Great to see questions raised that I could have raised myself .

I'm just reaching lvl 46 with a paladin now - or actually I finally understand that my mage with Str is in fact a paladin !

An additional point is of course the damage. I am a bit disappointed that spells don't grow even further (when do we get a lvl 6-7 damage, devs ?) ; but the fact is that you can't rely much on your weapon to kill enemies, especially bosses. I've equipped my paladin with a shield, and that makes it difficult to find a single-hand weapon doing more than 100. Having no shield makes you a weaker paladin - knowing that bosses in aoe3 have a slight tendancy already to kill you in one blow.

Furthermore, ideally I'd like to enter the middle of the melee to debuff / use area effect spells, then potentially retreat and fire from remote - but that isn't possible with a Str weapon.
So yes, please, give us fireballs with 400 damage :-P.