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

[Kevin]

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.
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I'll clarify that my experiences are with a retribution/holy paladin so I get some more damage on my paladin that way.

I'm not assuming same gear I'm talking direct comparison of my L46 paladin and my L60 proctection warrior and what I remember from the times he did solo at that stage. I also fought side by side at L45 with an L45 arms/fury warrior using the exact same weapon on the same mobs and our damage, even with me healing him or myself in combat at times so not swinging came out pretty much the same from what recap told me. I'm confident that he was not playing the warrior poorly either.

I don't really use heroic strike when soloing and I probably sunder too much solo as well so I don't save as much rage as maybe I could. I don't have tactical mastery or anger management so I have less rage generated that some people might think. Shield slam, top rank, thanks to armor on mobs, generally does about 300 to 400 damage. I've seen it as low as 180. I hardly ever get to overpower with my warrior though and I'm not sure why, things just don't dodge me. So shield slam is 30 rage and it gets you one or two swings worth of damage since my 2 hander is hitting in the 200-400 range. Seal of Command on my L46 paladin is routinely hitting for 200 - 400 additional damage without a crit. My 2 hander hits in the 130-240 range. It generally procs 2 to 4 times in the 30 seconds it is up so it generally procs more than I can shield slam in a single fight. Thanks to the precision talent the paladin misses less than the warrior as well. I solo with a Blackhand Doomsaw most of the time as well on the warrior.

Another issue that taints my soloing experience with the warrior is that I still don't have a full set of "offensive" gear. So I have this half tank (+def and +stam) and half offensive (+str, +agi, +crit) gear. So yeah you are right some of it is my warrior. My paladin does have a full set of level appropriate offensive gear as long as the full set of healing gear.

But the paladin doesn't have down time, at all, the warrior does and did at that level. I don't have to stop to drink or eat or bandage, ever. I simply may have to pick my next fight a little more carefully. You don't use a lot of mana soloing with a paladin and casting a Blessing of Wisdom on yourself takes 20 seconds to make up for the mana it took you to cast it. Judging wisdom or running seal of wisdom for a bit gets you mana postive at the cost of one or two procs for command at most. I pretty much never have to run away from a fight. The once every 30 minutes retaliation doesn't usually make up for that. I know that I'm comparing more L45 soloing vs L60 soloing, but my protection warrior is soloing -2 to -4 mobs. The paladin is soloing -2 to +4 mobs. I may be remembering wrong with Gnolack from L45 as well, he didn't solo that much at lower levels I had a holy spec priest with me most of the time.

I also know that the paladin has been slowing down on kill speed post L43. And maybe I'm counting downtime for more than I should be because it annoys me more than killing a single mob slowly. Maybe I do take mobs down faster than I think with my warrior, but it sure doesn't feel like it. I'd much rather solo with any class over a protection spec warrior so maybe I'm just attributing things that aren't there. Some if it may be that I play too much like I'm in a group as well.