I originally posted this in General, but I feel like it probably bears repeating here too.
I main Retribution Paladin. 
TL;DR at bottom, but here’s my longform opinion up front.
Blizzard’s design philosophy has put Retribution Paladin —my main specialization since Vanilla— in a very niche role. Burst DPS during a very specific and recognizable window, via Avenging Wrath/Wings. In PVE this feels great, in rated PVP, this doesn’t.
When it comes to PVE, I’m fine with being patient and waiting for my burst windows to come back online. Honestly, it feels like I’m wading through mud when I’m not in Wings, but the pachinko machine feeling of Paladin’s proc-style gameplay and sudden bursts of speed is fun. I really have zero complaints here.
When it comes to PVP, I feel dangerous in 1v1s and open world PVP. The utility, the heals, and the Forbearance abilities all feel great to pop… because they are powerful. But they’re balanced around Forbearance, so in most fights you’ll really only get to press one.
The big PVP issue comes from arena, where an entire one of these “Oh S**t Button” tools, Lay on Hands— is taken away. And in arena, fights are much longer because of healing and various strategic comps, which puts Ret’s predictable, and cuckable “burst style” at an extreme disadvantage.
Currently, we all know Paladin has trouble with mobility. Blessing of Freedom + Divine Steed is the only answer to mobility that we have, and requires two slow GCDs to get going— and even then we still get absolutely trained by anyone with repeatable CC once our Freedom is used. Divine Steed as “Burst Mobility”, simply isn’t powerful enough to justify having “Burst Mobility” over “Normal Mobility”. Anyone who has tried to keep uptime on damage outside of wings knows this, it’s nigh impossible to DPS outside of Freedom+Wings when you’re saving your mobility for that one, tiny, predictable window. And even then, building stacks of Avenging Wrath is a slow process, where by the time you might reach your full stack, the enemy will have cucked you out of it.
THIS is why we feel like the wheelchair spec . Because outside of saving our burst mobility for our burst offensive cooldown (which by the way is extremely recognizable and easy to counter), we feel like we’re crawling along on our hands and knees in arena after nearly every class: Druids, Shamans, Mages, Rogues, DHs, Monks, you name it— shoot, Warlocks standing still somehow get away.
This brings up our susceptibility to casters, since we get cucked out of our wings so easily. Rets have one SINGLE defense against casters during caster burst windows, Divine Shield. And it’s on a cooldown so long, that once it is popped, the next time their offensive cooldowns come back online, we’re goners. You take Lay on Hands away from us? Okay. Because we have zero mitigation against magic besides Divine Shield. We don’t get Blessing of Spellwarding as a variable tactical choice. I would honestly love either some kind of buff or PVP Talent for Shield of Vengeance, bring back LOH to arena, or give us BOS as a talent at this point, and I’ll just give this argument up and slog through the mud.
So what are we left with? We’re given Auras we already had as passives, Auras we don’t really need— all on a GCD. We’re given consecration, which is pathetically limp, and honestly just flavor. We’re given a redesigned Burst talent (Execution Sentence) that we didn’t need, and you took away Inquisition, the answer to sustained DPS. We don’t need burst DPS fixes. We need mobility fixes, OR the ability to just stand there and ignore damage. Which is it Blizzard? Blessing of Spellwarding in my wheelchair? Or can I at least heal myself to full after getting unavoidably trained, once a fight? Or will you give us an answer to our core class/spec issue— mobility.
That’s what brings me to the biggest issue. I hate borrowed power. I’d go as far to say most people hate borrowed power. We probably hate it so much because it’s something that doesn’t feel like it originates from our character/class, and will eventually go away. They feel like bandaids, when they should feel like cool expansion exclusive augments.
The Night Fae Covenant is the only choice for Retribution Paladins when Shadowlands drops. Soulshape is such a powerful fix to Ret Paladin’s toolkit that it is not an option to go with anything else. It is not only a blink, but it is a speed buff. Divine Steed is a 45sec CD, 100%+ speed for 3 seconds. Soulshape is potentially every 75sec, 50%+ speed for 12s. That’s literally double the ground that Divine Steed can cover AND it gives Ret multiple blinks to deal with CC or even chase & close gaps.
Why is this an issue? Because the way Blizz is designing Shadowlands is locking us into our Covenant choices. I HAVE TO choose Night Fae, because this is simply too powerful to ignore. Not to mention in PVE, most people will expect Blessing of Seasons. Blizz wants your choice to be impactful for RP reasons, but I’m honestly not that big of a fan of the Night Fae, at least as a Paladin. It seems like a Shaman/Hunter/Druid “nature boy” Covenant that I’m honestly not at all interested in. And if the Covenants are really going to be as big of a deal and time sink that Blizzard is purporting them to be, I really am not looking forward to being forced to joining the Night Fae. I’d much rather play with the Kyrians, or hell even the Venthyr.
TL;DR— Ret Paladin is handicapped in rated PVP: susceptibility to casters; mobility issues; forced burst DPS niche; lack of magic defense. Night Fae fixes this with Soulshape, but I don’t like that covenant’s fantasy as a Paladin.