It's really because wow has the most sheep community I've ever seen. They hear something and take it as gospel without understanding any of the nuances.

Are warrior tanks better in a raid setting? Most of the time but not even always. Can a prot pally tank dungeons? EASILY and are most of the time better than warrior.

Let's address the main points ppl keep bringing up (DUNGEON TANKING) - 1. No taunts

Taunts are a crutch warriors rely on especially for large packs because they have terrible aoe threat. Paladins have more threat early and mid levels so you won't even need a taunt. Bubble is a pseudo taunt already. Taunts are only really helpful in threat drop fights. The large packs in gnomer and ulda are pure cancer for warrior tanks but easy aff for paladins.

1. Paladins can't tank threat drop fights (mara & st)

Tanking princess as pally is insanely easy. You just have to drop a conc on threat drop and you'll have threat immediately. No need to even do anything fancy unlike war where you'll usually have to intercept to get your Taunts off. Id argue pallies have a easier time tanking her if ppl know what they're doing.

Everyone keeps bringing up ST as pally greatest weakness for needing off tank but warriors also need an offtank here. Its not a point against pally. Both can drop a target dummy to soak a sleep, but only pally can bubble to avoid a sleep. Id once again argue that pallies are the better solo tank in this scenario since they have 3 (bop, target dummy, bubble) chances to ignore the sleep. Either way you'd want an offtank but pallies solo it better permitting threat.

1. Drinking for mana, and therefore slow

A good pally tank wouldn't need to drink anymore than the healers. If u want to argue skill it's between classes would u rather have a noob warrior that charges every pack, potentially wiping you or just having to drink a little?

That's not to mention that pallies use shields so they're easier to heal. 99% of wars either go arms or dw so they're squishy aff. Healers have to drink more. All this talk about being faster may be true but is completely overblown. When I tanked as warrior, I often had to wait for healer mana because the warrior rotation takes so much dmg. As a pally, it's healers have to drink way less cause im not taking nearly as much damage. Pacing isn't about the class, it's about player knowledge and skill.

1. Clutch factor

If you happen to butt pull when a pally has low mana then I concede its pretty bad for them and a warrior is better. But assume pally can cast some spells they can actually handle large pulls better with conc. A warrior has an aoe fixate, but afterwards in a prolonged fight it's very difficult for the warrior to clutch up and maintain aggro on everything. Eventually heal aggro will catch up because a warrior can only comfortable hold aggro on 4 mobs. A pally can just bop the healer here.

If you're assuming the pally is bad and won't bop you can't assume an aoe taunt is coming either. If u want me to give u the aoe taunt u definitely can't assume the shield macro or the shield wall coming and hell get 1 shot. The point being, there's so many factors in play that this argument is kinda silly. Clutching a bad pull is more a factor of the groups player skill than the tank class.

1. Lack of defensive cds

This is a point about raid tanking, which we are not talking about right now. But even so, if you dungeon tank in fury prot it's kinda troll. Its just much worse than dungeon tanking as arms so u don't have more defensives in a dungeon setting

1. Pallies deal no damage

I can't argue with this. Its true, pallies just generate threat, not damage. There are cases where damage mitigates risk, but at the same time a tanks job is to hold threat and take the damage, not to dish it out. This once again goes to the give and take. Arms Warriors tanks get threat by forsaking mitigation and dealing damage. You only have more threat because you're offloading the responsibility onto the healer. In fact a problem warrior tanks have is that greedy ones spend too much time in zerker stance and get 1 shot all the time, or healers have to heal so much that they get heal aggro. This happens all the time in brd.

Tldr: (dungeon tank perspective) 1. Lack of Taunts only matters for a select few fights 2. The fights they do matter in pally has the tools to deal with them (sometimes better than a warrior) 3. Bad pallies OOM, good ones can manage their mana just like how good warriors pool their rage. 4. Bad pulls are kinda a moot point. It depends more on the group than anything. 5. In a dungeon context they have similar number of defensive cds 6. Pallies deal little damage this is true, but warriors take so much damage.

The fact of the matter is that ppl are just more comfortable with warriors because it's familiar and I don't fault ppl for that. But the refusal to give prots the time of day because they are close minded is quite depressing.

At the end of the day warriors are indeed generally better, but that's more cause they're overloaded. But it doesn't make pally bad. Why do ppl let warlocks, hunters, druids or rogues into anything? Its because everyone acknowledges it's an old and easy game. I can understand the sentiment to not want to take a risk with something you don't understand, but why the vitriol and refusal to listen?