Comparison - DK vs Pally

[booyar]

I dusted off my old pally in the last 2 weeks on ally side and have finally bought him over this last week hordeside.

He has similar gearscore to my DK tank Booyar. (Booyar has something like 100 more).

the comparison that i 'ran' was in Pit of Saron. I had the same healer both times.  My recollection was that there was no significant upgrade to the healer's kit for the 2 runs.

My DK with 150 more gear score had tremendous trouble getting to the gauntlet.

It could not then traverse the gauntlet.

The paladin never looked like a loser (in comparison).

I guess my question for the group is that i am left with a belief that DK tanking for instances is of very poor value and that paladin tanking is rather good/successful.  Am i wrong?


Some particular stark differences:
Paladins suck at getting caasters to come into an AE pack (i am no a Blood elf and so can arcane torrent every 2 mins - meaning 1 caster every 3 pulls)
DK's are really good at it.  Every 35secs a death grip, every 2 min a strangluate.  Plus brain freeze if i really need to run over to the mob.

Thats a pretty interesting difference.  The DK is spotting the paladin 5k hitpoints with similar buffs.

The DK gets hit really hard.

All of this is anecdotal.  I am not utterly convionced that what i have written above is the final word on the matter and would love to know otherwise, but i had retired Booyar when Chuppy (shaman healer) hit 80 because i thought the nerfs had gone way too far.  Retired is where he blongs after my 'replay' of him in instances.

My policy of having a defensive toon to allow for nerf of the toon i care about seems to be prudent.

Have i drawn the wrong conclusions?

Do healers have a take on this?

[Deshammy]

I have run all of the new 5 man instances in normal and heroic modes with all types of tanks except warriors ... not tanked any myself so only speaking as unholy aoe dps.
Pallys have no problem keeping agro and regaining it if I need to deathgrip a caster into the aoe.
Druids can take the agro back off me too without too much trouble under the same circumstances.
Tanking DK can get agro back with deathgrip or dark command with no problems.
My dodge/parry is reasonable and I don't see much of my rune strike lighting up which would indicate something hitting me and not the tank so I can only conclude that most of the tanks I run with are doing their job.
In different instances the story can change. In places like CoS where there are a lot of mobs in big groups, I can be out agroed by just about anyone with aoe. Any tank in there can have problems.
Raiding DK tanks so far as my experience goes ( limited ) tend to be OT rather than MT and have a specific job, usually single target so retaining agro should not be a problem.
On average, I have seen no real differences between any class of tank in any of the heroics I run regularly.
One other conclusion ... warrior tanks seem to be a dying breed. A pity as my wifes warrior tank was a blast for her to play and never had problems up to and including Naxx 25.

[dahplagus]

"I think there is one place where DKs noticeably and unfortunately take more damage, and that is when overgeared characters tanks 5-player dungeons. The reason is the way block works, where a paladin or warrior can almost literally take no damage because so many attacks are blocked and nothing is hitting for that hard in the first place. One of the reasons we want to change block for Cataclysm is to make it useful when just starting out, when on challenging content and when overgeared."
Post - Wow forums by Ghostcrawler

Source: http://www.mmo-champion.com/news-2/cataclysm-classesraces-wow-magazine-blue-posts/