I hadn't planned it that way, but last night I did a direct comparison between the usefulness of warriors and of paladins in 5-man dungeon groups. I had first logged on my level 60 priest to check the AH for devout gloves, and to hand in a quest I finished, planning to switch to the other server and playing the paladin. But then a guild mate wanted to do a short trip to Scholomance for a shaman quest, for which he just needed to kill Rattlegore, and he desperately needed a warrior. So I logged on Raslebol and helped out.
We never made it to Rattlegore, because we only had 1 hour before the guild went on a raid to AQ, and unfortunately raids tend to make all other activities impossible. But the short group to Scholomance was fun anyway. We had me as warrior, the shaman with the quest, a priest, a mage, and a rogue, a pretty good group mix. We only wiped once, when we couldn't stop one mob from running away, which ended up pulling two more groups of mobs. And playing the tank was great. I pulled with my bow, and I like doing it. Pulling is an art, but fortunately it is a player skill that is transferable from one MMORPG to another, so I got years of practice. After causing the initial aggro by pulling, I kept the aggro on me with taunt, sunder armor, and when all else failed challenging shout. Thus the rogue, priest, and mage rarely got hit.
When the other left for the raid, I switched to the paladin. I had planned to solo to 20 before going into my first dungeon, but when somebody in guild chat was looking for a pally for deadmines, I volunteered anyway. The group had two paladins, one rogue, one mage, and one priest. Pretty similar to the previous group, just with paladins instead of warrior and shaman. But the result was disappointing. Okay, the other paladin being level 24 we got quite far, and the sad fact that we never finished due to both the priest and the other pally having connection problems wasn't related to the class I played. But playing that paladin in a dungeon group was quite disappointing. The only "taunt" like ability I have was righteous fury, which increases the aggro caused by my holy attacks. But my holy attacks are limited to seal of righteousness, and using judgement on that seal, and the aggro caused by this just doesn't suffice to peel a mob of a mage or rogue who just landed a crit. The whole aggro management in that group was a mess without a warrior, and if there had been a warrior I would have been even more useless. And of course pulling with a paladin is also bad, because he has no ranged weapons, and body pulling isn't really a good way to do it.
I derive a big part of my fun of playing a character from him being useful to others. And now I have serious doubts whether paladin is the right class for me, as in most group situations I've seen up to now, I wished I would have had either a warrior or a priest. Me previous try to play an alliance character, a hunter, ended with him being retired at level 30, and I can see the paladin going the same way. I'll play him some more over the weekend, and maybe even up to level 30 over the coming weeks, but at around level 30 you end up getting new spells and abilities for any character class, and the "new shiny" feeling of playing a different class wears of. I'd rather play my level 60 characters and be useful to my guild, even if they insist of going raiding most of the time.
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