What happens when.....

[Syzygian]

Paladins still have fight or flight, which with proper use allows them a rough 10% increase over time in damage.
Paladins also have Goring Blade (one of the most powerful dots in the game), as well as Spirits Within and Circle of Scorn for their fluff damage.

I get you've got massive erection to hate on Paladins, but you're just being facetious now. Goring Blade's total potency is one of the highest in the game, Circle of scorn is over 500 ppm (since you're fond of it) and Spirit's within is at best 600 ppm with added utility.

It will never get close to the damage of a warrior, because warrior is the dps tank. Dark Knight has a lot of buffs, but dark knight potencies are lower than the paladins for gcd moves.

Paladin are not incomplete, they're simply a bit low in some numbers and need to be adjusted.

@Rawker: The det change isn't too bad, since the crit change is a massive benefit to SwO

Whoa there. I think you need to pass the salt back over this way. You've had enough.

It sounds more like you have a massive erection for PLDs to take such an objective post so personally. In no way did I intend that post as an insult to PLD, I was simply stating facts.

The fact that Goring Blade is tied to a combo (never been a fan of combo based DoTs, frankly) means you can't favor it like say, a DRK can favor DA Souleater (MP providing).
CoC is nice too and so is Spirits within but these still just leave massive gaps as I explained in very precise detail earlier.

Goring Blade, CoC, and Spirits within are great, yes, but they don't stack up to either of the other tanks. And FoF is also great, but again, it doesn't add up. DRK passively has 100% uptime on +15% and WAR has the same in Maim with +20%, both more in proportion to their tank stance penalty than FoF, and then in addition to that, both have a crazy amount of off-GCD DPS and/or offensive cooldowns.

They do feel incomplete, as they have these holes in their DPS layout and utility, and no real mechanic to manage alongside it. Now, if we're gonna make PLD the defensive/support tank, the defensive utilities they have need -massive- buffs to make them viable reasons to stop DPSing and powerful enough to actually translate into increased DPS mileage for healers, etc. I actually really want to see PLD succeed, it just needs to pick a direction, or the devs do rather. In 3.0, they added a bunch of fancy, relatively powerful combo abilities that still are not stacking up with DRK/WAR because they do not have enough personal offensive utility backing them (things like Berserk, DRKs oGCDs, etc.) and instead have a lot of half-hearted defensive utilities that are so situational as to be almost useless.