Why no palies?
 

Any time I do a "/who all paladin count", there's almost never anyone on. Certainly never as many as any other class.

Why is that? Just their sheer inability to solo effectively? Surely they solo better than rogues, right?

This is classic eq, the rarer something is the better it is. Obvious proof that paladin is the best class in the game.

There are several reasons for the lack of Paladins. First off, a fair portion of the population here regards hybrids as weak or worthless in general (that's just an observation--the debate itself is beyond the scope of this thread) and avoid those classes, so none of the hybrids are particularly popular. Second, P1999's community tends to favor classes that can solo; Paladins solo worse than the other hybrid types, further hurting its numbers. Third, the Paladin is probably the most specialized hybrid with the least overall versatility, and it's specialized towards a role (tanking for normal groups) that many players don't consider too important. On the other hand the class only has a relatively weak raid role--and many players pick their class with raid roles in mind. All this combines to result in the Paladin remaining the least popular class on P1999 year after year.

Danth

Divine Strength pls.

On a more serious note, warriors kind of take the lead in Velious, there are some fights you just can't survive without defensive, and paladin DPS is just sub par to boot. You pretty much need to be fully geared by the content you are in, in order to tank the content you are in, creating a catch 22 that most paladins don't ever live though.

I saw an epic erudite pally the other day. The experience itself was epic.

Paladins have horrible DPS. Even overly twinked, a paladin will level slower while soloing than pretty much any other character with equivalent gear. Plus as has been said, paladins really only excel as a group tank. They do that incredibly well, but most new people have a focus on what would be needed for raiding, even if odds are they'll never actually level high enough to raid.

It wasn't until PoP came out that paladins really started to shine IMO.

The GM's force most paladins to reroll as mindless massed killing and accumulation of wealth at all costs goes against the basic tenets of the class.

I've got a pally!

As a SK, I'd have to say we're better geared for trash tanking than paladins...plenty of aggro spells and more effective ones imo.

Flash of Light would be great if the mob didn't require that element of precision... too early and the mob is feared/bugged for 5-6 seconds, leaving you with nothing to tank. Too late and the mob has probably tagged anyone who was trying to sit.

Then there's the Stun line. Again, you got to time it right so that the mob is in the camp where you want it, aggro'd on you and hasn't upset anyone sitting nearby.

For those reasons alone I'll take my SK with disease cloud, shadow vortex (vortexing and prebuilding aggro on mezzed mobs is the best thing you'll ever do), and wave of enfeeblement if you get trained to get everything centered on you.

Warrior = best raid tank
SK = best trash tank
Paladin = low dps tank who doesn't raid tank or trash tank so effectively.


(just an opinion, of course... but the right one ;))