Curious why is paladin's the least played class?

[Alanus]

I played paladin on live.

In exp groups, I was either MT or crowd control. I could draw aggro well and take a beating, so I could easily root mobs away from the group (and keep myself healed), and I could also hold aggro well enough and take a beating enough to be a MT.

However, paladins really were terrible until celestial cleansing came out. After Luclin, we were awesome with slay undead. After PoP came out, I was soloing Kunark dragons (fearless AA + PoP gear) and Venril Sathir (slay undead + that PoWater weapon with insane dmg would kill him with a double proc). I soloed Rhag cycle in Ssra pretty early, too, but I think that was Omens of War expansion.

It was harder on live than on here, too, since the real good weapons (Baton of Faith) were like 40k on live. Here they are like 100pp or less.