On the cusp of the 4.2 to 4.3 transition, and with fresh eyes having just returned to the game recently, the State of the Paladin is very healthy. Overall, without feeling imbalanced, the paladin class feels strong in all three of its roles.

Tanking - Even with Holy Shield manually (or macro) applied, the tanking rotation has returned to a natural-feeling and physiologically/mechanically comfortable rhythm with ample room for spice and options. You can easily slide in an interrupt if your Captain America shield is on CD with Rebuke without missing a beat in holding the pack or single target mob. You can heal yourself or the group and spread Hands or other helpful spells all while doing your primary task of keeping the targets under control, moving to stay out of the bad, and keeping your friends from harm's way. Most of all, something that I am hearing confirmed by many healers, is that the Paladin tank is not squishy and is not difficult to gear with a little focused discipline. As a healer and in speaking with other healers, DK tanks continue to be very squishy and bad can go to ugly quickly for them; warrior tanks are either rock solid or highly squishy and the former are far more rare than the latter - this may be more that they are DPS warriors putting on the gear for the shorter random queues; druid tanks are a mana hole in the ground however if you are not in such a rush that you cannot drink between every 1-2 fights, it is not that much of an issue. Of all of them, the Paladin tank is coming across as the easiest to heal with average mana pools and without constantly having to trip CDs under code red conditions.

Healing - Long gone are the days where the Paladin was immediately set to tank healing role and our capability to take on any healing role and task is now well established. I highly doubt this will be reversed even in future patches or releases now that Blizzard has found how to allow any class to take on any healing role. Whereas the tanking role is really about control and moving the boss when the boss needs to be moved and if someone is standing in the bad it is someone else's problem, the healer's role is to try to find the places from which they can reduce movement as much as possible, heal the people standing in the bad, and if the boss needs to be moved, it is someone else's problem. And healing people standing in the bad (as long as they do it only for limited times as exposure to the bad is now designed to be fatal) is brisk and does not interrupt keeping the tank alive - in fact, it contributes to keeping the tank alive with Beacon and well-placed shocks to build up LoD or single-target WoG.

DPS - Mercifully, not seeing anywhere near as many Ret paladins swamping the 5-mans anymore. That ravaging swarm has phased out and passed on. Those that remain, have learned - for the most part - how to play their role within a larger group rather than be an individual who happens to have 4 other people in the same instance with them! Extremely well-geared Retadins are certainly out-dpsing other classes, however, for the most part they are running a strong 2nd place with respectable dps output and enough utility spells to be a strong contributor to the group success - especially when things go bad.

In summary, while I am hearing a lot of "they need to fix this" or "hope they improve that in the next patch" for other classes, I am not hearing the same for the Paladin. Fabulous. Play on!