That was one of the first things I noticed as well.

I'm specced prot, and haven't had a ton of time to play around on the beta server yet - apparently my original WoW copy was corrupt, which led to 3 downloads of the 2gb beta installation and a separate download of the original game before I finally got it working.

At 70, prot seems sorta slow to level. It's great against multiple mobs( not surprisingly ), but not particularly fast one-on-one and not particularly mana-efficient either. I was sorta more interested in exploring and looking around though, so will update my thoughts once I have had more of a chance to play around with it.

One note, the mount and pet bag space reduction is awesome for paladins.

Care to elaborate? I'd love to think that the strength scaling in prot allows for fairly fun and efficient leveling in a nice tanking build, in case they do not allow two-specs with easy switching until 80 (or not at all).

As much fun as Divine Storm appears to be, I am not seeing a light at the end of the tunnel in terms of my being stuck as the guild tankadin in the expansion like I have been in TBC.

More specifically...how often are you drinking and how fast are mobs going down. I'll walk into Wrath with a solid retribution set from all of the surplus raid epics and PVP, so pumping up my strength, AP, etc, shouldn't be an issue.

You mean stay prot specced with a 1-hand and board, but the rest Ret gear?

Uhhh... haste being the single best stat in the game for a Holy Paladin kinda makes you want more...

People who don't like haste talent fail to realise one simple thing. According to all the changes that we see now healers are FORCED to heal REACTIVELY. Unless we miss something important, no class (save druids) would be chaincasting. And I don't think that anyone who ever healed seriously would doubt that haste is the MOST important stat for effective reactive healing. Plus it has a nice side effect of buffing our effectiveness between heals, be it DPS, throwing hands, plea, etc. Perfect talent tbh, couldn't wish more (always wanted more synergy between our spells).

Yes, but use a DPS 1H as well. Your white damage is higher, your Judgements are higher, and your HotR hits hard. It's fairly easy to kill single mobs, and even 2-3 aren't that bad as HS and HotR knock them down. It's not as sick as Retribution, but it's quite respectable, and even better, it's a lot of fun.

As for drinking, I think I went Blessing of Wisdom, Seal of Wisdom, and Judgement of Light, and I didn't really need to drink, though killing was a bit slower than with Seal of Righteousness. Remember that AP boosts your health and mana gains from Seals and Judgments, which makes a big difference in longevity.

Edit: Also, this should get really good at 75. Shield of the Righteous is 200% Block Value as Holy Damage and 2 Strength = 1 Block Value. Win, Win.

I found that drinking as Protection in Retribution gear wasn't really a huge deal anyways thanks to both a tiny mana pool, and a lovely cup of Pungent Seal Whey or Honeymint Tea (depending on your level). With a pathetic 5k mana pool you'll drink to full in about 10 seconds if you have Blessing of Wisdom up.

Actually testing out retribution specc for the first time in beta myself I have strong doubts that Blizzard will leave paladins as godlike as they are now. The heavy returns in dmg/health and/or mana through divine storm are just ridiculous... (e.g. I got death gripped by a lvl 75 DK into some 5-6ish guards and total destroyed him without bubble because of upped Seal of Light and Divine Storm healing me for half my life pool on top of dealing truckloads of dmg)

I like the changes very very much don´t get me wrong, but the coefficients need a complete overhaul. For example: Why is spellpower even existant on paladin gear if every skill scales way better with AP than spellpower? With ShoL even furthering that issue and leaving TbtL way less powerful than it´s retri counterpart, despite being deeper into the prot tree, this all makes up for some weird class mechanics... again /sigh

Once they SoR/SoV scaling better with spellpower and SoC/SotM scaling better with AP we have a clear line for what to go for.
I also think that CS proccing upped seals could be left as a balanced mechanic, but in my eyes divine storm proccing your upped seal on 4 mobs will never make it to release, not without reduced effectiveness (e.g. 1/4 strength per target).

The XP required for levelling has increased a fair bit, like in the Original->TBC transition. I think questing in Northrend might be faster, as you get larger amounts of XP per mob and quest.

But then again, you can kill an awful lot of supplicants in a short time.

Because heals still don't have an AP coefficient. Until Blizzard changes that, they're going to have to do funky things with talents to make the entire class scale with one set of gear.

Someone who blazed through outlands in blues and greens might find the leveling more consistent in difficulty as they land in Northrend, with maybe just a token epic or two. Everyone says the damage gets reigned in a bit when they hit 77, although it is still higher than just about every other class.