I'm sorry, when you have two other specs available for raiding and you chose not to use either the tank or heal spec that would have benefitted the raid and made use of the class you play, that's not on the game designers. Only one rogue class was getting raid invites, and even then reluctantly. How many pure arcane mages did you see in BT? How about Demonology specced warlocks?

All the classes have trees that didn't suit certain aspects of the game, and as a paladin you had the choice to be the SINGLE BEST pre-3.02 tank class if you wanted to be a raider. You don't get to complain about not going if you're not willing to do your part to help the raid out.

I get it, you choose a class, you level from 1-70 with a spec designed to balance keeping you alive and making other things dead, it's jarring to suddenly need to respec to something with only one purpose to help out a raid. It's understandable, it's common...but it wasn't a paladin specific problem.

It could have been worse, healing priests can't solo anything in order that they could have the gear and spec needed to keep the raid alive. Tankadins could still do dailies without respeccing before and after every raid.