Blizzard to Paladins:

[acidjax]

Please, give me plate.  I'll show you what my priest can do if you give me 5-6k armor, the ability to wear a shield, and the ability to go invincible for 12 seconds.

A paladin is a priest with plate that has around the same amount of HP (priest has fort). But then remember you now cast your flash heal at almost half speed. Sure you can cast it with 100% chance of not being interrupted but it's still too slow. Then you have to remember to take out group heal and shield (for MS). Of course you also don't get mana burn or mind control. Furthermore if you go caster stats to get priest levels of mana you have no type of damage. Remove your insta-fear and your ability to get a mana-efficient damage snare. Take away your nukes and DoT(s). In the end, a high mana paladin is a plate armor (maybe some cloth mixed in) priest with divine shield that loses all type of offensive capability (damage and snares on call) while retaining a fraction of non-healing utility.

I stare blankly at the screen when reading this statement.  Sheep, frost nova, entangling roots, slowing poison, as well as most of the offensive power of two classes -- warlocks and priests.  And you think it's "debatable"?

It's debatable in comparison to the usefulness of purge. Only magic debuffs apply since shaman can cure poison and disease. Cleanse is reactionary and purge is offensive; primary healer priests already take an almost purely reactionary role. Paladin blessings can be purged. A shaman can be a real menace with purge while a paladin would be more like "haha i can cleanse your debuff... but i can't do anything back".

Anyways the whole point of what I was saying is that not enough magic debuffs tend to be thrown out that a couple priests can't keep up with and still heal in pvp.

Cleansing is one of the most powerful tools in PvP that completely alters the course of battles.

You mean curing debuffs which other classes can do yet also offer more utility. After a couple paladins you reach a point where more wouldn't do as much good as having other classes. Paladins can't just decide to switch to a ranged dps role or consistantly assist snare/immobilize.

Ah, now I understand the confusion.  You mistake the large battles in AV for PvP. That's not PvP.  That's just a zerg-fest reputation grinding.  You can't even discuss most PvP with regards to the large battles in AV, because most people don't get to use most of their best PvP or crowd control abilities there.  Real PvP happens in 5-10 player confrontations.

What "real pvp" is differs per opinion. While in CTF you can have smaller fights where each individual is making a bigger difference, CTF lacks the strategic depth potential of AV. CTF is a skirmish; AV is a war. Things like baiting, flanking, and sandwiching between graveyards you don't see in CTF. CTF is to FPS as AV is to RTS.

If I were a paladin, I could have bubbled, healed, and laughed at those idiot warriors who were wasting their time attacking a paladin while their team is being ripped apart by my partymates.  Instead, I died.

You argue as if the paladin's divine shield cooldown is as fast as the priest's 26-30sec fear. What else could you have done? Limited Invulnerability Potion. Too expensive you say? Rogues use blind, thistle tea, poisons, and bandages in addition to potions.

Now think then what the paladin could've done in the same position. He pops his 5min cooldown divine and heals himself once and he's got half of his shield time left to do anything with impunity. He can't burst heal fast and doesn't have power shield to pop on people that are mortal striked because those warriors aren't going to swing at the paladin the whole 12 seconds. He can blow his long cooldown BoP on someone which will work for a couple seconds before it's purged. He can't group heal to counter the initial whirlwind. He's still a 3rd-rate healer with low melee-range dps that can go immune up to 12 seconds of every 5 minutes.

Finally, you only pick one certain skill the paladin has for one specific situation and try to transpose the skill to your priest without mentioning any downsides. You don't mention things other debuff curing classes can do that paladins cannot.

Now my party has no dispeller, so three of my partymates are sheeped, one's entangled, and the rest are frost novaed and have dots ticking on them.  Meanwhile, the enemy team is free and clear to do whatever they want.  The warriors now charge one cloth wearer at a time while all the ranged dps picks people apart.  The party gets routed within 30 seconds.

Again, it's an unfair comparison. You can't just hand-tailor a theoretical matchup to make your argument work and use it as a proof. I felt that in many cases you could replace a paladin with a priest and be better off. You are trying to change that alliance-only opinion into a horde group and taking out the paladins without replacing them with priests.

There's only a few things that purge is useful for in PvP -- and most of that is dispelling priest and mage shields.  But those shields can just as easily be "purged" by dealing damage, so purge really isn't any special advantage.  Cleanse is far and away more powerful.

Purge is also used to get rid of key buffs (like fear ward) and paladin blessings. It counters the majority of paladin utility.

The bigger difference in large raids is all the buffs that can be specialized according to class.  Sheesh, the aggro increase and aggro reduction seals alone are incredible.

Salvation may become a moot point depending on how it's eventually "evaluated". For the time being it's an awesome buff but not a reason to have 10 paladins in a raid since a couple can buff the raid fine.

But even without those, the auras and seals are still amazing and definitely outshine what shamans can bring to the table.

Let's look at the actual usefulness of various paladin skills in raid encounters:

Devotion - the extra armor is for the most part useless. It's a slim chance that a rogue that dies in 3 hits will now die in 4 with the small increase to damage mitigation.
Retribution - junk
Concentration - not very useful
Single Resist - This would be more useful if the resist bonus stacked with other resist bonuses. If you have paladin +60 fire resist aura with MotW and the effects of a magic resist potion, you still only get a total of +60 fire resist. Also, paladins tend to play more of a support role so oftentimes many people don't even get the buff during fights.

Seals - pretty much the only judgements used are light and wisdom. If judgements had a static low mana cost with better offensive effects perhaps more of them would be used.

Shamans are good.  But they can be killed, unlike paladins.  And they don't have cleanse, unlike paladins.  Those are huge advantages that paladins have over shamans in PvP.

Shaman are good at killing and good at surviving. Paladins are good at surviving and if their cooldown on one skill is ready, the best for 12 seconds. Paladins are poor at killing as it is relatively easy to escape their seal of command (slow weapon only partial windfury weapon) kill zone. Shaman have grounding and tremor totems with other totems that break stealth. They have better offensive buffs, instant ranged/pbaoe snares, damage on call, and a better fast cast heal. Those are huge advantages that shaman have over paladins in PvP.