Actually, in hindsight, 85 might still be a bit low for the paladin to really plow through HoS (honestly can't remember the ideal level range). An alternative (which is also a hotzone) is OceanGreen Hills. Yes, it sucks at a hotzone in general. However, if you go into the grotto at the north end of the zone, it's chock full of plants. Now, you might be asking yourself: Why the heck would I go fight plants? Um... Because... wait for it.. they are Undead Plants. Yes. Somehow, through the magic of really strange necromancy, those plants are flagged as undead. Which means you can rock them as a paladin. This was the area I did lesson burns with my paladin before moving to the blackwaters/fishermen in HoS. Again, I can't recall the exact level where one became better than the other (I do remember that it wasn't yet a hotzone when I was hunting there), but if HoS is a bit slow for the paladin, try the grotto. The one negative of it being a hotzone is that occasionally someone else may be hunting there (whereas it was totally empty pretty much 100% of the time when I used it).
But if you can get it, it should be awesome hunting.
Oh. Second the point about just playing the BL directly. I found that soloing is still really really fast for most classes up until around level 70 or so (depends on the class, and I think that you're right about BLs being particularly good with sufficient AAs, which they get with autogrant now). The one advantage to PLing the BL with your paladin is that you're getting exp with both characters. So not even really PLing, so much as grouping. Done right, over time the BL will gain levels faster than the paladin, and can kinda catch up. At which point you can just switch to boxing them as a group.
Edited, Jul 28th 2015 3:11pm by gbaji
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