Those graphs take into account all the parses that were uploaded and are a graphical representation of the general performance of all healers(when it comes to HPS), it’s a statistic (which is why you find it in the Statistics area of WCL and not Rankings)
If we can’t rely on statistics such as those on WCL with thousands of entries to get an idea for what is possible to accomplish then that is to say we have no way of knowing at all really, and that is false.
HPS as a statistic is very important when it comes to healing damage as soon as possible. A few classes have high HPS but not many can sustain it due to mana issues.
Paladin healers, leaving the rest of the utility kit aside, had before the nerf the best two things you want as a healer, high HPS and mana efficiency. This can be seen reflected here:
h ttps://sod.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/2012/#metric=hps&aggregate=amount
As for mana efficiency it should be clear how strong Paladins are sitting ~60% crit chance with world buffs getting so much mana back from illumination.
Check top druid or priest parses and you will see how big the mana gain discrepancy is compared to holy paladins. Priests and Druids have solid AoE heals but they can’t spam those endlessly because mana is an issue.
At the end of the day you want to bring to the raid the least amount of healers. I’m not sure any raid leader will turn their nose now at holy paladins.
Maybe this nerf will be reverted, maybe the devs will go another way and give paladins a solid AoE heal, maybe this will be it, time will tell how severe this nerf is.
Right, ok, that makes a lot more sense now! When looking at this on the statistics pages for pure HPS, it does seem Paladin’s are not at the bottom; I don’t really see any reason not to take these into account.
I only have a few issues with this, though. First off, my original post was quite specific on the lack of a fleshed-out toolkit + the lack of a real chest healing rune being big reasons as to why I felt we were bottom of the pack, which these stats don’t address.
Secondly, when looking at the top 100 rankings, you can clearly see Priest’s and Druids dominating for several phases. I feel there is a way to look at these both and come to an overall conclusion!
As to your second part about mana efficiency, then you’re correct there; it’s clear we’re ahead of on mana with illumination (even more so that we can’t dump all our mana on DL), and there is no real way around that other than to give us a heal that is very expensive to use! I personally was hoping for AoE closer to LoD that was similar in cost to CoH!
To sum up, my main concern is with the lack of a toolkit and interesting buttons to click. At least with DL spam, I could think about who I was going to shield (for example, the 3 living bomb targets), but that is gone now, and I have to worry about mana even less, making it more boring 
And just to confirm, I’ve not played Shaman in classic or SoD, so I can’t really compare toolkits.
so paladins were given a crazy tool that turned them from subpar to the best healer in the game, and it was significantly nerfed as a result.
welcome to the world shaman players have lived in since phase 2.
now you just need 3-4 more patches with further demolishing nerfs to experience what its like to be a shaman in SOD 
Pretty much, and now they are crying
Man, that sucks!. Paladin’s have also been disappointed with our toolkit since Phase 1! This phase we finally got something decent, and it was swept away from us, so we’re literally in the same position as you’ve been in!
The thing is though, if we direct our frustrations at each other rather than at least attempting to make contact with the developers, then surely you must see that we’re then part of the problem rather than the solution?
Surely then. You must agree this is a reasonable thing to be upset about? Given that you also have been through this
Upset, yes… just accept it as it was needed from the devs pov. As the shaman nerfs has been in the past aswell
I see what you’re saying. I still feel justified in requesting a response from the developers though. There is definitely no chance of revert if I don’t at least question it!
I have a sneaking suspicion that the devs intended DL to be a very powerful tank heal or to be used on priority targets that are about to take a lot of damage, they probably didn’t anticipate (big mistake on their part) it will be used like it has been.
I guess the devs consider the Hallowed Ground rune to be your heal rune for the chest slot. Shamans have an almost identical option in healing rain, both the paladin and the shaman equivalent are locked to party wide healing which is what sucks the most about these respective runes, both of these spells could be so much better if they healed every raid member in the area. It would at least take care of melee clumps nicely.
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As someone with a priest healer, paladins should learn their place and not encroach on priest turf of having shields for days! Go back to spamming Flash of Light :^)
Thankfully, my paladin is prot or I’d be mad.
You know, these priests have a bit too much shadow in their spell books. What is that all about?
I’d be cautious if I were you talking like that about your paladin brothers, lest the paladin gang knocks on your door for a proper cleansing.
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Stay in your lane, paladins!
As this is clearly a troll. I’ve reported it as such.
I’m dead serious. I have Rdruid, Dpriest and in last phase Hpala, but now turned Prot.
And as a Dpriest player, I’m saying, paladins, stay in your late, shields are not for you!
Tpau you have to excuse us, we are not used to having Pala mains making sense - as we been having Wavé yapping since P1.
Hpala was godtier in Vanilla, and for me it was atleast nice to see them get a bit jucied up in P4 - earlier phases they kind of feelt neglected. No clue how the nerf hit them.
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Tbh in vanilla ret and prot was meme specs.
The only option if you wanted to play a paladin was holy, wasent that good tho, wasent the worst healer either
In PvP they were gods, no clue about PvE.
There is one thing you learn in Vanilla, you do not mess with hpala´s.
Even if they are stealing your resources, you watch them steal that crap.
Maybe just maybe because paladins were able to do H3 with two holy palas who’s doing 1-2k hps constantly whilst no other healers are close to it? Hmmmm…
Bro aren’t you already tired of this? All 3 paladin specs are more than viable but keep continue crying about shamans, but first check warcraftlogs.
If you’re crying about pvp, as a ret paladin its more of a skill issue than anything right now, if you can’t kill shamans with bubble.