Are Paladins Suppose to be healers?

Classes Paladin
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Hi Community,

Just a question out of lore curiosity. Are Paladins suppose to be main healers?

I played Paladin pretty often since Vanilla and always had a hard time understanding why a person that could wear plate was healing, and originally with only 2 spells. Wasn’t a Paladin suppose to be either…

  1. A warriors who took a few lessons in priest school to learn to lick his wounds better after battle.

Or

  1. A Priest who went to warrior school to learn to slay undead better.

Because over the years, as Blizzard keeps re-evaluating the class, the company keeps introduction better healers, especially now with the Evoker. Feels like it is time Paladins find a new purpose.

I missed the old days with all them blessings :frowning: Now a days I somehow smack my enemies with my shield and waves of light heal my team, seems weird conceptually. Makes more sense went Monks do with their Gust of Jade Mist than a Paladin doing it.

I must of slept through the lessons in that Uther book “The Light and how to swing it”…lol

Oh well, I’ll be retiring my Paladin for good in upcoming expansion, as I feel he has adventured enough for one life time. But I am looking forward, in my spare time, to making armaments of armor and weapon by bending the light with my sheer will, cause that makes sense apparently…

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Instead of just complain, what would you change?

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It was a question out of curiosity really, no meant to be a complaint.

Hmm… how would I change them? Maybe as a class where your spells are mostly AOE style, where the Paladin cast grounded spells party member stand on to get different blessing and buffs, then the class can feel more like a support or direct mix of fight and heal. /shrug XD

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I like Paladin healing. It feels on brand with Paladin. But I really miss the days of blessings. Like that’s my favorite part of classic Paladins. I got to give people buffs! I know Blizzard is trying to cool it on the raid buffs with the new “Bring the player not the class” methodology but it just felt so nice to give people buffs.

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Conceptually I feel like melee wings for holy paladin fits more.

Plate armor screams melee combat, the light part is definitely magic orientated. Thematically paladins seems in a good spot to be honest.

I do wish we were slightly more utility,/buff oriented (but I don’t mean just buff others DMG, that’s so… flat)

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Thematically, yes, Paladins can be healers and Paladins typically can perfom some healing in many Syfi IPs that include Paladins. If you’re arguing that Paladins shouldn’t heal, than I would argue that many other WoW specs have less or no thematic reasons to heal. Thematically certainly many non-hybrid/non-support roll dps and non-Paladin tank specs shouldn’t heal or should heal for far less than Paladins.

I’ve observed the changes for TWW. Holy Paladin will remain capable for its healing role, Protection Paladin will be able to heal less than now, Retribution, limited still by mana in all content and pvp specific healing nerfs, will be a poor healer but may have a few save the day healing moments in PVE where its meager healing is enough to spare the team from wipeing.

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Ok yeah, keep going…

Humm, please no.

It’s antithetical to the direction the game has been going.
The game is more dynamic, requires more movement and positioning than ever before.

Prot players have been complaining about Consecration being static for almost 8 years now and they just started to make concessions to it.

Hell, people trashed lightsmith reticule idea because of how bad it would feel if the wrong person took it or, worse, if no one took it at all.
And you want more of that?

What do you mean?
Holy has been a staple in mythic raiding since Legion for all competitive groups.

Design wise?
I’d agree.
They flipped flopped a lot, melee healing became a thing and, although controversial, it was an ok design to keep improving.
But in DF they went back to support range healing, which is fine, but made it so

How come is there STILL no range damage spender for Holy? How hard is it to put Denounce in there?

Meanwhile, other healers got reworked and came out with a more fleshed out and streamlined design.

All around I’d say Ret feel very good and have a very good design, it’s main problems are that it doesn’t bring anything special compared its other spec and that the PVP balance team seems to despise it.

Prot is improving design wise because of consecration changes, I still think it’s fundamentally flawed having AS be such a focus and yet do it’s own thing outside of HP gameplay. It’s a fracture between the two that they tried to mend with talent that links them like grand crusader and crusader judgement but that doesn’t feel right.
At least to me.

Holy…
Not a big holy player, last time I tried it, I went through the talent tree and it felt like it didn’t know what it wanted to do.
Took a peek for TWW, still think it looks confused, they just tuned the core spells higher.

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per the lore,

The first paladins where priest that learn Martial Combat and otherwise Knights to learn the holy light.

“I will establish a new branch of the Church, the [paladins] I have already selected the first candidates for this order. Some were [knights]

  • before but others were [priests] I chose these men for both their piety and their martial prowess. They will be trained, not only in war but in prayer and in healing. And each of these valiant fighters will possess both martial and spiritual power, particularly in blessing themselves and others with the strength of the [Holy Light]*
    — [Archbishop Alonsus Faol]

Theoretically, it makes sense they have different specializations to be more proficient with other stuff like the original 4 paladins were.

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Wonderful perspectives and insights on this question I had! Thanks for all the replies community :slight_smile:

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