Originally Posted by
Calamari
You are right, a well designed raid encounter will have means to prevent the full use of such situationally powerful support tools. However even in raids Hand of Protection is very powerful (think Rotfaces slimes, when they catch up with someone who can't dodge the poison pool).
Hand of Sacrifice is fantastic, 30% damage reduction on a friendly tank is -huge- when, effectively another cooldown to their arsenal at your disposal. The current Intervene prevents 1 attack (usually not even that, it can be very unreliable), and unlike hand spells, requires you to charge all the way over the friendly player's melee range and through whatever might lie inbetween, most raid tanks can't afford leaving their positions all too often.
Lay on Hands? I've saved so many wipes with this in raids and 5 mans. Can top off a near death tank within 1 gcd, at a 7min cd that's simply magnificent.
Prot paladin self healing is but an icing on the cake and not necessary to use at all, it's simply a bonus in addition to all the support tools available to you.
The true trump of being a prot paladin is having the tools to assist and counter almost any danger on individual party members without interrupting the tanking process at all. A protection warrior has none of that, we have our dps rotation, there is no reactive self healing outside of Frenzied Regeneration. We have 1 support cooldown, which is Rallying Cry, and that pales in comparison to Divine Guardian. We have 0 support tools to reduce a friendly targets damage taken, or heal the group, we are the only tanking class with such drastic limitations to group support.