Paladin vs Valkryie which is better?

[Jacksparrow]

I'm in chapter 25 right now and when I wanted to upgrade a healer I just realized that Valkryie and Paladin has the same stats, they both have the same ability but the former has a bigger health than Paladin. So in that sense why would I choose a Paladin over Valkryie? other than cavalry weakness to spears Valkryie is the better unit.

[Zalugar]

Paladin is overall more tanky than the valkyrie. While the valkyrie gets more health, the Paladin has the guardian trait so they take 25% less damage on defense and that difference beats out the health difference. Plus valkyries take bonus damage from spears.

However, valkyries also gain the charge ability if the squad is cavalry movement. So they synergize well with knights, raiders and hussars. Hell, even dragoons.

I personally prefer Paladins due to their additional tankiness, as I typically expect a squad with paladin(s) in it to take several beatings on the enemy's turn. I don't expect the same level out of valkyries, who get less use out of their charge ability than the paladin does out of their guardian trait. They are still fairly tanky, though.

Edit: Oh yeah, Paladins also do bonus damage against heavy infantry and heavy cavalry due to being striking.

[Lampros]

Different types of units: Paladin is a front-line tank; Valkyrie is a hybrid healer/melee cavalry.

[Yodums]

Generally you take paladin when you don't intend to activate hit & run on the squad. Horses are a precious commodity, and you absolutely should distribute horses such that every horse is exclusively allocated to squads with the intent of meeting the threshold for hit & run.

You are correct that Valkyries offer a ton of army flexibility. They maintain similar-enough utility to paladins and don't lose their primary function as hybrid when mounted. On the other hand, mages and some unique heroes cannot be mounted, which makes it cumbersome to make hit & run squads with mages + paladins because so many spots would be allocated to units that don't contribute to hit & run. Infantry movement is fine for thrash squads that are deployed to collect treasure chests though.

Paladins are useful as tanky backline healers for dragon rider infiltrator squads against enemy assassins that normally murder templars, and flying dragons cannot lift horses, so no valkyries allowed.

Also, if you fancy cannons, they eat up horses and you won't have enough horses to spam hit & run squads across the entire army (and cannons are locked in their movement class) unless you get lucky with horse loot / shops, so you're stuck with paladins in that case.

There's a possibility the new difficulty mode in the works may actually incentivize min-max specialist paladin tanks and punish hybrid units, but who knows.

[Steelfleece]

It's worth noting that for a unit to be cavalry (or light infantry or light cavalry), you need a simple majority of the squad to be that type (2/3, 3/4, 3/5, 4/6, 4/7, 5/8, 5/9). This does let you save horses here and there by, say, making a 7-person raider squad 4 raiders, two samurai and a templar. It gets a little more peculiar slotting paladins into a cavalry squad and downright wasteful putting valkyries into an infantry squad due to the sheer lack of synergy though, so I'd consider whether the individual squad benefits more from having one versus the other.

I'm not on right now to check, but I believe valkyries count as melee cavalry for your knight captain leaders. They benefit from cavalry charges, and using them as cavalry helps you slot more non-cavalry units in, such as a templar or mages.

Paladins count as heavy infantry for your soldier captain leaders, they carve up other heavy infantry pretty well (paladin vs sentinel lines are pretty favorable for the paladins), and if going into an infantry or flying unit they spare precious horses for the raider squads. As noted above, mixing cavalry and flying troops into one squad will always result in infantry speeds.

[corisai]

Most ironic that due crazy threat modifier - Paladins are LESS suited for tanking squad then Valkyries.

But I found awesome use for paladins - cannon squads. 3xPaladin in frontline making sure that:
a) AI would never attack your cannons (too high threat).
b) If you're forced to attack at point-blank range - they would make it safe.
Ofk, you can use 8-9 cannon squads and just keeping them out of threat with micro - but I found that game difficulty don't worth it.