Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Paladin (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Single target healing
An apparent "double standard" exists because the game has far fewer healing specs than damage specs. Most 25-player raids are going to have a diversity of healers so it's okay in our minds for them to have more discrete niches. While there are many fights where single-target damage is not particularly useful, there are very, very few fights that are not tanked, and therefore where single-target healing is not particularly useful. Besides, while the paladin niche may be single-target healing, when I look at raid stats, nearly all of them are managing to heal people besides the MT. I've run 10-player raids with 2 paladin healers plenty of times. It works fine. (Source)