Hammer of Justice is great against those pesky kobolds that just like to run away at 20% health. Hand of Reckoning works wonders too as does Rigteous Defense. I solo leveled as a holy paladin back in the day when we didn't have these last two spells, I know how frustrated you are. Not to mention that the first ranged weapon we can get, Linken's Boomerang (which is really just a trinket), can only be gotten solo at about lvl 60 and at the very earliest, I think it's 56 or so. And by that time it's pretty worthless. good luck with your leveling.

The problem being, those aren't terribly helpful in battlegrounds/PvP. The Exorcism change, for example, was made for the reason of balancing PvP. So, instead of having one decent ranged attack below level 40, I had zero ranged attacks, with a 6-second stun on a 60 second cooldown. Even warriors have a gap-closer at that level.

Not to mention, they can also use guns.

Actually, Hammer of Wrath is a staple of pally pvp. you honestly won't survive if you don't use it. The beautiful thing about Holy paladins in pvp is that they're almost impossible to kill. Instead of trying to kill the opposing hunters you should work on staying alive as long as possible so that your warrior friend can come over and bonk that hunter over the head. But as a ret pally in pvp, I can see where you're coming from, this nerf to exorcism is going to be really really rough. It was/will be (in 3.2) really the only ranged spell to use while tearing it up in the BGs and giving a cast bar to it, which can be interrupted, is ridiculous. I mean, why don't they give the warlock's fear spell a cast bar so I can hammer of justice it away. even though that 1.5 secs isn't that long, it's long enough when you're trying to pull out every trick in the book to down a shaman in pvp.