So, I'm not a fan of the Divine Smite not being ranged, but I guess that is some whistling into the wind. I do like the new unified smite mechanic, and many of the smites have been improved. Still need some tweaking on Banishing, Staggering and Wrathful, but blinding and searing are now good.
I'd also give up weapon masteries any day of the week to keep cantrips for Paladins. Seriously, cantrips opened up some great utility for the Paladin, don't take those away from us to give us weapon masteries.
I am a bit surprised they took away divine Conduit, it was a good ability since Paladin's have a lot of use for those channel divinity options.
Is Level 7 just supposed to suck for paladins? Charm immunity is of limited use, they nerfed ancients into the ground by just giving them resistance to three of the least common damage types, and Vengeance gets an ability that is decent, but then broken by its own later ability. About the only one that is a purely good ability might be the Alacrity, and it isn't THAT good.
I like the Smite of Protection, but I am upset it got moved and changed. I understand why because of Inspiring Smite. Inspiring Smite needs to scale better at high levels.
Nature's Wrath is fixed! YES! In fact, most of ancients is great except for the nerf to the Aura.
Same with Vengeance for the most part. Vow of Enmity moving is amazing, relentless stopping movement is neat. However, Soul of Vengeance needs to be an opportunity attack, otherwise you will have conflict between wanting to use Relentless to lock them in place, and Soul to hit when attacked. And you shouldn't have your 15th level ability competing with your 7th level ability like this.