In Phase 3, Protection
Paladins become the undisputed kings of raid tanking, significantly outclassing both Feral
Druides and Protection
Guerriers in the total value they bring to a raid team. A number of factors conspire to make Paladins emerge as the dominant tanks of Phase 3: Firstly, the mob density on trash packs in both the
Temple noir and
Sommet d'Hyjal raids is set very high, and the damage dealt by trash in both raids is also quite low. These factors allow a single Protection
Paladin to solo-tank most trash packs by themselves, facilitating extremely high raid DPS by maximizing the AoE and cleave output of
Mages,
Démonistes, and
Guerriers. Aside from a handful of hard hitting trash mobs that can be off-tanked by a Druid or Warrior tank to reduce damage intake on the Paladin, the other tank specs will feel very useless in the majority of both Phase 3 raids when the Paladin can handle pretty much all the trash by themselves. Secondly, the effectiveness of Paladins as
main tanks gets a substantial boost in Phase 3 since many of the bosses are Undead or Demon type, resulting in a
free 300+ TPS boost to the Paladin via the
Exorcisme ability. Prior to Phase 3, one of the main weaknesses of Paladins in a main tank role was the necessity of choosing between
either high TPS
or low DTPS due to their limited itemization choices, but this tradeoff becomes a non-issue on bosses where
Exorcisme can be used, as the TPS boost it provides allows the Paladin to get away with extremely defensive gearing while still holding Threat comfortably. On top of this, Paladin tanks scale tremendously well with Phase 3 itemization, as the
Armure de porteur de Lumière set provides such an excellent mix of both Threat
and mitigation stats that very few compromises need to be made between the two axes in fully optimized BiS gear setups. Prior to Phase 3, the ability to sustain very high TPS and low DTPS simultaneously was unique to Feral tanks, but this niche will no longer be unique to Druids once Paladins have access to Tier 6 gear. Finally, the raid utility provided by an additional
Paladin in the raid is miles above the other tank specs, as neither
Chef de la meute nor
Cri de guerre come anywhere close to the value of an additional Blessing.