The usefulness and effectiveness of Warriors, Paladins, Shadowknights, or Rangers really depends on the setting.
You can generalize but it's going to be depend on if we're talking about Raiding or Grouping.
And to even further dig down you can break Raiding down between Casual and Hardcore.
On Hardcore raiding only (Ogre) Warriors will do. They will almost never take any other tank class.
On Casual raiding it's more based on whoever best fills the role. I can say as a low 50s paladin I have tanked Fear trash, shissar, all of the golems, and many epic kills with no problems at all. The benefit of a hybrid in this setting is the snap aggro and better mob control. Warriors fill the role fine but are often not needed. In my personal experience most of the warriors I raid with fill the role of DPS and not tank.
Also on the casual front most guilds seem to have a 'the more the merrier' attitude as there is no limit on the amount of players you can bring to a raid.
In either raid setting if you have a hybrid class who isn't tanking then it's all about filling a sub role such as DPS, Heals, support, etc. In the DPS role Shadowknights and Rangers will exceed a paladin. No doubt about it. Paladins can assist the enchanters with their 0 damage stuns and offtank mobs when needed. But as a Paladin I know my DPS is abysmal. It's not even something I try to improve. My focus is on HP/AC and Aggro.
On Grouping, this is where Knight shine the brightest.I don't really need to go into to much depth here. The only downside to knights here is the XP Penalty. But that's going away in Velious.
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