New Player, saying hello with an inquiry!

[spoil]

Hey there! Basically spell casters use spells, while pure melee classes are only as good as their equipment. A naked necromancer for example is maybe 70% as effective as one with good gear, but a warrior twink with a good weapon, haste and a fungi tunic (health regeneration) is going to hit way harder and have way less downtime than a beginner.

Paladin is obviously a hybrid, so you're not basically entirely gear-dependent like a warrior. Paladins have really useful spells like root, lull, stun and flash of light (great low-cost, high-aggro spell for tanking in groups). Those are just the spells you'd commonly use pulling/tanking in groups, you also have heals, buffs, undead nukes, etc. And you have an ability to Lay Hands and save yourself or a friend with an instant heal. So paladins have a ton of utility, clearly the better option in my opinion. Dwarf is a great choice, lacks charisma (important for the lull spell line) but more than compensates with the best physical stats and a BIS barrel roll jumping animation.

[spoil]

I should add that paladin is going to be better at soloing than warrior as well (better, but not good), mainly because you have the ability to split mobs with lull/root. But where it really shines is in groups.

[WarpathEQ]

If your goal is to solo entirely, Paladin will be amongst the hardest classes to play considering you have no prior EQ experience and this is your first character so you are also starting with nothing.

A good weapon will be your top priority, you will spend a lot of time researching locations where you can hunt effectively. For melee characters the early levels are pretty easy but the mobs scale up faster than you do so once it get into the 30s and 40s it starts getting pretty rough without good gear.

The tunnel is east commonlands is your friend, this is effectively the wall street of EQ where people go to buy, sell, and trade gear. I would focus on raising as much money as you can, selling everything that drops while you level, and focusing on getting a good weapon and some cheap gear to fill your slots as melee are heavily gear dependent characters.

The good news is paladins are durable...you have the ability to single pull mobs for killing. You can root a mob, back off, and heal yourself mid fight. You have lay of hands which is a good life saver in those oh shit moments. It will just be a long slow slog to level solo.

Where paladins really shine is in the late game they are amongst the best in game at getting and maintaining agro on a mob, in some cases they are preferred over warriors for some of the toughest mobs in the game due to their agro (the majority of the mobs are still tanked by warriors due to their abilities to mitigate damage in the end game). The also have items that give them the ability to complete heal which can be the difference between winning or losing a high level raid target if things go sideways.