I kind of talked about this in another thread. Paladin is awesome in 4 man dungeons, but a lot of its abilities are neutered in 8 man.

The biggest offenders (imo) are Shield Swipe and Shield Bash. Other than Ifrit hard and the Dorme Chimera, I can't think of any 8 man bosses that actually let you pacify them. Mmmmayyyybe an add on Leviathan Extreme? Either way, Pacify is really overpowered, which is why we don't get to use it. Same thing with Shield Bash stun. Paladin already hurts for usable WSes, so taking away those two just further cements the whole "123123" thing.

Sooo my thinking is since paladin already does way less damage than warrior while tanking, why not turn Shield Swipe and Shield Bash into real DPS increases? Yeah, swipe is technically better than Halone combo, but it's not really a good damage increase. Here's what I'd do:

Shield Swipe - stays as is

Shield Bash: Delivers an attack with potency 110. (TP Cost 150)
Additional Effect: Stun 6s (PvP 4s)
Combo Action: Shield Swipe / Combo Potency: 390
Combo Bonus: Restores 80 TP over 15 seconds.

So basically you get a 300 potency/gcd combo (Halone is 203/gcd) that you can do every 15s after a block if you want to stay okay on TP. A nice DPS boost that you can't really use while OTing.

As for blind and awareness, I think they're kind of lost causes. The devs seem content with Awareness (even with how crappy it is), and I don't see them letting us bring random dodge chance into carefully calculated boss fights. Tempered Will actually gets a decent amount of use, IMO, though I wouldn't mind a shorter cooldown. Overall, though, I agree with you that a lot of our pure utility skills should be changed into buttons that can be used in *every* fight. Warrior is a good example of this since their rework. Outside of Holmgang and Fracture you can probably find a use for every one of their buttons in every fight.