For sure. It’d have to be melee only and deep Ret, but that would help a lot. Ret will still be low dps but that’s ok. Nobody should be doing warrior levels of damage, not even warriors 
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Both druids (feral) and enhance are excellent burst and dmg potential
paladins are also not meant to regen mana like a mage. Our unique mana regen is actually group based, and the seal of wisdom is intended to be used tactically and swapped around. Meaning for pve raid dps, rets are not setup to take advantage in the traditional sense. But in pvp there are situations where you will use every item in your kit for both solo/group pvp, and paladins there have no issues working out the low mana.
Not really an issue, TBH.
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A thread about Paladins doesn’t mean other hybrids shouldn’t be addressed too. There can be other threads for that.
With that said…
Feral feels like it’s in a good place for a hybrid. I don’t know much about Enhance and where they sit, but I do know that Balance and Shadow both suffer from the same mana longveity issues that Ret Paladins do.
You’ll note that I’m suggesting for a small bonus to mana sustain. It doesn’t have to be crazy. With that said… SoW doesn’t really get an opportunity to be a factor in both PvP and PvE, fights just don’t last long enough. You need a decent amount of time to offset the cost of the seal, the judgement, and possibly a second seal before you overcome that deficet.
With that said, this could be an intersting, and very classic, alternative to address Ret mana issues. My suggestion is to restore a small amount of base mana on crit attached to vengeance, since it jives with that talent’s goals already. However, attaching a bonus to two-handed weapon specialization that guaranteed a SoW proc with a multiplier (or perhaps reduced cost) when using 2h weapons only, could come with some interesting gameplay decisions.
Even as a Ret in PvP, either of these solutions won’t add much as they require the ret to move into melee range to utilize. You’ll also be forced to make a decision between a fast 2h weapon that will be lower damage, or your normal slow 2h weapon for higher damage. One intersting thing to call out… the latter approach using an enhanced SoW for mana regen, leave the Paladin weak to purges by priests and shaman, which is a good thing imo.
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No thanks! I main a Paladin, I don’t want this. Most of all I found Exorcism against all targets so bad first time around. I have not grown to like it since. Please if you like all these changes to paladin wait for later or play something else.
Why did you find it to be bad?
GCD on none-support feels one dimensional on a paladin and it feels best when you have that freedom to get off a bop/cleanse/freedom in team combat.
Cutting your regen judging/casting exo is a good example of why the mana is none issue in pvp. Because you arent supposed to spam, you are supposed to tactically cast seals/judges and abuse the 5s rule.
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Can you please elaborate on this? I’m having trouble understanding what you mean here. Based on the way you use “none” further down I’m guessing it’s just a translation quirk. I think we can get there, I just need a bit more help understanding what you mean 
Exorcism is on a 15s CD. Skillful play can line this up with other ability usage allowing the paladin to continue to abuse the 5s rule. Play that isn’t skilled will punish the Paladin for using Exorcism, or at the very least, it will be a judgement call to weigh an extra damage cast against the loss of mana regen at an inopportune time.
As it should be.
Because Exorcism is a thing used against evil entities like undeads, demons, possesions ect. Not against orcs, trolls, kobolds, Gnolls and other … It took a great hunk out of the “Paladinness”
No thanks.
Thanks for elaborating. While I do appreciate flavour and charm in Vanilla WoW, I think that there are flaws here. Exorcism does not currently work against Undead player targets, or mob types that are clearly undead/demons. A good example of the latter being the last boss in Strat Life.
I think TBC offerred a nice solution that could easily be applied in this case. Exorcism still does damage, but receives a bonus to undead/demon targets.
For you, would that still preserve the “Paladinness” while giving Paladins more flexibility in their damage application?
This. Problem with exo isnt that its only against undead, its that compared to other sources of specific mob dmg, its pretty weak. Other items give 200+ap towards undead, and it puts paladin in a weird place when its class fantasy as a killer of undead/demons does less dmg against said sources than a warrior.
Like I said in other posts, paladin just suffers from dmg scaling and crusader seal being a holdover from a dps meta they scrapped.
Why is it always bad paladins asking for changes like this?
“Why is it always the class incapable of doing what it is designed to do in the community of hyper elitist classic andys asking this?”
I would prefer the errors to be corrected, Paladins’ exsorcism should be harming obvious undead NPC’s and be given a minor bonus against UD players - I am not much for trying to balance - or re-balance, or maybe even un-balance - PvP where I cannot grasp the consequenses.
And no, I would not like Exorcism to harm obvious non-undead etc. like kobolds, gnolls, ect.
I don’t mean this to be offensive, Vanillataur, but it sounds like the limiting factor is your ability (or lackthereof) to consider what a change might mean for PvP. You’re welcome to feel about it however you like but those feelings, especially uninformed ones, should not act as the barrier to what is some sorely needed balance adjustment for Ret (or any other class/spec).
Throughout all of my suggestions I have made an effort to consider the PvP implications. I agree that Ret Paladins are in a decent place in PvP and don’t want to tip the balance too much. I don’t believe my suggestions thus far will do so but if you feel otherwise, I would absolutely encourage you to dig further in and consider what those changes might mean. When doing this, it would be helpful if you had some baseline experience of actually playing a Ret Paladin in PvP. If you don’t want to, no problem, but perhaps you might want to reconsider your strong opposition to potential changes here.
I’m not trying to be rude here, we’ve interacted many times on these forums and I have high regard for you, but you’re taking a stance against something without being willing to dive into the implications of it.
Finally, I want to point out that all of this is speculative. We have to consider the original design intents of Vanilla and, in a parallel universe where Vanilla didn’t progress on to TBC (ie, no massive shifts), what kinds of balance changes might Blizzard have made here. The fact of the matter is, the 1.12 patch left the game in a rather unbalanced state, primarily on the PvE front, with some DPS classes far outscaling others and creating a large rift. Had we not gone to TBC and WoW went fully into maintenance mode, it’s reasonable to assume that this would have been addressed in some form or another.
The how of this is up in the air since we’re all just putting on our Vanilla designer hats and trying to do the best we can… but I absolutely would encourage you to build on the discussion here.
Always thought a great change to make ret better in PvE without impacting PvP would be giving 2 handed specialization additional weapon skill. Makes sense aesthetically. It wouldn’t be revolutionary but I think it would be a welcomed… edge.
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You are not offensive - I have no idea whasoever aout PvP, and I have repeatedly said so in these forums. The only thing I know is that the opinons on Paladins’ viability in PvP are videly diverse in the Forum - ranging from absolute crap to godlike - I do not know what to think as I have almost zero first hand experience. I keep out of PvP if at all possible, and think I joined 5 BGs from they launced until I quit in BfA – maining a Pally almost all the way.
I said exactly what I meant whenI said:
I think you here mean on the PvP front 
I will on the other hand continue to maintain that Exorcism against NPCs other than those Undead and suchlike is a big no go for me.
I’m glad you aren’t taking it that way
No I mean PvE. The relative balance between classes in PvP isn’t that bad, every class has a place and a contribution to make. The same can’t be said in PvE, where cummulative class changes and Naxx gear exposed the rather crazy scaling of melee classes and, in particular, warriors.
If the only reason you’re against Exorcism on any target is purely for RP related reasons, perhaps we can shift the discussion. Hopefully you can recognize that while Ret is in a decent place for PvP, they struggle to be an effective contribution to a raid team. They need… something!
My goal is to avoid adding entirely new abilities. This feels like something appropriate to an entirely new expansion and doesn’t belong in the context of Vanilla. Adjustments to existing abilities and talents seem more Vanilla-centric way to go. Changing Exorcism so that it can be used on any target capitalizes on the fact that the ability already exists and allows it to extend the Paladin toolkit to a broader range. Furthermore, it doesn’t really cause significant impact in PvP given its CD, mana cost, and damage compared to health pools (ie, it’s significantly less effective than, say, Mortal Strike).
If you can’t support an Exorcism change in this way, are there any other suggestions you can offer that would make Ret Paladins more PvE viable while having seemingly limited PvP impact?
If they give paladins crusader strike then they need to buff lots of other specs/classes. Not gonna happen. Just deal with the fact that you’re gonna have to heal in raids in classic as a paladin. They get a lot better come TBC. If you don’t wanna heal, then make paladin your alt and play a warrior or rogue.