blood elves druid make as much sense as goblins druid
they are not “lore-friendly”
Any race that worships anything can be a priest, as light is powered by faith so u can even have faith in gold and it will let you manifest these abilities, but for paladins their icons always had to be an embodiment of light or sun as they don’t simply call the light down, they embody it on a intimate level.
As for the Zandalari, many of them frequent many Loa but only Rezan has a monopoly on paladins that we have seen.
Edit: It seems you already knew about how goblin priests work, haha
I don’t think they can’t, it’s just dangerous. As converts (a recently made race whose members were ALL something else) you don’t lose your class. It’s why there are Forsaken Paladins canonically, they just get hurt by their own power.
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It’s another one of those cases where it can happen, but it’s rare. We’ve seen High Botanists in multiple elven societies now and with a spellkit that’s similar to druids. I would have to look more into the specifics of how nature magic works in the lore game (I know elemental magic is sort of ‘bestowed’ with pacts with the elements), but we see Freywinn - a blood elf - with a treeform, and Tel’arn - a Nighbourn - having spells with the three common attributes you see with druidic spells: Arcane, Nature, and Solar.
Factoring in that he can summon plantlife and manipulate it, that’s VERY druidic. Druids are possible within their culture, but I would wager that most would think the title of ‘druid’ would be primitive when applied to themselves.
True, there’s lore suggesting that a paladin’s relationship with their deity of choice probably gives them a closer connection and lets them embody their power more than a priest could, but there’s precedence in the lore with NPC dialogue to suggest the power can be drawn elsewhere.
Paladin’s draw on their power through unshakeable faith in something. The cosmic force of Light doesn’t care if what your faith is in so long as it’s accompanied with belief and conviction. I’ll go so far to say that Prelates are a further proof of this; now that Rezan is gone, all they have is their code, their people to lead, their queen, and the remaining loa, and like the dialogue suggests, that serves as their anchor now.
I’m eagerly awaiting the day where we can play goblin paladins as souped up CFOs. Blinding Light = Blinding Bling $$$$$$$$
Read about discipline priests, light and void can be used together.
They have shown to be able to be used together and they also periodically changes sides according to the Naaru.
This suggests one cannot exist without the other.
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The Botanists you have seen though are not druids, and the examples you listed is what happens when you use arcane to manipulate how plants grow in a unnatural way.
Druidic magic follows natural schematics so to say where mages use arcane magic to create the outcome they want in a way that otherwise is not natural.
Being modified by arcane also makes the plants arcane inclined, no longer in a natural state.
Actual druids would not approve of this because it is unnatural and mage as a class and society are using arcane in a way that is far removed to how druids think it should be used to the point of heresy and just morally wrong.
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The light doesn’t care about good or evil, it only cares about conviction.
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They are abominations.
Blood elves aren’t technically Pallys as they are blood nights not Paladins, Taruen pallys are ridiculous.
How Trolls can sit down to a meal pray to the light while being cannibals is utter nonsense.
Zandalari do not practice Cannibalism, they also explain tauren paladins through a light god named An’shee
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Going off of the spells in their kits, I disagree - they’re druid enough. Even though Freywinn has some mage spells in his arsenal, he has two of the most iconic druid spells in the game’s history and the majority of his spells go beyond that. I’d go so far as to call him dual-classed.
I mean the guy is wearing the Cenarion Raiment - he at least leveled up druid to 60 and raided enough MC for that gear. Come on.
Cultures with druids among them often view the arcane with skepticism or harshness if their culture was greatly impacted by the War of the Ancients. You see a lot of this with Night Elves in particular and even some tauren, but druids are a LOT more arcane aligned than they’d want to admit. Hell, The Emerald Dream IS a construct from the Titans and will always have some link to the Arcane by that association.
We see a lot in druidic quests and lore about preserving a ‘balance’ in nature, but it’s clear that there’s other schools of thought and different doctrines within druidism that would likely conflict with one another as to how that balance would be achieved. The Drust embracing death is almost antithetical to the tone of a lot of the druidic quests that came before BfA.
I don’t think a Zandalari druid or even a Kul Tiran would care so much about arcane manipulations as long as it didn’t upset the balance to such an extreme level, given the history of their cultures.
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The term “Paladin” has truly lost its meaning.
Originally, the Paladins were a group of human warriors of the faith, armed clerics who took up arms in defence of the Alliance during the Second War. They constituted the military branch of the Church of the Holy Light. Paladins were a strictly-Human group. In Vanilla, the class was Alliance-exclusive, and only Humans and Dwarves could be one.
I tolerated Blood Elves Paladins in TBC, because High Elves were followers of the Holy Light as shown by the High Elf Priest unit from WC3. Still the introduction of Draenei “Paladins” muddied the waters. Now suddenly Humans were no longer the first paladins in the setting.
Cataclysm is when the term completely lost its meaning. Tauren don’t worship the Light, why can they be Paladins? Nonsense.
BfA with Troll Paladins just made no sense. Loa are Wild Gods, the domain of Life, not the Light. Rezan is a Wild God = LIFE. NOT Light. A follower of Rezan should be a Druid/Shaman, NOT a Paladin. Utter nonsense.
That’s not what jumping the shark means.
They’re paladins because of how light magic works in universe. Remember, the Church of the Holy Light may be an Alliance-founded organization (or Draenei depending on where your definition of the Church begins and ends), but the Light is something that’s been around for all of known creation.
Plenty of races older than humans and the Church itself have made use of paladin arts before paladins were a named concept.
Frankly? It’s very likely tauren were paladins before humans were, as the worship of An’she, which is where Sunwalkers draw their power from, fell out of vogue and had to be rediscovered. Crazy, right? 
Except that the Sunwalkers are a modern group. They were founded AFTER the Cataclysm.
Furthermore, the Sunwalkers worship An’she, who is related to Elune, who is a Life entity. Not Light. Life. Life =/= Light.
Paladins are Light, not Life.
Said it when it happened, will say it again. Troll paladins is stupid
The botanists are mages, using arcane magic to mimic nature.
If you are using that to justify a druid, so we can justify goblin druids cause what more lucrative than growing stuff for free that you can sell?
100%
“But the lore!” excuse went out the window with Goblin and Gnome Priests. Gnomes worship science, not ‘the light’ and Goblins, as a race, are far too selfish to be Priests.
And then you’ll get the inevitable argument of: “well races aren’t a monolith and close proximity to other races that worship the light have caused SOME Goblins/Gnomes to convert”
Okay and if that’s valid, then it would also stand to reason that some humans would find Druidism cool and convert, too. You can’t have it both ways.
So at this point, I’m all for removing class/race restrictions. I’d love more options for Druid, Shaman, etc.
Also it makes zero sense that any races that can be both Warrior and Priests cannot become Paladins. It’s stupid.
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Yes, after the Cataclysm, but Tahu Sagewind’s dialogue in particular makes mention of it being something that was lost with the influence the the night elves had on the trajectory of their druidic culture.
An’she may be related to a goddess associated with the moon which coincides more with life/nature entities, but that doesn’t outright exclude any attachment to the light. Resources from quest dialogue with tauren paladins, what the Visual Guide had to say about them say that their power is Light-based, and as it has been said multiple times in this thread, what you believe in doesn’t have to be purely the associated with the Light for the Light to be invoked.
Out of curiosity, what are you drawing on that’s saying that the High Botanists are mages? I’m finding very little lore surrounding the term ‘High Botanist’, and as previously mentioned, druids do have arcane tools as a part of their kit.
It would depend on the goblin’s character, but seeing how goblins literally get their priest powers through their belief in greed of all things, it wouldn’t be a stretch, no. Honestly it’d be pretty in-character for a group of goblins making an effort to restore life to places like Desolace and other barren areas so they can make a move on the agricultural industry. I’d actually be down with that. 
The ingredients are right there…
I’ve got a strong feeling paladins will be opened to all races if and when we have another bout with the Army of the Light.
Is there a Loa of surfing? Because I’d love to run into the Loa of Hanging Ten.
It’s one of those situations where the lore is backseated for gameplay. Zandalari paladins don’t really wield the Light like other Paladins, they’re more like Divine Warriors who wield the power of their chosen Loa. Unfortunately Blizz hasn’t put in the effort to give them a racial/class skin to represent this in-game, but when you see a Zandalari Paladin, think of them calling upon the might of Rezan for their power.
On the topic of Paladins, one of the things that sets them apart from the likes of Priests is that Paladins are more like living conduits of divine power, be it Light or Loa. Priests on the other hand call upon and wield the light, but don’t directly embody it. That’s what makes Anduin a warrior priest but not a paladin, he calls upon the light but is not suffused with it the way someone like Turalyon is.
That’s also why the lore doesn’t currently support Undead Paladins. Nearly all Undead Priests are canonically shadow priests as the shadow heals them while the light wounds them. An Undead who attempts to embody the Light as a paladin does would probably be disintegrated. And currently there isn’t really another divine entity that acts as a viable patron to the Forsaken, so no alternative for a Paladin power source yet.
Sir Zeliek was an extraordinary outlier, but player Forsaken are implied to have been fairly ordinary citizens of Lordaeron before being risen. If it were up to me, making an Undead Paladin would require leveling up a Human Paladin and then doing a difficult scenario where they ultimately die and get turned into a level 10 Undead Pally. Make the players earn it.