The light: abandoned faith or still needed?

Hello and welcome on Dave likes cookies.

For the first post of this brand-spanking-new blog i'm going to tackle the problems of endgame paladins. (the fact my main is a paladin has nothing to do with it, i swear ! )
Are paladins needed in endgame raids apart for their ability to buff, cleanse and rez ? Recently i've seen examples where other healers are being selected for raids whereas paladins are not because of the nature of the instance. I'm talking about Sunwel Plateau in particular where there happens so much at the same time, where everyone takes a crapload of damage at the same time and where classes with raidheal abilities really shine. (priests, shaman and druids)
This has also been stated by numerous highend raidingguilds who are in the competition for world first. Recently Neg (a restoshaman from SKgaming) said the following:

"Paladins are the healers who really get left behind. They were the kings of healing in early Burning Crusade, but the most efficient way to use them in Sunwell is quite sadly having them outside of the raid buffing people."

Honestly i can only agree with said statement, sad as it is. The paladin's healingefficiency is just too low to be competitive with other healers in SWP. This isn't only the case in highend raiding but also in the newly implemented Magister's Terrace where groupdamage is also quite high and have to be healed rather quick, something paladins aren't able to do that well.
So my question is: "Will the paladins go back to what they were initially when we started raiding MC? Buff - and cleansebots with the additional heal here an there ? Or will Blizzard take a look at our healingcapabilities and improve it so we're a competitive healingclass in endgame raiding again?"
This won't be a question that will have an answer in the first few months, we'll just have to wait and see until WotLK is released and check out what new talents and spells paladins get. But for now we're pretty redundant and outclassed by other healers, which is a tad sad tbh. While paladins are great healers for lower bracket raidinstances where we excel at MThealing and throwing heals around because people aren't receiving that much raiddamage, we are being ditched when they hit SWP for restoshamans.
To conclude the first -fairly brief- topic of this new blog, i'd like to give a token of support to my fellow paladins and hope for the best in Wrath.

-Dave out