Warriror tank ftw.

[Lokked]

Warriors are fine with a high CC group, such as 2x mage + warlock + Priest (2 poly, seduce + fear + banish, shackles), or Hunter, Mage, Warlock + Priest (Ice trap + Feign Death, poly, fear + seduce + banish, shackle).
In these cases, they can do their job as excellent 1 or 2 mob tanks. However, the muster of skill required to manage these setups is quite high.

Shaman have almost zero CC ability, and while they may be able to tank 1 elite while the warrior deals with whatever he's got agro on, this will fail horribly in Heroics.

I leveled a druid up with my shaman, and while the druid is VERY good tanking up to 3 mobs (better then an equally geared paladin imo, as Druids have higher damage mitigation), it becomes more and more difficult as you attempt instances with larger-then-3-pulls.

The only issue at that point, regarding Heroics, is gearing up your paladin for them. This requires doing the 70-instances on normal repeatedly until you have suitable gear for your paladin.

So, as from my experiences, Warriors are suitable for high CC groups, Druids are good to reach 70, with 4 shaman, as a tank, but are difficult in Heroics, Paladin are suitable for a 4x shaman group as tanks for all PvE occasions.

Also, there are many threads describing this. Please use the Search function next time.

[Bluepants]

I actually find the warrior superior to a pala tank.
But then again, i dont run the holy trinity setup, i have all 4 shammies elemental.
And 1LHW in aoe aggro is nothing, the warrior has no problem keeping the mobs on him.
With a descently geared warrior 6mob heroic pulls is no problem.
Thunderclap might only hit 4, but 1 is dead befor the tank takes damage, and the second is dead before the tank needs heal.
A pally lets me use chain lightning, but pally tanks in general take more damage, wich in turn lowers my dps.
A warrior also has a few "oh shit buttons" wich helps too.
Solo target threat is also supperior in my experience.

As for a more diplomatic aproach: The tank you are used to, is the best tank anyhow ;)

[Sanctume]

I played both Prot Warrior and Prot Paladin.

For me, the only drawback a Paladin have is getting gear to uncrushable level (for raids)--but not needed for heroics.

The "silence" argument is valid, but that does not inhibits tanking much in events like Maiden in KZ.

The "fear" was a huge factor before but that's been addressed with a few tools such as fear wards, tremor totems, and even pvp trinkets.

For multi-boxing, the Paladin is "less" button mashing which works well using those precious seconds to button mash for the shamans.

Holy Shield is 10 second interval, while Shield Block is 6 seconds.

Passive threat on Paladin vs a Warriors active sunders.
At most, a warrior can actively maintain high threat using mouseover sunders on 3 targets.
A paladin can front load threat to 3 mobs on the pull, and grab more agro on more adds using consecration.
The prime test field for this is the 7 mob pull in Shattered Halls.

A Paladin tank brings more "passive" tanking abilities that helps multi-boxing in multi-mob pulls.

A warrior has its own strengths, especially in leading edge content where tank and spank one boss. The warrior can muster more mitigation and "buy time" for the raid to learn the encounter. That raid environment differs so much than a 5-box setup.

[Turenn]

Like Sanctume said, being uncruchable is not an issue in Heroics, it's not even on the table, all you really need is 485 (490 against level 73 mobs) defense to be uncrittable. And while we are on the subject being uncrushable is impossible, due to various reason, mostly because of poor player reaction and server lag. I never use shield block, at the level of gear I have I don't need to use it, gief rage!.

With tools like the shield spike and the sporregar shield a warrior can hold aggro on 7 mobs, all it takes is pratice. and for the record that a warrior tank is crap without CC is just plain bullshit I hate to use CC while I tank in pugs etc, with CC the run takes so much longer, my way, pull>dps>next pull and so on.

My post was never about the fact that warriors are better tanks for a Multiboxer, I'm leveling a paladin atm. My point was that while the paladin are great tanks I think that warriors and druids are viable alternatives.

So dust of your warriors and give it a try, loads of action

[Turenn]

Like Sanctume said, being uncruchable is not an issue in Heroics, it's not even on the table, all you really need is 485 (490 against level 73 mobs) defense to be uncrittable. And while we are on the subject being uncrushable is impossible, due to various reason, mostly because of poor player reaction and server lag. I never use shield block, at the level of gear I have I don't need to use it, gief rage!.

This makes me giggle....

When my Paladin hit 70, I had 502 Defense. I asn't activelly grinding for tanking gear, I just picked up this and that, surfed the AH a little, and put together gear as it "made sense". After some instance grinding, I'm at like 520 defense. I was at 530, and backed it off for some more mana.

Anyone who says its hard to gera a Paladin up is nuts. I did it accidentally.

Getting 490 defense isn't hard, but if you want those huge health pool it's going to take a bit more effort. 490+ Defense=Uncritable, NOT uncrushable.

[Sanctume]

Sorry, I forgot to add that I was at like 11k health unbufffed too, which is enough to start heroics. So when I dinged 70, I was ready to jumped into Heroics. Granted, my healer was already geared, but the point still remains.

Getting a paladin tank geared for heroics is easy.

Actually several things happened to make casual heroics "easier":

Paladin got extra 10% stam talent from a patch, it became easier to break 10k hp unbuffed without putting all +12 stam gems.

Also, blue gems became easier and cheaper to come by from the dailys.

Most of all, heroic was tweaked down hard. There were trash mobs there that can one shot tanks, even harder than boss mobs.

Like I said, there's a lot of difference form heroic than raid.

So I would say it's harder for a paladin to reach "uncrushable" compared to a warrior. The difference is Holy shield +% block compared to a Warrior's Shield Block.

Shield Block
10 Rage
Instant 5 sec cooldown
Requires Shields
Requires Defensive Stance
Increases chance to block by 75% for 5 sec, but will only block 1 attack.

Improved Shield Block Rank 1
Allows your Shield Block ability to block an additional attack and increases the duration by 1 second.

Holy Shield Rank 4
280 Mana
Instant cast 10 sec cooldown
Requires Shields
Increases chance to block by 30% for 10 sec and deals 155 Holy damage for each attack blocked while active. Damage caused by Holy Shield causes 35% additional threat. Each block expends a charge. 4 charges.

Improved Holy Shield Rank 2
Increases damage caused by your Holy Shield by 20% and increases the number of charges of your Holy Shield by 4.

Just look at that.
A warrior have 75% already for 6 second.
A paladin only gets 30% for 10 seconds. A paladin needs to cover 45% more mitigation to reach "uncrushable"
Sure there is Redoubt, but that's random and raider don't like huge random in their tank's survival.
The only +block to holy shield is a Libram obtained through Badge of Justice.

[Steph]

Whatever-class-you -are-most-comfy-with FTW!

Having played a warrior tank from MC back in vanilla WoW to T5 instances and now playing a tankadin in T6 instances, I think I am qualified to chime in here.
Armory links: Ivl Warrior Stephanius Paladin

For single character play in raids or 5mans it does not really matter what class your tank is. There are encounters where the one or other class has an advantage, but any discussion which class universally is 'the best' is utterly pointless.

Any competent warrior can multi-target tank, but there are limits to the amount of mobs and the threat maintained per mob. In a multi-mob pull, the warrior has to rely on DPS going for the kill target so that minimum threat on the remaining mobs is sufficient because only healing threat needs to be overcome. A warrior also has more options to use in most situations. The big problem is using the right one in the right moment and not fumbling with your buttons.

A tankadin's threat output is mostly reflective. Upon getting initial aggro, there is no per-target maintainance of threat needed. This scales indefinitely. It does not matter if it's 4 mobs or 40, besides the damage input. This is highly relevant when you want to AoE nuke groups. When using my paladin tank in multiboxing, I usually case two salvos to drop the priority kill target and then nuke the rest down using my warlocks seed of corruption. I usually use two warlocks and one mage as dps, which makes this work quite nicely. Nuking their heart's out, the warlocks do not draw aggro. Ever.

The great thing about the reflective threat on unlimited amounts of targets is that it requires only an intelligent pull and then relatively low maintainance compared with the frantic target switching and button mashing of the warrior. This is rather a question of what you prefer when playing solo, but when multiboxing and playing the whole holy trinity yourself, any cut-down in actions per minute is extremely helpful.