I have been toying with the idea of rolling a paladin but dont want to spend a ton of time on a character that will have little to no place in PVE/raiding. As far as I have seen warriors tank better and cloth healers/druids heal better so what is a paladin's place in a raid? Surely not dps?? lol

a paladin is basiclly anything.  prot pallies can tank near as well as warriors or feral druids well.  Holy pallies can heal as well as any other class but can wear palte and a shield. Ret pallies plop out massive crits and dmg bursts as well as upping the whole raids dps via debuffs ploped on boss or sanctity aura.  Any spec can do a decent job healing, buffing and bringing auras to the table no matter wat spec.  it just depends if u have the balls to be a pally. :P

Pallys arnt DPS like a rogue they are "burst-DPS" every 3 sec or so they hit for mb 1.8-3k with Seal of Commandment on then you do crusaders strike instant cast for about 900-1.5 then u figure in the judgement of SoC ... not bad damage at all we dont take HP bars down gradually we take chunks at a time =P

so true but i have to say

SEAL OF BLOOD FTW

GLORY TO THE SIN'DORI

silly belf >.<

lol just an example

human pally ftw;
if 15% rep isnt enough already.
second sword expertise actually helps- there arent nearly as many epic axes a pally would use as swords (to dwarf pallies) and Be pallies dont even have an expertise(i dont think.)

also- the racial spell that helps you see stealthed ppl is a boon in pvp. its saved my ass alot in bgs.

Prot Paladin will be even more acceptable when BLizz decides to back them up with gear.  I am a 70 Protection spec Paladin and to be honest i'm wearing ~70% Warrtank gear to keep myself safe from crits and crushing blows.  Tanking is a natural ability and is great fun...so too is hacking chunks out mob/players health bar.  I've never ran a Holy Paladin but i can tell you there's no better compliment to a Protection Paladin than a Holy Paladin.  Their mechanics combined with the passive Spiritual Attunement ability = Everlasting Tankadin.  I've only just gone to Karazhan but i tell you i belive Paladin are everybit as powerful and capable as Warrtanks.  I am wearing only one epic and was easily able to reach the warning mark of our main tank...a seeded Warrior caked in purples no sweat.  Of course that was Kara so i had a bit of an advantage as almost everything we fought was undead but still.  With matching gear it would have been an aggro argument and actually was anyway except that i know how raids go and didn't want to upset our healer as i was a guest offtank in their group.

I have been Main healer on kara->MH on my pally
Respecced prot and now im main tank on kara with only few epix and rest blue

believe me we OWN!

tho retardins go do pvp and pwn :)

honestly every high lvl raid group i know loves a holy paladin, they heal as well as a priest and can protect themselves so the rest of the group can do what they do best. Its basically a healer you dont need to babysit.

They heal single targets well but multiple targets require more effort.

Tanking is....easy. Certainly more so than any other tank.

DPS I guess it's not too bad but pure DPS classes will out-DPS you.

Buff/cleansebot.

as they said pallys OWN all but being prot takes balls and ret is bieng lazy the real work lies in healers. i know everyone u ask can agree without healers groups can fall apart. =] go holy.