Doh, I posted in the wrong thread, but I'll just duplicate it here.

My approach is from one character's strength and weaknesses.

My first character was a warrior and I played it and learned how it is.

Then eventually, I come upon things in the game that I can't quite do, or do well. I would say, if I only had some small heal over time, I can take on these 2 mobs. The idea of a priest standing in the back tossing heals over time sounded great. And what about the priest tossing from dots on my warrior's target as well?

Soon I am taking on 3 mobs at a time. My first challenge back at level 60 was how do I clear those 5 packs (Officer, medic, +3) in BRD to get that dark iron node. I could almost tank all 5, but that damn officer and medic heals. Simple tank and spank wasn't enough.

I eventually learned how to handle that 5 pack. Mind control on the medic kills the medic fast. During the MC, The warrior charges the lowest add. When the medic dies, warrior does AoE and priest dps the one fast. After the fear is gone, I'm back to a 3 mob situation.

Fast forward to TBC. I levelled a paladin on my priest's account, and I end up having a Warrior + Paladin at level 60. I did not do BRD as much, but when I did quests, I found out that my Paladin can handle 3+ mobs without a healer. It sure was slower, but I used my warrior as DPS with some good shouts and debuff that benefits the paladin tanking: thunderclap, demo shout, and battleshout to speed up the killing.

Anyway, when it comes to instances, a tank is a tank no matter what class. The tank's job "buys time" or helps increased the "margin of error" I can do in a fight before things get out of control. That's how I approach it; based on what the game event and mechanics.

A warrior can do the tanking job. It may not be as efficient as front load threat. but a warrior has a bit more health and mitigation compared to a paladin when "just stating out and gearing up." This little bit of advantage can be overcome by a paladin over time as the paladin gets geared up.

Overall, the paladin is "easier" to micro manage in normal 5-man instances. Having a high DPS team helps here.

But when it comes to heroic, a fresh paladin geared with quest items and random blues will most likely not last versus heroic trash without good heals, and good dps. That's verus 1 trash heroic mob. What are you going to do with the other 2 or 3 mobs in a pull?

A similarly geared starting out warrior for a heroic instance will have a slightly more hp and slightly better mitigation than a similarly geared paladin. It will still not be trivial to tank one heroic mob. He'll have a much hard time tanking 2 as a paladin regardless of threat.

The heroic videos shows high DPS team. These teams have been geared well above the heroic trash mob encounter, and just about even par with certain boss mob encounter. I fresh DPS team with quest items and random blues will not survive the first pull of a heroic instance. They will not have enough dps, and not enough health to survive a couple of heroic trash mob hits. Having a tank "buys you time" to learn that encounter. Or if you don't have a tank, then you would be farming for better gear before you tackle a heroic instance as a pure dps team.