to cover for you when your glaring class weaknesses are exploited. Spamming holy light is hard, after all.