Ironically enough…I loved Cataclysm; it was actually my favorite time to play WoW. And it was the class design of the time that made me love it so much:
It was the only time in the whole of WoW’s history that Holy paladins had both a ranged direct-damage spell with no cooldown (Exorcism at the time) and baseline multi-target damage spells that did decent damage and had short cooldowns (Consecration and Holy Wrath). Since that point, Holy has either lacked decent multi-target baseline damage spells (MoP and WoD), or they’ve lacked a ranged direct-damage spell with no cooldown (Legion, BfA, and SL). Having both is more fun than having one, and so far, Cata is the only time we’ve had both—I’m so hoping we get both in Dragonflight!
We also got four new direct healing spells at the start of Cata: Divine Light, Word of Glory, Light of Dawn, and (what I hope they unprune in DF) Holy Radiance. Keep in mind that, up until Cata, the devs didn’t give paladins any new direct heals, while other classes were getting new direct heals as expansions came out. Sure, WotLK gave us Beacon and Sacred Shield, TBC gave us that Divine Illumination cooldown, but we never got a new direct healing spell until Cata, when we got four! Getting four in one expansion made it feel like the devs were making up for lost time, and I especially loved having a multi-target heal with no cooldown that provided Holy Power like Holy Radiance!
It gets better: I’ve been pretty disappointed by the damaging Holy Power spenders that Holy paladins have had at their disposal from MoP onwards: Glyph of Harsh Words was worth casting, but its damage was barely higher than Holy Shock’s damage IIRC. Shield of the Righteous’s damage is also pitiful against single targets; I’ll admit its damage against clustered enemies shines, but that’s pretty niche—against single targets, its damage is less than our finishers, which all too often makes it feel unsatisfying to cast. Honestly, if it weren’t off the GCD, it wouldn’t be worth a GCD to cast it. Cata didn’t have these problems, because at the time, we had Inquisition: it didn’t deal direct damage at all, and simply boosted holy damage by 30% for a set amount of time. It was very much worth casting, but since it didn’t deal direct damage, it didn’t have the balancing headache of giving a healer too much burst damage. I was very sorry to see it become Ret-only in MoP, and the fact that it became unavailable for Holy made me think that Blizzard was getting way, way too trigger-happy with their ability pruning. Honestly, there are times I wish they’d bring Inquisition back as a Holy-only spell, though without Denounce/Exorcism/some non-cooldown holy damage spell, it wouldn’t be as impactful now as it was in Cataclysm.
On top of all of this, we still had some good seals and blessings in Cata, and we got Rebuke in the middle of the expansion when Retribution’s talents were adjusted to make Rebuke baseline instead of a 21-point Ret talent. I had SO many tools in my toolbox during Cata, many of them were or felt novel, since several spells were retooled to be far more useful than they were before, like Exorcism and Holy Wrath.
I was never happier playing WoW than I was in Cataclysm!
…That’s probably the only unpopular opinion in this thread, if I’m being honest: Shockadins are popular (with me too, for what it’s worth!), but I know I’m in the minority for liking Cataclysm the best.