after leveling Paladin ... Dark Knight just feels really squishy

[OcieKo]

That's not quite what I am misunderstanding. What I am misunderstanding is if you are using sprint to create distance between you and the mobs to avoid auto attacks and it takes them a couple of seconds to catch up to you, how are you not wasting ticks from it by placing it at your stopping point instead of weaving? I could possibly see this if you are not using sprint, but then we're back at using Anticipation to reduce some damage during the pull. Which again, it is on such a short cooldown, and you have no other strong mitigative CDs to combine it with as a DRK. It's also a preference to ask your group to sprint with you. You are the only tank I've ever heard of doing this, as I have never had a tank ask this of any group I was a part of. They either use it, or don't and the same applies to the group following him.

We'll probably just have to agree to disagree or chalk it up to our preferences on large pulls.

Generally speaking you stop just past the last group, so if you say pull 3 groups, sprint is only getting you substantially ahead of the first, slightly the second, and is just getting you to the far side of the third. Since most dungeon/raid trash mobs produce group aggro rather than individual aggro, the first mob initiates all of them, and by the time they begin moving your generally very close to the furthest down mob of the pack.
In his example (using a 3 group pull), by the time he hits Salted Earth Group 3 is on him, Group 2 is probably just outside of the range, Group 1 is probably going to take a second to get in range regardless because of object occlusion at that point. So if every group has 4 mobs for example, by the time that Salted Earth starts ticking probably 6-8 mobs are in range, 4-6 will be there by tick 3, delaying it til you hit all 12 will likely be more detrimental for cooldown alignment than it will for loss of aoe dmg.

~snippet~

Pretty sure this was the general principle of where you were going with it, correct me if I'm wrong.

[TouchandFeel]

Pretty sure this was the general principle of where you were going with it, correct me if I'm wrong.

Pretty much.

I didn't go much into it previously but you also need to account for the fact that Salted Earth is a two-click free roaming/free target cast which, while ogcd, still can take longer to get out than many realize.
Every time you use it you need to click once to activate it, check for the location of the ground marker, adjust the ground marker as necessary and then click again to place it. Even if you are very practiced in doing this it can easily lead to clipping your other attacks and abilities during a period of high activity such as the first few seconds of stopping to fight in a big pull where you are trying to establish your group aggro lead and use your defensives since that is the period of highest incoming damage.

In addition to the potential of clipping or delaying abilities, the couple ticks missing a few mobs at the very beginning is often, if not always, made up for by increasing the amount of time Salted Earth is affecting the mobs before they start getting killed off.
You are going to lose ticks of Salted Earth on some mobs, whether at the beginning or later as the mobs die while Salted is still running. Prepping the cast and getting it out at the beginning just shifts where that happens and frees you up to utilize your time and attention to the myriad of other abilities you want to get out as soon as possible.