Yes, paladins are excellent healers and their faster heals are fantastic smoothers on a tank. I have an L52 paladin and he has been main or only healer in several instances starting with Gnomeregan up through Zul and Mara (haven't gotten into ST yet). At L45 I was able to have a 3500 mana pool and still hold 45% damage reduction to mobs my level. 4K mana pools should not be hard at all for a paladin that knows they will be healing. I'm wearing leather, mail, and plate, I had some cloth items but those have all been replaced.
Paladins generally don't get used right either and a palain spamming the smaller heals while a druid or greather heal spec priest spams the larger heals is quite possibly the most mana and health/sec efficient combo that you can have. My opening post shows that with Blessing of Light up (and you can't have this up in all Fights, Garr will wipe it off so many times it isn't worth having up) paladins can have the best HP/s or the best HP/MP healing of any class in the game. The only thing that can beat a paladin is crits and even a druid with the full talent won't have enough regrowth crits to beat a paladin with talented HL and active BoL up. A holy/protection paladin with Blessing of Sanctuary and judging seal of light (I look at seal of light as a form of damage mitigation, not healing) also provides excellent damage mitigation with their healing power, as those two combined are dropping damage by around 100 per hit when you get a proc of judgement of light.
In a 5 man a paladin actually heals more like a druid than a priest as well if they are only healer and want to be efficient. Sure Flash of Light is more efficient when talented and with BoL up but generally only have BoL on the MT and then as only healer you don't get enough HP/s most of the time to keep them up.
But yeah this thread was about druids in specific but paladins are great healers too. I actually suggested that a paladin be the primary healer on the Majordomo tank in Molten core because of the way damage comes in in that fight. Free a preist up with those wonderful flash heals to help out the rest of the raid. :)
Against someone like Lucifron who will crit a tank for 2K damage a paladin won't cut it though without help. Though a paladin and druid could do a damn good job on the tank there.
Paladins generally don't get used right either and a palain spamming the smaller heals while a druid or greather heal spec priest spams the larger heals is quite possibly the most mana and health/sec efficient combo that you can have. My opening post shows that with Blessing of Light up (and you can't have this up in all Fights, Garr will wipe it off so many times it isn't worth having up) paladins can have the best HP/s or the best HP/MP healing of any class in the game. The only thing that can beat a paladin is crits and even a druid with the full talent won't have enough regrowth crits to beat a paladin with talented HL and active BoL up. A holy/protection paladin with Blessing of Sanctuary and judging seal of light (I look at seal of light as a form of damage mitigation, not healing) also provides excellent damage mitigation with their healing power, as those two combined are dropping damage by around 100 per hit when you get a proc of judgement of light.
In a 5 man a paladin actually heals more like a druid than a priest as well if they are only healer and want to be efficient. Sure Flash of Light is more efficient when talented and with BoL up but generally only have BoL on the MT and then as only healer you don't get enough HP/s most of the time to keep them up.
But yeah this thread was about druids in specific but paladins are great healers too. I actually suggested that a paladin be the primary healer on the Majordomo tank in Molten core because of the way damage comes in in that fight. Free a preist up with those wonderful flash heals to help out the rest of the raid. :)
Against someone like Lucifron who will crit a tank for 2K damage a paladin won't cut it though without help. Though a paladin and druid could do a damn good job on the tank there.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.