Paladin requires a lot of stats so its best to prioritize STR (14-16), CON (14-16), CHA (14-16), and INT (10-14) with WIS and DEX as dump stats spending all levelling points in STR. Then you'll want the best tomes you can get.
The problem is that people splash paladin way too much, and little work has been done to make taking several level of paladin viable unless you go 18-20 paladin levels. I also think that enhancement tiers higher than 2 should require more class levels. Some how the level requirements of the higher enhancement tiers lowered thus making splashing the best way to build instead of pure classing being the most attractive way to play.