Paladins...is it as bad as they say?

[Concillian]

People forget  a protection warriors damage, even in battle or zerker stance, because of no talent backing, is basically just autoattack with a little help here and there as well.  Sure you control when that damage comes but it really doesn't add any more damage than the PRNG will give a paladin.
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I would tend to disagree here. My protection spec warrior bounces from mob to mob at a killing rate only beaten by my rogue. I will agree if you're talking about using a 1handed weapon, but even a protection spec warrior should be soloing with a slow 2Hander and a weapon switch macro to go 1H+shield only when necessary (shield slam or to silence a caster), this should be a similar weapon to what a pally should be using with SoC for the procs to be as useful as possible.

While heroic strike damage may be pretty minimal, I never use it solo, ever because it's so horribl rage inefficient. It takes almost as much rage as shield slam but does 1/5th the damage or less. Pretty much ANY other skill is a better rage dump than HS, mostly because everything else gives an additional chance at triggering overpower. Shield slam is well over weapon damage at the levels it is offered, and is guaranteed twice per fight because of the rage you generate. This itself is more damage than SoC, and it is predictable. Plus you can dump additional rage into low damage skills like hamstring or sunder to add value plus potentially get a dodge for an overpower.

The predictability of your damage allows you to not use skills that will eat rage when a mob is at 5% and the next hit will kill it anyway. Then you can use that rage to take the next mob down significantly quicker than normal. But if SoC procs when a mob is at 5% and running away, oh well, you just "wasted" it.

You are also assuming the same gear, and likely a paladin will be focusing less on strength and more on INT than a warrior will. All of these things combine to give a signficant advantage to a protection spec warrior in terms of killing rate. If you are having similar DPS rates between a protection warrior and a pally when solo, then you are simply not playing the protection warrior in an efficient manner when solo, you're certainly not using your retaliate every half hour for an 'I win' button against an encampment of 4 or so or the elite of your choice.