Stay in SM till 40 and move onto ZF. Screw Gnomer, it's terrible for boosting. Also the library isn't bugged. Some zones the mobs will purposely reset if you run to far away just like outside of instances. Gnomer is actually one of these zones which is one of the bigger reasons why it sucks for boosting.

I've used two different paladins too boost. 1 with 11k hp and 950~ spell dmg and another with 8.3k hp and 300 spell dmg (green "of the sorcerer" gear) and tbh the surviablility of your paladin comes more from the talents and abilities rather than your gear. Using BoL and strafing, which most people don't , while gathering mobs makes up for alot of gear issues. Sure it's still much nicer to use my BT geared pally in comparison to my green geared pally but till you get past ZF it's not a huge difference. Gear does start to come heavily into play in BRD+