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There are certain classes that attract more players than other classes. The class that attracts the most players is the Paladin class, in fact roughly 14% of the characters in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm are Paladins. The other class numbers look like this…

Paladin stats

Numbers don't lie, well they can, but let's leave that for the political statisticians, ok?

As you can see above, 14% of all characters between level 80 and 85 are Paladins. This puts them a few percentage points ahead of the next most common classes of Hunter, Druid, and Death Knight (all at roughly 11-12%), and even further ahead of the rest that reside at 10% down to 7% of the characters out there. You can find the above stats and over at warcraftrealms under the census info section here.

Since there are 10 classes in the game, one class having almost 50% more than what should be the average of 10% is a big deal. The reasoning behind this is vast and varied and what I am going to look into here in four simple categories that I believe drive character selection. They are: Look and Feel, Class Abilities, Class Roles, and Role Demand.


Paladin Look and Feel

Let’s start by discussing the overall look, feel, and even history of the Paladin class.

The Paladin class has existed across several Warcraft games, most famously portrayed by Arthas himself. Even outside of WoW players have a general idea of what a Paladin is, they are holy warriors that wear huge heavy armour and fight for a righteous cause. This draws people in with the history of the class, people know who a Paladin is from other games and from previous Warcraft RTS’s. They know roughly what to expect, a knight heavily based around mythical knights such as King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, knights with chivalry and honour.

When presented with an image of a Paladin in WoW players see a class that has a very clean look, consistent across all builds, always humanoid looking, and generally having no strange shapes to their armour or appearance. They stand out due to their simplicity, have great looking and normally very traditional styled armour. In a game that can have some armour styles that are pretty far out there, this traditional look appeals to many players.

The overall look and feel also appeals to all the knight in shining armour fans. After all a Paladin is the traditional holy knight. Many players like the feel of playing a character that they can imaging rushing in to rescue the damsel in distress. Deep down everyone wants to be the good guy, even if it is fun to occasionally play the man in black, and no I don’t mean Johnny Cash.

All of these factors bring players to the Paladin class even before you look at what they actually do in the game.


Class Roles

Once players actually start looking at what a Paladin is capable of in World of Warcraft they generally look at two main things, the roles that they can fulfill in a group and the specialized abilities that they have. We are going to look at the roles that a Paladin can fulfill first.

To start off with, a Paladin is able to do pretty much everything in the game. They can play as melee DPS, a healer, or as a tank. That means that the only role they can not fulfill is that of ranged DPS. Being able to play as 3 of the 4 roles in the game, and with 2 of those being the most important 2 (tank and healer), this is a big incentive to play as a Paladin.

Better yet a Paladin can fill all of those roles very well. They are exceptional healers able to be solid raid healers and stoic PvP healers due to their armour and abilities. They are one of the best tank classes in the game due to their AOE threat generation, huge amounts of block, and the group buffs they can provide. Lastly they are great at melee DPS able to do good single target or AOE damage, provide group buffs and replenishment, and can easily switch to fill another role when required.

In fact the only class that can do more than a Paladin in WoW is the Druid class which can do melee and ranged DPS, heal and tank. However, since they change shape to do some of these things, some players do not like them as they lose their humanoid appearance.

Paladin Comic

Sure Druids can do a bit more than Paladins, but they are kind of funny looking. You also don't get to see the gear you are collecting when in animal forms. Combined, these two things turn off many players.

It is also fairly easy to play any one of the specs at a competent level. In fact, Paladins are probably the easiest to tank with of any tank classes. This ease of play allows players to move between different builds easily and still feel competent. Don’t get me wrong, each role needs a serious amount of skill and knowledge to play well and get the most out of it, but you can switch into a new role and be useful fairly easily. It takes a skilled player to get 100% out of the class in any spec, but most players can manage something like 75% efficiency as a Paladin pretty easily.


Class Abilities

Looking at the Paladin class there are several great class abilities that draw players in. Everyone has their own personal favourite abilities that draw them to a class, so these vary by player, but here are just a few that I believe draw people in.

  • Being able to bubble themselves and others preventing a lot of damage. Nothing pisses off opponents more in PvP than a bubble, and nothing else can save you in PvE like one either.
  • Avenging Wrath is another winner, as popping a set of angelic wings to suddenly do more damage and healing has an epic look and feel to it.  Am I the Messiah? Why yes, yes I am, and here are my angelic wings to prove it!
  • Guardian of the Ancient Kings is great ability that does different things based on your spec / role but all of them are very cool in the fact that you summon your own ghostly holy knight that helps you out over the next short period of time.
  • Last up is Lay of Hands which has the ability to instantly fully heal the Paladin or a friendly player. This last second save is one of the best in the game.

In addition to the cool looking abilities there are extremely useful ones as well, such as Blessings and Auras to buff players in your group or raid, Seals to match the situation, AOE abilities, the ability to resurrect other players and much more. All of this topped off by a mechanic called Holy Power that lets you save up what is very similar to Rogue combo points to really lay the smack down on your opponents.


Class / Role Demand

Lastly there is the demand issue for the roles that classes play in the game. Since all groups require a Tank and a Healer, and traditionally few players like playing either one for long, those two roles are always in demand in the game. Since a Paladin can fill both of those roles by specing into Protection or Holy they are an in demand class.

Additionally, no matter where we look back in the history of WoW there has always been a demand for Paladins to fill a certain role in a group, as they just seemed to be better at it than other classes. Initially it was as a healer, you could always find a raid spot as a healer while playing a Paladin. Paladins threw big heals and were great tank healers right along side priests, and they also could throw efficient small heals and were able to spot heal the group.

Then came Burning Crusade and as a Paladin Tank you had a spot any time you wanted, while healers were still in high demand. After that came WotLK, and Retribution Paladins came into their own and were one of the better melee DPS classes. Paladin Tanks and Healers held their own through WotLK as well, always being in demand.

With Cataclysm flexibility became even more critical and since Paladins could flip between two specs and therefore fill two roles in a group, they became go-to choices to fill spots.

Overall this means that no matter which class role is in demand at which point in time in the game, as a Paladin you can switch to fulfill that role. The sole exception being that of ranged DPS. But hey, no class is perfect.


The Messiah’s take on why there are so many Paladins

Even though the stats show that 14% of characters are Paladins, that really seems low. Everywhere you turn in-game you will find Paladins around you. At one point in time it seemed that Hunters and then Death Knights dominated the game, now appears to be the time of the Paladin.

This to me isn’t a bad thing as Paladins are able to fill all three roles that make up the holy trinity in a group: tank, healer, DPS. While it would be nice if they could fill ranged DPS as well, that just doesn’t fit their image. After all a brave knight wouldn’t hide at range from an enemy, they would charge in to smite their foe with holy vengeance.

Playing WoW right from the start, and my first character being a Paladin, I could be viewed as being a bit biased on the topic, and who knows, maybe I am. However, I believe that playing a class that is able to fill all three roles required in a group, and learning to play all three specs, makes you a well rounded player. It also allows you to be able to find groups for any content you want to do far more easily than if you could only fill a single class role.

I believe that players have seen over time that the in demand roles change from expansion to expansion for all classes but that tanks and healers are always in demand. They have therefore learned that they should have a character that can fulfill those roles when required. This means that when it came time for players to pick a new class to have as an alt they generally created either a Paladin or a Druid since they could do all of those things.

When people went to chose between a Paladin and a Druid, obviously more correctly chose the Paladin class for some of the reasons outline above, or for their own reasons.


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Byron has been playing and writing about World of Warcraft for the past ten years. He also plays pretty much ever other Blizzard game, currently focusing on Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, while still finding time to jump into Diablo III with his son.

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