In Phase 3, Protection
Paladinos become the undisputed kings of raid tanking, significantly outclassing both Feral
Druidas and Protection
Guerreiros 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
Templo Negro and
Pico 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
Paladino to solo-tank most trash packs by themselves, facilitating extremely high raid DPS by maximizing the AoE and cleave output of
Magos,
Bruxos, and
Guerreiros. 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
Exorcismo 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
Exorcismo 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
Armadura do Arauto da Luz 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
Paladino in the raid is miles above the other tank specs, as neither
Líder do Bando nor
Brado de Batalha come anywhere close to the value of an additional Blessing.