Paladin is viable without any talent points spent.
1-60 leveling and pvp. sure.
Raiding? - “healer in plate” or gtfo with that nonsense.
/notsoserious 
You can, most of the “necessary” holy talents are early in the tree so the only thing you lose out on really is some crit.
As for ret, you do miss out on the +hit in prot so you’ll need to account for that.
Unfortunately the talents are no longer laid out this way. But, the point is still valid: you can be creative with your build.
this is unfortunately wrong the reason ret paladin exists is because of pvp with their massive utility and being a plate dps they are a force to be reckoned with in wpvp and premades
If you want to be viable in raids, you are healing. If you want to be viable in dungeons, you could tank, and deal dps, but you will receive a lot of negativity since Paladins weren’t optimal at all for tanking or dps in most scenarios.
Depending on the guild you’re in and the content you plan to run, you should be perfectly fine neighbour. You won’t get into any of the min/max hardcore raiding groups unless you’re bringing crazy good skills, but you’d be fine for world and dungeons.
You could still do raids, you just wouldn’t be the most efficient to have in the party. But you could still totally rock a raid if you’re bringing good skills and are decently geared up via previous raids, endgame dungeons and some high end crafting.
This is coming from a player that is working on a Ret Main/Prot off Paladin. Play the way you like, find the guilds that work with how you want to play and have fun!
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21/0/30 allows you to heal pretty good still since you will be getting mana back whenever you crit heal.
No such thing…
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I’m currently specced deep holy/ret (33/0/18) until our next raid. I dont lose any of the healing talents, but I sacrifice some of the utility such as kings, imp freedom/protection, and imp might, but I gain SoC, pursuit of justice, imp judgement, and conviction.
I’m able to kill things relatively quickly with SoC and holy shock, and having divine favor basically gives you a free full health bar every 2 minutes. I’m also able to jump into group, swap to my healing set, and heal just as well as I do on raid nights. If you arent assigned a tank group for imp devo aura, arent assigned kings/might blessings, and arent in charge of judging light, you could technically keep this spec and not see any difference in raid performance.
depends on your guild but I would assume most would leave you behind for another specialist if the option is there.
This deserves its own thread, tshirt and franchise. 
I played a paladin to rank 10 in Vanilla. The only viable spec they have is holy.
I play a Pally tank. I know warrior is a better tank but i don’t find it as fun. I don’t like the rage mechanic. I like the fact that Pally tank is more challenging. I would play retail if i wanted to dominate and be the same as everyone. The dungeons are pretty easy in this game so everyone can play whay they want and we can still clear leveling content. I know if i raid i will have to switch to heals. A tiny percentage of people playing today will raid…
The wonderful thing about the Paladin’s Holy tree is that it’s most important talent for healing is not very far down. This is Healing Light, which increases amount healed by 12%. So grab 5/5 Divine Intellect, 5/5 Spiritual Focus, 3/3 Healing Light, and why not also grab Consecration for a point. This is only a 14 point investment to be able to heal any dungeon just fine.
At max level, you may want to increase investment to 20 to grab 5/5 Illumination, the second most important healing talent. Illumination makes it so when a heal crits, you get the mana spent back. This is obviously very good but only with better gear.
Only 14 (13) points are required for dungeon healing, and only 20 points are required for raid healing, meaning you can put the other 31 into whatever you want!
I’ve been considering doing a 20/31 build. You can still heal but tank dungeons as well. With that build you lose out on improved wisdom, divine favor and extra 5% crit chance though.
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Just how critical is Holy Shield for dungeon tanking? Could you get away with 21-26 in Prot (i.e., BoSanc + optional Reckoning)? That would shave off 5-10 points to put elsewhere…
if you want raids holy unless you are good friends with the guild leader to let you raid as ret.
Ya, especially pre 60 half ret half holy is pretty viable. Stack SP when you can even as melee as it ups your holy dmg plus heals.
honestly do whatever you think works and have fun with it - you dont have to ride the razor’s edge in classic