I disagree with many things posted on these forums over the past few months, particularly the whining about how "useless" paladins have become. If you think we are useless, perhaps you simply don't have the proper AA's, or don't know how to play your pally. We are still one of the most powerful classes out there, in terms of balance and well-roundedness, and I believe the devs know and understand this while most players do not.
Our best tool is healing, and if you disagree you need to reconsider. Pally heals (especially burst) are scaled well, and with proper AA's, foci, and twincast, burst will almost always heal your target to full health...and with 0.25 cast time we can keep warriors up on mobs such as Fippy, Beast, etc. very well by filling in the gaps.
Healing is also our greatest boon for tanking and agro. Beacon was a great addition if only due to its ability to get on the agro list of every mob in an area. Cast this, and then heal whoever is being hit (yourself or anyone else taking damage) and the heal agro will act as AE hate, giving you more agro than any SK could dream of building. Follow this up with epic click or AoI, and then (if taking heavy damage already, use LoH) keep healing yourself, and your AE agro will keep going up. Paladins have always had the best AE agro, you just have to know how to use it. This doubles for tanking...our ability to heal ourselves coupled with twincast heal, epic click, AoI, and / or first spire (any pallies who use 2nd or 3rd spire should be shot) allow us to keep ourselves up wonderfully, especially when other healers are healing you as well. I've tanked Fippy from 80-60 without dieing with only 5-6 clerics, holding agro easily by filling in healing gaps with twincast burst.
And now to contribute to this thread (sorry for the partial derail, just some things that needed to be said)...
1. Crush of Compunction lackluster agro...wholeheartedly agree. Force of disruption + twincast + 2 stuns is still more than enough agro to pull mobs off warriors, but more agro is always better
Another cool thing...projection of piety can even outagro HT...yes other tank classes got it as well, but the idea is to work as a team, not be better than all the other tank classes (even though we are)
2. DPS situation...please for the love of all things do NOT give us swarm pets. Swarm pets are abysmal DPS, have stupid amount of push, and are possibly the most overrated dps ability in EQ. Second spire revamp...eh, maybe, but as I said first spire is so useful that it should always be ready for a tanking situation. We are tanks...not a DPS class. Sure other tanks can DPS, but they can't hold a candle to our ability to heal ourselves, our groups, or an entire raid (love splash so much). Perhaps a revamp to holyforge...shorter reuse (and probably duration...5 mins is too long for a DPS disc anyways), increased chance for crippling blows, perhaps a damage modifier would be nice. Something we can use once every 30 minutes to increase our dps from the 2-2.5k DPS mark to around 4-5k mark for 30 seconds - 1 min...nothing ground shattering / balance breaking, just something to allow us to give a little extra every once in a awhile.
3. Rest of the stuff..doesn't really matter. We are already a dominant force in the raid game, and our stuns still make us the best choice for tanking in pretty much all of the new zones. Brells Temple is the only zone with a majority of mobs that are immune to stun, but just switch gears to healing yourself between agro casts (yes...Light healing spells...with twincast they aren't so useless....with epic click, etc. they are actually quite nice).
That's all I have to say...and to those who disagree, please try out my suggestions first. Pallies are a complex class with tons of ability, you simply need to pay attention and figure it all out. A properly played pally requires a great deal of concentration, and is probably one of the hardest classes to play.