I am a long time lurker here and just feel I need to say something for a change.
I decided after looking for pally tanks all the time to roll one for myself. So I rolled a BE pally (pretty gay I know - wish I had another option horde-side) on a new PvP server where I have some friends. Am currentl at level 68 and I love this pally so much. Am prot specced and I never have to wait more than 5 minutes for a group for any instance. CC? who cares, tanking 4-5 mobs is easy (from a threat perspective at least!). Grinding is relatively fun when I take 4-6 mobs at once. It's actually way faster to grind multiple mobs at once than it is to single target them. If I am grinding with my mage friend we kill mobs so fast that we are restricted by spawns (and those evil alliance who drop outta the sky) more than anything else.
I havent tried Ret (in the later levels) yet but am thinking of going ret to grind out some battlegrounds at 69 for the S2 healing mace and maybe an S2 2hander.
In short, pallies are just awesome. I can do anything I like without having to re-roll (except maybe ranged dps - but I have my lock for that). Thanks to all those great pallies on this forum whose advice made this class go from a grind at the beginning to a fun experience once I knew what I was doing. I'll be back post kara as all the info I want/need now is already in the stickies :)
Good luck all of you and thanks
Sacer (Twilight's Hammer EU)