I don't think blessings are better than 13% more damage for shamans and death grip and a bunch of other abilities. I didn't even realize we were talking about runners, I thought we were talking about mobs that ran after a DPS. For runners, who cares? I already addressed that any way - chains of ice pretty much stops them in their tracks, and death grip obviously pulls them right back to you, but I haven't yet even found a place where runners matter. The spiders in drak tharon that someone mentioned do run but I've always killed them before they get more than a couple steps away.

Anyway, tanking is mostly preference these days, but when I create a "main" character for my multibox group the first thing I think of is "how much would I like to play this character/class if I was soloboxing" and I can tell you that IMO Paladin is one of the most boring classes to solo box and DK is one of the most fun - so if I ever stop multiboxing I'd MUCH rather have an awesomely geared DK then Paladin.