It would be very difficult to say all there is to say about paladin in a few paragraphs. This is one of the most versatile of classes and it would take a much longer world of warcraft guide on paladins than this one to cover all there is not know about paladins. But hopefully you will get a good idea from this article about what it takes to be a paladin.

Paladins are a class of their own. They're said to be hybrids of warriors, Priests and other DPS classes like Mages or Warlocks. By the way, DPS means Damage Per Second which means a class which give out lots of melee damage or close combat damage.

While they can be best described as a hybrid class due to the fact that they display traits peculiar to those classes, the paladin uses those "borrowed" traits in a very powerful way. Some would say in a far too powerful and unfair way. At PvP they very easily hold their own and most classes find them hard to beat. They are nicknamed holy warriors as they fight like warriors but can also heal themselves like priests and druids and like warriors they can wear the hardest armour of all: plate.

Their trees are split into three. To be tanks they can pick abilities from the "Protection Tree" where the spells and abilities they pick allow them to give and be able to take enormous damage and enable them to take on several enemies at once. The special spells available here include "Retribution", "Consecration" and "Holy Shield" which put together give Paladins very good tanking abilities that are very sought after in certain instances and raids.

One of the other two trees available to Paladins is the "Retribution" tree from which paladins can pick spells and abilities that allow them to deal lots of DPS or close combat "melee" damage against the enemies they are fighting against. Here such spells like "Crusader Strike" and "Seal of Command" allow the paladin to be a class that is very useful during raids.

The third ability tree of the Holy Warrior is their healing power. Their healing abilities are especially attuned to give heals to different players in the game. On top of this they can fight making them healing warriors. This makes them probably the most versatile class for group play where they can both take the role of the Priest as healer and tank as warrior. Perfect for either job or as back up.

So if you see yourself as a healer or tank or dps expert but don't want to start up three different characters there is no need to start a warrior to tank, priest to heal, or Mage to do dps. A paladin can do all these three things at once. For this reason the paladin is a class that is almost indispensable in groups and more than ideal in end of game action like raids or large instances where paladins are highly sought after.