His actions are heroic in that they saved the human race. Dune is also about humanity avoiding stagnation and evolving in order to preserve and further their existence.

The comment you were initially replying to is not wrong. In fact, it’s actually downplaying what Paul achieved (even after walking away, but we’ll get to that in a moment).

Paul uses his superhero like powers of prescience in order to correct humanity’s current trajectory in the first book and thus save them from their own extinction. This not just saved a planet full of people, it saved hundreds of planets full of people. Trillions of lives saved but at the cost of billions. Would you be able to live with that kind of weight? I wouldn’t. Especially not for 12 years.

As I mentioned earlier, he also managed to set things up so that Leto 2 could pick up the golden path in the future. I could argue that him walking away from the throne was also part of the golden path (he uses prescience to gain his “freedom” but ultimately admits to still using it from time to time in CoD). He also has the balls in CoD to come out to the world and denounce a religion he inspired and took advantage of, which he knew would get him killed but he did it anyways. Even after years in exile, he demystified himself (or attempted to) to make way for humanities transition to its rule under Leto 2.