Pretty much the whole time I have played my hoy pally he has teamed up with my wife’s mage.

Sometimes I manage not to keep up with the healing and she dies, frequently I finish off the mobs. I figured this might have given me an exaggerated send of my ability to kill stuff (she has already managed to soffen them up). Sometimes we split up on gather quests, but that is rare, and they tend to have softer mobs.

Last night she dropped off the edge of a cliff and left me with 4 fresh mobs all slightly above my level. Well 3 fresh and one slightly broken in. I killed them all. No problem. Well, I had a problem with it taking a VERY LONG TIME. Bash-bash-bash-holy-shock-repeat, with some bash-bash-bash-flash-of-light thrown in for good measure. They definitly were out damaging me (esp when there were 4 of them), but they were not getting enough damage through my plate to out pace my healing. (my “leveling gear” favors plate even if it doesn’t have quite the +INT/+SpellPower kicker as cloth…since leveling for me is part tank and part healer)

So I don’t think a holy pally has too much troubble killing things. I _do_ think a holy pally has trouble killing things before I feel like taking a nap.

Not that I dont like healing mind. I love it. Ive a Disc priest I used for healing who is stranded at 72 for two reasons: 1. Disc sucks to solo with and I hate the shadow play style. 2. Paladin healings is absolutely bloody amazing all of a sudden. I respecced Holy because we couldnt find a healer for a heroic and Ive been hooked. Healed all fo the heroics as that spec now and loved it. About the only problem instance is Azol Nerub and the freakin AoE poison volleys.

Pally soloing as holy is quite significantly better than it ever was. Also, the trick with Pally soloing is to pull lots of melee mobs and consecrate em to death. Compared to Disc where its pretty good vs one target and horrible vs more than one. This is obviously my personal opinion but I prefer holy pally soloing to Disc priest soloing. I prefer Ret soloing over Prot and Holy. I need to try holy priests again at some point, but I digress.

As for the comment about dual specs, I think folks are reading too much into it. “Even if the dps part is for soloing”. I dont honestly see any attitude here beyond a perfectly valid reason to want to repsec. No healer or tank is going to be as quick at killing things as a DPS spec. Prot paladins are pretty good – better than holy right now – but certainly not anywhere near as quick as ret.

The whole hybrid thing never really existed anyway. Prior to 1.8, Mac was happily tanking or DPSing. Paladins coundnt solo heal anything unless they overgeared it. They holy tree was terible and no-one speced into it beyond the 11 points for Divine Favour. No taunt (except for BoP) made people not consider pallies a tank. The complete lack of end game tanking gear for paladins killed that niche for everything except 5 mans. DPS? It was possible – every possible. Gear as a warrior and you could, but you couldnt heal and people wanted you to heal in raids. Sounds very familiar really. The lack of Spellpower gear in general until BWL wasnt fun either.

Roll forward to 3.0. Providing spellpower for all three specs is a very positive step toward Hyridising as was merging stats. Talents in all three threes help healing too (sheath, crit, bonus crit heals, etc).

The problem with pallies is that they are a melee class for DPS. Prot and Ret are now where they sould be in this regard (strnegtgh being a heavily facoured stat). Healing requires spellpower. SHocks damage is good, but its cooldown too long and seals and judgements dont do squat without strength. Shield of Righteousness is nice too… with strnegth.

Ultimately, the downfall with holy is its gear is not useable in both healing and soloing roles which is not true of Prot gear (tanking/soloing). Im a big supporter of moving holy to a Melee stat healer somehow. Spellpower from strength like ret or from stamina like prot. You’d still need mana and regen somehow, so talents to convert something to mana (again strength or stamina) and give some mana/5 from somwehere.

As it stands, we’ll see what happens with the increased seal/judgement damage coming next patch and also, there is a new option. Seal of COmmand is back to scaling with spellpower and strength. HOly might want to experiment with using a 2 hander to solo and that seal.

Well see about that I guess.