Paladins are better at beastlords at pulling because they get bows and allows us to pull from a greater length than a spell would(however a paladins archery is capped at 80-or have they changed this?).
I wouldn't really class a beastlord as a tank to be honest, i've seen many do good jobs, but they lack the gear that provides AC and the AA's.
Race is all up to you, with all the new gear around starting stats aren't as important, however still concentrate on STA. In my opinion, i would go for the dwarf, they look strong, not many Dwarf pallys around on my server, plus have you ever seen them jump? lol they do a flip in the air.

practice 1h slashing, when tanking its usually better to have a sword and shield.

Paladin archery can go up to at least 200 now. They changed it with TSS release.

and why exactly did you bump this post?

To be honest when the pally gets big enough for LDoN he is a paci/pulling/tank king. After that Sony nerfed us so bad we suck at everything.
You cant Paci, you cant single pull because you cant paci and you cant tank.
If you can get enough people to do LDoNs then you will have a blast. Most fun levels in the game. After that be on the look out for no groups, being unable to tank and being unable to solo.

Dont listen to Kalysta!!

us pallies are usless i tell ya, useless!

paladins make slightly better pullers than beastlords, but not by much. Paladins get two pulling tools in my view, the pacify line, and root.

Paladins stop recieving upgrades to the pacify line at level 49 though. Lull is the first in the pacify line of spells. The way it works is that you cast it on a monster, and as long as the monster does not resist the monster will be calmed. Meaning that when you pull Other mobs the Calmed mob will not attack or assist the other mobs he will stay. so if there is 3 monsters in a space and you want to single pull one you will lull 2 of them and pull the other un-lulled mob.

Paladins get upgrades to lull, soothe at 25, calm at 43, and pacify at 49. all these spells are capped meaning that they will not work on monsters if they exceed the level cap attached to the spell (a red message appears saying "your target looks unaffected". the main problem with this line of spells for paladins is that because they are also cleric spells, we don't recieve them until later levels than the clerics, which sometimes means that the monsters our lull spells work on are so low level that they aren't very good xp.

root on the other hand is not really the best pulling tool, but it can still work to an extent. For example back when i did LDoNs i would try to root the add(s) and pull 1 unrooted mob back to my group. then i would use dispell to take root off the next mob and pull that. Root of course is unreliable and wears off often, in which case i would just tank the add instead of trying to move and root it away from the group, since i was the main tank And the puller in that case.

At 60+ paladins pacify'ing skills become useless pretty much, as we stop recieving upgrades to the line. Which means that at high levels, neither paladins Nor beastlords make very good pullers. The best pullers at high levels are monks, bards, necros, and SKs, if I'm not mistaken.

Beastlords do not get any form of root, nor any kind of pulling utensil that i can think of but i could be wrong.

As for a tanking comparison between paladins and beastlords it should be pretty obvious that paladins are better; they are a plate class which means the highest AC armor for a players given level range will be available to a paladin where as a beastlord will have to wear leather. Paladins also get Stun spells (too many to list, these are our main tool), which are good for tanking because they are not only great aggro (i keep 3 stuns memmed at a time and spam cast them), but if the monster is low enough of a level the stun spell will stop the monster making them unable to attack, and thereby decreasing their damage output and saving your healer mana :) stuns also become very important for stopping monsters that try to cast heals on themselves, or monsters that try to cast gate.

At high levels and/or with good gear a beastlord actually makes a pretty decent tank, i have seen some uber beastlords, they are fun to play with. I'm not so sure on how good of a tank beastlords are at lower levels, or if they prefer using their pets to tank at low levels. beastlords are much more damage oriented than paladins, where as a paladins spells are defensive/beneficial for the most part.

DOH, and one more thing. I laughed earlier about us not being able to tank. That is so true. I can only take on 4 mobs in arcstone at one time and I am gimp. Them silly mobs keep attacking my sword and dieing. If they were smart, they would stay away from the blade and hit me once in awhile. I will say this, we are not the best tanks! That job is left to the warriors, but I can assure you we are far from the worst. Every class has there spot in this game, you just have to know what yours is. And if you ever want to find a few solo pally spots, shoot me a tell, I'll show ya plenty of them. Now I will show you where these spots are, but I will not attempt them by myself. That's scary for a class that can't solo!

I hate patch days,, they make me silly.

I've got a 75 beastlord, and a 32 pally. MY brother has a 72 pally. So I know (feel free to question me) my stuff-- Beastlords get no lull, mez, snare, or root (w/o AAs, or clickies). BUT they get a pet-- wierd nobody has mentioned that here yet. I pull with my pet all the time, all it takes is good placement, timing, and the spell Protection of Calliav (3-hit rune). I have only a few AAs on the BST, so no pet snares or holds yet, but pet pulling works for me. Also, just slowing the mob works to get aggro and ensure the mob gets slowed. I am in no way uber or twinked, he's barely got 1.8k ac 11k hp buffed. My brother is gimp, so I tank sometimes. Pet pull also can fail, if mobs get too social, or if they are a certain level. Pally's have a good pull, because of the bow, root, and lull, but beastlords can certainly substitute for a puller in a snap, if necessary.

Paha, you Pallies keep on with your octi-pulls, Tauaunt, but you will NEVER be able to match a Ranger. We are the masters of pulling. Hell, one time, I pulled 13 mobs in Torden, Bastion of Thunder when I was level 60! But half of them summoned, so after I hit the first one with a nuke it summoned me and they all started bashing me, and I never really got the chance to move. Unfortunately, my group didn't get to see my wonderous 13 mob pull, for I was dead almost instantaneously. But hey! Free ranger gate! ^.^