One of the intresting facts from ‘Ensidiagate’ was that the Rogue with the Saronite Bombs was playing two Characters of the same class and spec. This as a method of getting around limited trys and I assume also of giving a good chance of things like ’1-shot’ achievments. Nothing wrong with it of course. You put the time in you get the rewards. But it is rather like a racing team having ‘spare cars’, fine if you have the cash or in this case time. I wouldnt be surprised to find multiple alts all in top tier gear all with multiple specs and changes to Spec, Glyphing, Roster for each and every fight with the same players.

One answer is that maybe holy paladins are really really good at the moment, or really really good on this particular fight. Or just that there are more spots in raids for healers (up to 6-7 healers, only 4 heal capable classes) and holy pallies tend to be most likely to get doubled up. If paladins make up 14% of raiders on average, then that’s an average of more than 3 paladins per 25 man raid.

The main thing I do see with paladins is not so much fewer tanks (the main thing that surprised me with tanks was that warriors averaged just over 1 per raid, I’d have expected raids to be more likely to take a spread of tank classes) but not as many retri as I might have expected. I think raids are not taking more than one retridin so a lot of paladins are simply finding it easier to get a spot as a healer. Also, they may not be the most popular raid tank (although they really aren’t far behind now) but that doesn’t mean they aren’t the most popular tank – we don’t know who tanks instances.

note: this does not reflect my experience because we often run with up to 6 druids

Also, I suspect you are spot on with warlocks and this might just be a fight that favours a particular spec.

Paladins still aren’t “the most popular tank”, actually there are far more Paladins who heal than tank, and what’s kinda strange. In TBC all 4 heal-capable classes were usually made healers except “mana batteries shadow priests”, but nowadays it seems classes like Priests and Shamans aren’t any more pidgeon holed into healing. So why Paladins?

Could also ask why Druids, but I know the answer, resto rocks, balance sucks, to say it shortly.

Another point that matches internet memes is that Holy Paladins are much more useful in end game raiding than Disc Priests. Disc Priests are nice when you lack gear, but the more you gear up, the less you see the advantages of Disc useful and the more you see their scaling weakness.

It is not surprising at all that “pure dps” just pick the best spec, while hybrid classes follow more the choice of group ROLE. Devs can say it’s a same choice of playstyle between ret. paladin and holy paladin as the choice between arcane and fire mage, but it is not. The game has 5 distinct roles, that’s tank, healer, melee dps, caster dps and ranged-dps-who-is-not-a-caster and the last one is a hunter.

The difference between arcane and fire mage is they pew pew with a bit different spells. The difference between a mage and a shadow priest is that if your shadow priest does too little dps, you can’t change spec, you’d have to reroll from scratch or change to totally different role (healing).

“Pure dps” classes don’t even offer big change of playstyle that Druids and Shamans offer with 2 dps specs.

And well, about Warlocks… I still do see a lot of destro, I guess it’s just very much dependant on encounter whether destro or affli performs better, I wouldn’t be surprised if those aff warlocks have destro offspec they use for fights when affli underperforms.

@Forreststump: I echo everything you said, absolutely!

Agree that they need a tanking buff, and agree that many DKs are alts (mine is, as well). However, I also submit the following amendment:

There is a reason that the derogatory term “Deathtard” has evolved to describe a not-insignificant portion of the “Flavor of the Month” class for this expansion.