I've been leveling a new human Paladin and when doing my Verigan's Fist quest chain I got a sword that shook my foundation in Verigan's Fist. I grabbed the Haunting Blade off the rare ghost mob in SFK (who for anyone who has grinded the instance has found that he pops like half the time and drops this sword most of the time) and was comparing the stats to verigan's fist. Here's a quick rundown of both weapons:
Verigan's Fist
65 - 99 Damage Speed 3.20
(25.6 damage per second)
+7 Stamina
+12 Spirit
+6 Intellect
Haunting Blade
66 - 99 Damage Speed 3.80
(21.7 damage per second)
Requires level 20
Equip: Increases attack power by 28.
At first glance, it would seem that the Fist is obviously superior. However, the Haunting Blade has 2 more dps from the AP increase, putting it's effective dps at 23.7. Still 1.9 short of the fist however. The thing that caught my eye though was the speed difference. Haunting Blade will put out more damage with it's Seal of Command than Verigan's Fist would, putting the actual damage these 2 weapons deal even closer. After some figuring I found that someone with 25 dps from AP would be able to bridge the gap, so that the damage would average out to be about the same. Which at lvl 20 is kind of hard to do, so the Fist will still be superior in damage albeit by a very small margin. It also has the stamina and Intellect which helps (the spirit is negligible in it's effects)
Conclusion: While the Fist is still the superior weapon, doing the quest is very long with lots of running around and takes a lot of time that you could otherwise be using to level. If you manage to get into a group that is doing SFK and can summon you there, and you can get the sword before doing the quest, it might be worth it to just forget the quest and keep your Haunting Blade.
In short:
Pros of getting Verigan's Fist:
-You can get a lot of Flight Paths that you will later probably use while leveling.
-It's kind of a Paladin staple weapon, and for RPing purposes might seem to be a necessity.
-You need to do instances to get the items, which could net you even more blues or items.
-Just doing the quests and instances gets you a fair amount of experience.
-The weapon is better and has stamina and intellect to help your survivability.
Cons of getting Verigan's Fist:
-Flight paths are nice, but by the time you will need to use some of them, you will already be lvl 30 and can get your mount, making the trip quicker (post 2.4.3).
-There is a LOT of running around through enemy territory, making you an easy target for gankers (on PvP servers). Also needing to walk through high level areas with mobs that can easily kill you.
-The only instance that you can get good gear from while doing this is SFK, as you don't need to go into BFD and Deadmines will be too low of a level for you by then. And you can get the sword in SFK.
-You could level faster by just continuing to quest in your area, and keeping the LFG channel open to see if anyone is doing an SFK run that you can jump onto to get the sword (hopefully).
-There isn't any weapon that is as good as the Fist for the early 20s, however the sword that you might be able to get is close enough.
I guess the point of this was just to show that there is an alternative now to getting the Fist, the sword was made Blue in a recent patch, and wasn't an option before. Before that patch, the Fist was a much superior weapon to anything you could get at the time. Of course you don't even have to get either weapon, I was just pointing out that the sword is easier to get if you can get people to summon you to SFK.