Holy is going to be more in demand to a point. There’s going to be at least one Ret required for their unique utility, too. For Prot - probably one or two max for trash, especially in Hyjal. Outside of that I don’t expect to see them in a raid.
The main thing is that Crusader Strike refreshes all Judgements on the target, including ones applied by others. Do you can have a HPal apply one and not have to do anything to keep it up.
I’ll be in the camp that Prot is more useful. They are a phenomenal tank, best AOE threat in the game, although you don’t want more than 1.
And your prot will need ret/holy OS. Prot pallies take some time to gear up like feral tanks do. Some people with these rosy tinted pally tanking dreams are going to have a harsh reality to realize the life of a prot pally in BC.
Despite popular opinion, Holy is not very useful in TBC since every raid should have 5 shaman in it, and 3 of them should be resto. Optimal comp would also include 3 druids, one of each spec, and 2-3 priests, again ideally one of each spec.
So that’s 6 healers right there. Out of 25.
Due to paladin buffs, you’ll also want 3 paladins, one of each spec. So that’s 7.
7 dedicated healers out of 25 is enough, if not, somebody’s bad.
Holy paladins lose MUCH of their value in TBC. Kinda like warriors, in general.
That said, if you LOVE being a holy paladin and are good at it, you’ll get a raid spot.
Get a prot spec, learn to tank, then pick either holy or ret for your dual-spec.
Always will be Ret, no matter what. Nobody managed to force me to be Holy in Classic, and I don’t see that happening in TBC. I wouldn’t mind someone asking me to tank though, for offspec.
holy is the only viable spec in classic. you need to take 5/5 illumination and 5/5 holy power. other than that build however you want. stack +healing, and intellect. put flash of light rank 1 and 6 on your hotbar. get the higher rank holy light book from aq20. you dont have prayer of healing or the access to the +healing gear that priests have. your main purpose is to provide kings/salvation/might/wisdom/light to the raid and to cast flash of light on every global cooldown.
Holy or prot. Ret is still bottom. Its perfectly playable, and fun, in the same way that it is playable and fun right now in vanilla. You can do it, its viable, but its not really what that class does best.
Almost every 5s team needs a holy pally unless you’re doing some 4 dps plus shaman bloodlust comp.
And paladins are hands down best aoe tank in the game.
If Alliance, prot or holy. Alliance ret still sucks in TBC; it’s a little better than it is now, but not by much as far as its relative damage to boss HP. You’ll still have a retadin in a raid group ideally for imp sanc aura, judgment maintenance, and imp jotc, but the talent pool will probably be small as all the “serious” ret players go horde for the sake of twisting SoB with SoC for much greater damage.
It only “looks better” because raid teams are smaller than the top end gets flattened. If you don’t like ret now, you probably won’t like it in BC.
Thanks for all the answers, but I still don’t know which one would be the most useful for my Guild considering that they do Progress, Farm and then Speedrun of the Raids.
Is really necessary or better that one Ret Pally in the raid over any other DPS that does more damage?
Is really necessary or better a prot pally in every raid over a Warrior Tank? My guild have a lot of Warriors tanks.
Is really necessary or better a Holy Pladin (for healing the tank, i guess) over a Resto Shaman/Druid or Holy Priest?
I understand that there must always be at least 3 for the blessings (kings, salvation and might/wisd), but which one would be better?