Kind of have to agree with Astral145 here. Whilst DGladius is 100% right that there's nothing wrong with stance dancing to boost dps, the way the current tank meta is filtering down through the playerbase is making it misrepresented. Tanks are hearing that they should spend as much time as humanly possible in their dps stance or the world ends.

For a Warrior? Sure. Deliverance with Fell Cleaves all over the place makes a huge difference. Dark Knight? They need solid cooldown management but their AOE dps is fantastic, especially dropping Grit (though really solid with Grit up). Paladins? Well... on bosses sure, on Trash? You'll see virtually no difference Sword Oathing trash packs due to how reliant Paladins can be on Flash for AOE threat - sure the Paladin themselves will parse notably higher, but this should be a drop in the ocean compared to the AOE dps that good DPS classes and a competant healer can put out.

Fact is, for most runs (especially PUG runs with average players who maybe don't exactly do alex savage levels of DPS) the run will be more successful if a Paladin stays in Shield Oath for the vast majority and only swaps to Sword Oath on bosses they're comfy on. Yes, good paladins will easily be able to spend huge amounts of time in Sword Oath on 4mans.

But I'm not really talking about the really -good- players. I'm talking about the more casual ones who are perhaps a little undergeared, lack confidance, the ones who were probably toting a full set of VIT accs around until they heard from an overbearing guildie that they were a n00b for doing that and should run full Slaying. The community has taken the combination of a Savage Raids tank meta where tanks are expected to minmax DPS, coupled it with the changes to Warriors who have an entire kit -designed- around constantly stance dancing even in 4mans, and somehow applied that as a one-size-fits-all mentality that includes Paladins for 4man content.

That's what's harmful. Paladins as a class were designed to be a pretty simple low-aoe-damage tank that held huge amounts of AOE threat via low/no damage abilities but had a kit involving blocking and physical cooldowns that meant they could take large packs of adds with no issue and require less healing than the other tanks. They have a DPS stance that puts out decent damage but it's all aimed at single target stuff. In situations where you don't have DPS checks threatening to wipe your raid, a Paladin CAN take advantage of their strong mitigation kit to make a run smooth and easy. The problem we have now is a large amount of players who don't truly understand the differences in the class thinking they have to somehow play like a Warrior all the time.