Dark Knight vs Paladin Mitigation

[Cabalabob]

In a "perfect" scenario a paladin would block not parry, unless you have a really gimped shield a block will reduced more damage than a parry. It's also far more reliable that a paladin will have Shelton available to make that block happen than for a drk to have reprisal up and get a parry.

Reliability is a huge factor in mitigation, if you can't rely on something to mitigate a tank buster then it is widely considered worthless as a defensive measure against busters (see any thread about parry being a worthless stat). If you replace parry with Shelton in your paladin groups (Shelton is reliable as 100% block). And take reprisal and parry out of the drk groups due to unreliability (drk has no way to 100% ensure a parry or that they will have reprisal up for the tank buster) you get a much different picture.