Paladins

How do paladins do as healers? Obviously they lose out to priests but are they a viable option to be healers?

Basically i want to create a healer but find priest too fragile for my playing style...so i'm looking at other options. Paladins strike me as having great survivalbility being able to wear the heaviest armor...Only concern is that they may not be able to handle healing in groups..

I have run a few instances with paladins as healers and have our butt handed back to us in shreds..

On my pally, I've had some trouble healing in groups, but not much. Paladins are (at the moment) designed to be the best single target healers in the game. I can sit around and spam Flash of Light and keep the tank up and I won't run out of mana for eight to ten minutes (using all of my other mana reduction and mana gain abilties from trinkets). But healing a whole group is somewhat difficult (so five man dungeons, basically, since anything beyond that there will be more than one healer).

To a degree, paladins have more survivability in PvE, because of their high armor, but in PvP that becomes a little less important, because of resilience mostly taking over the place of armor (to make PvP more balanced). If you're going for a PvP standpoint, going with a priest is a smarter idea. In a PvE setting, its somewhat harder to decide. Paladins have less choices for healing abilties, lacking an Area heal, and their heals become largely mana inefficient the longer the cast time. So a pally healer is better in a situation where you have another healer who can heal the group, and you can just sit around and spam flash of light on the tank.

I wouldn't recommend starting a pally solely to make a healer. Make a pally to have a character who can do everything. I know that's why I made my pally. I switch my specs at least once a week. And priests don't really have much survivability problems, in group or out. I had no trouble solo leveling my priest up to 70.

I understand that pallys could be healers, but priests are lots bettr at healing! Im a pally and im gunna tank! lol u wana tanking pally so u dont get attacked in instances!Ttyl!

Paladins can heal fine. Maybe not as good as others, but not bad.

just go druid they group heal better then pally's and are more survivable then priests

so basically I got my main up to 80 and geared, so now i'm focusing on my paladin. Only thing is i've decided to focus on tanking with him. Some question about the paladin tanking mechanism.

Paladins generate threat through reflected damage. For this to happen they have to be hit. Thus wouldnt it be best to avoid the Anticipation (Dodge) and Deflection (parry) talents in the talent tree? But most pally tanks i've seen max those out...

Pally's are horrible healers take ur pally and grab a sword and sheild and kick some