After seeing tankadins going crazy soloing and 1 shotting bosses like nothing added with people saying that ret paladins are doing low dmg (atm) is tank pallys viable?
After seeing tankadins going crazy soloing and 1 shotting bosses like nothing added with people saying that ret paladins are doing low dmg (atm) is tank pallys viable?
100% no because Vengeance doesn't stack when its a player dealing damage to you.
Also the weird 'huge damage' fights you're seeing are gimmicky crap like Chim in BWD. It's not a consistent thing at all.
Tank paladins are always 'viable'. Otherwise they won't be in the game.
Prot is fun to mess around with, but if you want to do any real damage you'll need to be ret.
If you can manage (and this won't happen a bunch), you can get the Glyph of Hateful Words for offensive Word of Glory stacks, and at least at level 85, if you stack 5 of those, you crit for just about your own HP, which can 1-shot many other classes besides other tanks. So in short: If you're very lucky with procs and staying alive, yeah, very powerful, if you can't stack procs or you die before those happen, no.
But, that being said, there are at least a few viable BGs where having a tank is almost needed, the boss BGs like AV... Flag carries, etc..