[jere]

Introduction:
This is just a short discussion on the optimal paladin rotation and its merits. The new thing about paladin tanking is that now every GCD is pretty much used (save maybe one every 9 seconds, though it should get used some). We have quite a few new abilities to incorporate. For starters, the two big ones are Hammer of the Righteous (51 point talent ability) and Shield of Righteousness (skill learned first at level 75). These two abilities add a large amount of single-target snap threat to what we are tanking. Lets review them quickly:

Hammer of the Righteous (HotR):
This ability hits up to 3 targets for 4x weapon damage and either applies or procs the current seal (whichever is applicable). This is a great AoE tanking tool if you have 3 or less mobs to tank, but it is also a pretty decent single target threat ability as well, assuming you pick either a melee dps or tanking weapon (which you should be at this point).

Shield of Righteousness (ShR):
This ability hits for 100% block value plus a base amount determined by spell rank. This is a very hard hitting single target ability, and will most often do the largest chunk of your damage/threat.

Others:
The other two important abilities in your rotation are Judgment and Holy Shield. These are mostly for mitigation reasons, though they do provided damage as well. Judgements will keep up the Judgements of the Just effect on an enemy, slowing their attack speed by 20% (assuming you talented this, which you should) and of course Holy Shield increases your block %, thus reducing how much damage you take.

Alternately, you have some other abilities you can use, such as Consecration, Sacred Shield, Holy Wrath, etc. These will be discussed a bit later, but typically are not as high priority as the 4 abilities mentioned, either due to cooldown lengths, mana usage, or other factors.

The Rotation Itself:
The optimal rotation will be one where every GCD is utilized efficiently. This is most easily done when abilities have cooldowns that are multiples of the GCD, 1.5s. This would include cooldowns of 1.5s, 3.0s, 4.5s, 6.0s, 7.5s, 9.0s, ..., 15s, ..., 30s, etc. At first this might seem a bit daunting. Luckily Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous have 6 second cooldowns, so they are good, but Holy Shield is an 8 second cooldown, Judgement is 10 seconds, and Consecration is 8. Thinking about it, if a cooldown is less than a multiple of 1.5s, then you will lose some uptime on it due to not being able to fill all the time slots with it. Conversely, if a cooldown is too large, you will lose uptime on it or another skill because it pushes the next abilities further down in time, reducing the number of times you can use them in a given period of time.

Luckily there are somethings that can help. For example, even though Holy Shield is an 8 second cooldown, it has a 10 second duration, which means if you use it every 9 seconds, it will be up all the time (theoretically). For Judgement, there is a talent in the ret tree called Improved Judgement, which can lower the cooldown to 9 seconds if one point is put into it (going further down to 8 doesn't really buy you anything). This will make the Judgement ability fit nicely now. Consecration doesn't really have any life savers. If you add this in your rotation, you will have to make due with not using 1 second of possible uptime (if it were longer duration).

The last thing to consider is how to order your skills. For this we will start by looking at the main 4 abilities, HotR, ShR, Judgement (J), and Holy Shield (HS). We will assume you talented 1/2 Improved Judgement and that you hit Holy Shield every 9 seconds, making both of those abilities 9 second cooldowns effectively. HotR and ShR are 6 second cooldowns. Through trial and error you will find that if you basically alternate 6 second cooldowns with a break in between and fit the 9 second cooldowns in between, you will come out with a [theoretically] optimal rotation:

00.0 9s
01.5 6s
03.0 9s
04.5 6s
06.0 9s
and so on

Going with other orders ends up with gaps in the rotation where nothing is going on and you have to wait for a cooldown. To see how this looks with the abilities put in, simply fill in the 4 abilities in places where their cooldowns permit. The actual order of 9 second abilities with respect to each other doesn't matter. You can do Holy Shield first or Judgement, for example, and it won't affect the average damage of the rotation. The same is true for the 6 second abilities. You can start with ShR first, or you can start with HotR first. It would look something like this:

00.0 Judgment
01.5 Hammer of the Righteous
03.0 Holy Shield
04.5 Shield of Righteousness
06.0 ***
07.5 HotR
09.0 J
10.5 ShR
12.0 HS
13.5 HotR
15.0 ***
16.5 ShR

At this point, the entire sequence will repeat, making it an 18 second rotation. This rotation is called the 96969 rotation in reference to how the cooldowns are ordered. Notice that some of the 9 second cooldowns are denoted with ***. This is because this particular spot might vary based on encounter or playstyle. The most typical skill to put here is consecration (remember, there will be 1 second of no consecration in between because it is an 8 second duration). If you have the mana to do this, then that is a good way to boost your TPS.

Other Abilities and Where to Fit Them
Consecration:
As discussed before, you are typically best off placing consecration in the free 9 second slot in the 96969 rotation.

Hammer of Wrath:
This ability has a 6 second cooldown and is available when the target is below 20% health. Where to use it typically depends on one factor pretty much: How does the damage it produces compare to HotR? If it does more than HotR, then replace HotR with it in the rotation. Otherwise, the only place you will get any benefit out of it might be the free 9 second slot, but you need to see if that will provide more benefit than what you already are using that slot for. You will need to compare its damage to the damage of the ability you are currently using before deciding. Alternately, if you already using that "free" slot with a better ability, and you are hit capped, you can opt to use this inplace of every other Judgment for maximum damage potential.

Exorcism:
EDIT: This ability now has a cast time and is now not usuable as part of the 96969 rotation. It can still be used to pull, but not really much for sustained threat rotations.

Sacred Shield:
The general rule here is to use the free *** 9 second cooldown for this or replace the lowest hitting ability (other than Holy Shield) with Sacred Shield. If this is judgement, then you need to consider the option of using the next lowest in order to not risk losing Judgements of the Just (if you are hit capped, this is less of an issue).


Glyphs/Gear Considerations:
Consecration Glyph:
This Glyph increases the duration and cooldown to 10 seconds. If you plan on maintaining a 96969 rotation, then don't get this Glyph as it will kill the rotation.

Libram of Obstruction:
There is a lot of discussion about whether to forgo the typical 96969 rotation in order to always follow judgement with ShR to maximize the damage from the Libram. Simply put, this won't improve anything, but it will hurt your DPS. EDIT: Now that the duration is doubled, there should be no discussion on this. Do the 96969 rotation, period.

Depricated:
Consider any 18 second rotation. You can cast two judgments every 18 seconds, which means you get to maximize the damage of ShR twice in 18 seconds. The 96969 rotation already does this. Even though every ShR doesn't follow a cast of Judgement, you get 3 ShR casts in the 18 seconds and 2 of them will get the benefit of the Libram before the buff fades. All trying to make sure ShR is used after Judgement does is mess up the rest of the rotation and reduces the overall uptime of the other abilities. Using the 96969 rotation makes sure that every Judgement gives benefit to at least one ShR before the buff fades, plus it optimizes the rest of the rotation.

Other Considerations:
Obviously Lag and Player Skill will affect the effectiveness of this rotation. Lag is tough to counter, but practice will help with the skill and macros can be used to help lessen the work.

Macros:
You can use macros to help free up action bar slots and to make the rotation go more smoothly. Using /castsequence macros to chain ability after ability is usually the key. However, trying to do the whole 96969 rotation in one macro is not advised. It is an 18 second rotation, so it will be fairly long. Plus, if you need to do something different (pop Divine Protection, etc.) or a fight mechanic prevents you from doing something, you can get hosed easily and either have to wait longer or start over (if you use resets in your macro).

It is easier to either break it up into 2 macros, one for 6 second abilities and one for 9, or to only use one macro and do the rest by hand. I tend to use only a 6 second abilities macro and do the 9 second abilities by hand. That way I have more precise control over the mitigation ones in case something happens. The 6 second abilities are a lot closer in function and both are pretty low in mana cost, so, in my opinion, they are better candidates. The macro I suggest is

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=6 Hammer of the Righteous,Shield of Righteousness

The order of the abilities is up to you. I prefer HotR first as I tend to use the "up to 3 targets" more and don't tend to have the need for higher burst upfront. If you prefer ShR first, then by all means use that. Also, the "reset=6" is optional. Again, I use that to make sure I can easily get back to HotR if I need to. You can add in key modifiers or remove the reset entirely if that is your preference.

The 9 second abilities macro would look almost identical, but again, I prefer to do those by hand.

Rotation Analysis at Maintankadin:
This is a really good thread that covers, in depth with MATLAB, how our different stats scale, how to improve the 96969 rotation, which seals to use and many many other things. I would highly suggest reading it.

Maintankadin :: View topic - Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work)

This goes down into the nitty gritty, checking everything from different talent builds and glyphs to the use of reckoning.

[Widdox]

Great post. For the *** slot Sacred Shield is a good choice as well for a little more midigation.

[jere]

Yep, that is a good point, and I actually do that myself a lot. I will work on updating that in there when I get some free time to write something up.

[Falkor]

I am curious about something, I used Sacred Shield the other day spammed it every 6 seconds throughout the encounter. I then looked over the WWS report looking for any indication that it did anything, I saw nothing. I had made a macro to simply cast it on me and I know from the report that I had the buff. Generally there is an indication that you absorb X from X ability. I haven't seen anything indicating that it doesn't show in the combat log or that it doesn't work as the tool tip indicates. Am I missing something here?

[Omgspace]

Source: jere 00.0 Judgment 01.5 Hammer of the Righteous 03.0 Holy Shield 04.5 Shield of Righteousness 06.0 *** 07.5 HotR 09.0 J 10.5 ShR 12.0 HS 13.5 HotR 15.0 *** 16.5 ShR At this point, the entire sequence will repeat, making it an 18 second rotation. This rotation is called the 96969 rotation in reference to how the cooldowns are ordered.

Do you think a more efficient way would be to start with a 6 sec cd making the sequence 69696?

00.0 Hammer of the Righteous
01.5 Holy Shield
03.0 Shield of Righteousness
04.5 Judgement
06.0 HotR
07.5 ***
09.0 ShoR
10.5 HS
12.0 HotR
13.5 J
15.0 ShoR
16.5 ***


For maxing out threat/dps I think this might be a little better, and every little bit helps, right? This sequence would also allow a cast sequence to be easily made for boss fights or if you just want to save button space.

Ex:
/castsequence reset=6/combat Hammer of the Righteous, Holy Shield, Shield of Righteousness, Judgement of Light, Hammer of the Righteous,(will still be on cooldown here for seals/concecration/etc.) Shield of Righteousness, Holy Shield, Hammer of the Righteous, Judgement of Light, Shield of Righteousness(will still be on cooldown here for seals/concecration/etc.)

This is just a thought I've had I could have missed something.

And:

Source: Widdox Great post. For the *** slot Sacred Shield is a good choice as well for a little more midigation.

I like to use Sacred Shield every 3rd *** slot after the first which keeps it up through the fight. Which I've noticed helps alot.

[jere]

Source: Omgspace Do you think a more efficient way would be to start with a 6 sec cd making the sequence 69696? 00.0 Hammer of the Righteous 01.5 Holy Shield 03.0 Shield of Righteousness 04.5 Judgement 06.0 HotR 07.5 *** 09.0 ShoR 10.5 HS 12.0 HotR 13.5 J 15.0 ShoR 16.5 *** For maxing out threat/dps I think this might be a little better, and every little bit helps, right? This sequence would also allow a cast sequence to be easily made for boss fights or if you just want to save button space. Ex: /castsequence reset=6/combat Hammer of the Righteous, Holy Shield, Shield of Righteousness, Judgement of Light, Hammer of the Righteous,(will still be on cooldown here for seals/concecration/etc.) Shield of Righteousness, Holy Shield, Hammer of the Righteous, Judgement of Light, Shield of Righteousness(will still be on cooldown here for seals/concecration/etc.) This is just a thought I've had I could have missed something.

I am not sure I understand your assertion. In both your rotation and mine, there are 3 HotR, 3 ShR, 2 Judgements, 2 Holy Shields, and 2 ***'s. In both your rotation and mine, each judgement buffs one ShR. The damage output would be the same. The only difference is the order of attacks, but the damage output hasn't changed that I can see. As far as order goes, any order you like is completely fine (I think I put that in the thread somewhere, if not I will go back and edit it in when I do the SS edit), they should all give the same DPS if you are alternating 6 second cooldowns and 9 second cooldowns (in any order).

The macro you posted will work, but like I said in the OP, it leaves you open to issues if you have to interrupt it for something. You typically end up losing HS uptime (which should be a priority). Still if you want an all in one macro, that's fine. I just don't recommend it.

[jere]

Source: Falkor I am curious about something, I used Sacred Shield the other day spammed it every 6 seconds throughout the encounter. I then looked over the WWS report looking for any indication that it did anything, I saw nothing. I had made a macro to simply cast it on me and I know from the report that I had the buff. Generally there is an indication that you absorb X from X ability. I haven't seen anything indicating that it doesn't show in the combat log or that it doesn't work as the tool tip indicates. Am I missing something here?

I just got to test this tonight. It does show up in my combat log as (xxx absorbed) and it does show up in my WWS reports:
Wow Web Stats

If you expand the Damage In portion, you will see that I have 33 damage absorbed hits incoming. I never had Power Word shield up. I think the problem is the buff Sacred Shield Procs is also call Sacred Shield (so no distinction)

[Omgspace]

Source: jere I am not sure I understand your assertion. In both your rotation and mine, there are 3 HotR, 3 ShR, 2 Judgements, 2 Holy Shields, and 2 ***'s.

I know that all the spells equal out in the same time period but when I was testing the 96969 sequence I kept running into an additional cd time at the end and I couldn't figure out why. When I switched to the sequence I listed I stoped running into that problem. Thats why I think the sequence I listed was more efficient, but I guess it could have been some lag or something throwing it off.

[jere]

There shouldn't be any difference since you are mashing something every global cooldown. That is wierd. Hmm...not sure what the difference could be. Maybe button placement (or were you trying a single macro for all this?) ?

EDIT: It could even be perception. We might notice a GCD issue in one spot in the rotation more easily than another due to how our motor memory works. It shouldn't produce any different results on average though.

[Blacklac]

Whoa whoa whoa, I think everyone is missing a HUGE threat gen/dps opportunity. I'm not sure if others are aware, but stacking Shield of Righteousness is much more efficient on ALL levels than 69 or 96 rotation.

I don't know how other people tank, but my rotation, regardless of mob size, is to AS, Consecrate, HS. From there on its HotR, Judge, tab, ShR (rank 1), tab ShR (rank 2), tab, recast Conse and HS. Rinse Repeat.

ShR ranks 1 and 2 do not share a cooldown, and are by far the highest threat gen, and will hit the hardest of any of your attacks. I generally mark a skull for raids and have no threat issues for up to a 6 mob. Any paladin not generating AT LEAST 4k TPS, is doing something very seriously wrong. You should top out at 8-9k TPS with raid buffs.

[Thorongil]

The SoR:1 and SoR:2 not sharing a cooldown is an unintended bug, and is being fixed come next patch. While some Pallies are making full use of this exploit until then, I frankly don't want to start using this and then have my practiced rotation be thrown off when the bug is fixed. I'd rather know what my threat gen *really* is, not what it is while exploiting a bug.

Just my .02

[jere]

Source: Blacklac Whoa whoa whoa, I think everyone is missing a HUGE threat gen/dps opportunity. I'm not sure if others are aware, but stacking Shield of Righteousness is much more efficient on ALL levels than 69 or 96 rotation. I don't know how other people tank, but my rotation, regardless of mob size, is to AS, Consecrate, HS. From there on its HotR, Judge, tab, ShR (rank 1), tab ShR (rank 2), tab, recast Conse and HS. Rinse Repeat. ShR ranks 1 and 2 do not share a cooldown, and are by far the highest threat gen, and will hit the hardest of any of your attacks. I generally mark a skull for raids and have no threat issues for up to a 6 mob. Any paladin not generating AT LEAST 4k TPS, is doing something very seriously wrong. You should top out at 8-9k TPS with raid buffs.

I agree with Thorongil here. Most of us know about the exploit, but, and this is a moral/ethical choice on my part, I don't really like the idea of teaching exploits to people to artificially and temporarily increase their threat. It is getting fixed next patch anyways, so we don't have to worry about it much longer.

[Blacklac]

Oh boo hoo, I use the best options available to me. When I'm holy I have a lower rank Holy Light on my bar for mana conservation. Is that also "cheating"? If holy shock didnt share CDs I would probably have hotkeys 1-5 set to different ranks of it. Point being if you hit random buttons you should be generating 3-4k TPS. With several mages, rogues, and hunters, and a ret pally in particular, doing over 4k raid buffed dps, I'll take 2 shield slams to increase threat gen until it is fixed.

BTW, I didn't see anyone boycotting JoW when it was broken and ridiculously OP.

[Akeber]

Source: Blacklac When I'm holy I have a lower rank Holy Light on my bar for mana conservation.

There is zero benefit to this since the 3.0 patch over two months ago. Lower rank spells have the same mana cost as the full rank ones and do less healing. I'd suggest reading patch notes a little better.

There is nothing "wrong" with using the both ranks of SoR. Personally, I've chosen to leave it out of my rotation because A) my threat genration is fine without it, and B) there is no sense training myself on a rotation that I know is going to change.

[Blacklac]

Well it's a good thing I haven't been holy since 3.0. Although now I look a bit foolish. Haha.

[Papachopchop]

I'm only now beginning to realize that my ability casting did begin to have a rotation to it. Even if it didn't happen on purpose... and about the shield bash thing... Don't fill guilty if you use it while we can pally's! For instance, If the healers had a chance to cast without mana, or crit with double the heal, or the hunter's had an ultra DPS bug of some kind... I wouldn't care... I would want them all using the best way they could especially in raid situations because your bug for extra DPS could help save the raid and gear that new lvl 80 DPS unit you brought that couldn't quite measure up on the damage meters...

So unless you are griping about how I pwn'd you in the battlegrounds... I don't want to hear about my DPS as a prot. Pally because after the patch... I'll go back to having a PDS that only beats the healers and it's if he ISN"T trying to dps even. So let me have my fun while I can, never played a DPS unit before.... For a limited time I kinda get to play both =)

[Blacklac]

The fact is that no one wants to see their name below the tanks on Recount. Thats all. No one was upset with the super OP no mana cost Boomkin Hurricane when it was bugged. As long as that pink bar on recount stays at the bottom, no one has a problem.

Consistently being the workhorse, and being first or second on damage done in a 5 man or 10 man raid just makes the dps look bad. No one likes to look bad. Tanks on the other hand, myself included, LOVE to show up the dps. That may be because we have huge egos and the success or failure of the raid generally rests on our shoulders.

[Lain]

I do like to show up the dps and I also like to fuck around in 10 mans... I was doing 1800 dps on patchwerk in 10 man tonight with a suicidal rotation that pays off because we have OP healers that never oom

Take your standard 969 and replace HS with Conc and put your last 9 as a rotation thats avergers shield, exorcism, holy wrath, exorcism, etc you get to watch them come off CD a couple globals ahead of schedule but I dont know if its gonna be a dps gain or loss if you prioritize that over judgements of conc... if anyone knows fill me in

Also I like avenging wrath glyph for heroism late in a fight where Im comfy enough to pop my wings and abandon my half bubble because with that kind of haste from raid buffs you can push things real sick like you lose a little uptime on everything but add a HoW after every 6 in your standard 969 and give priority over conc and judgements (unless you need to refresh judgement on boss) and you can sneak in most of an extra global every few moves... or maybe Ive got it all wrong and someone can prove it so

[jere]

It all boils down to how much damage a given ability does per cooldown with your gear.

Consecration outscales HoW, Excorcism, and Avenger's Shield, so there is a point where it will simply do more damage. In that scenario, replacing Consecration with any of those is a bad idea unless you really need the utility of having the threat all at once rather than spread out over 8 seconds (such as a high mobility fight). In my current gear (armory Jere in Fahrenheit on the US armory), consecration does more damage, so it takes priority over all of those. If they are close in damage, then pick them over consecration though as consecration can't crit and they can.

Now replacing every other judgement is indeed an option to look at. HoW will do more than Judgement will. HOWEVER, if you use the Libram of Obstruction (as most should), not doing Judgment every cooldown will make you lose one of your two obstruction procs. You need to take the damage of your Judgement (on average) and subtract it from the ability you replace it with and see if that is more than 654 to 655. That is the damage you lose each 18 second cycle by not Judging each time. If the increase in damage you get from swapping is higher than that, then you can safely do that for more dps (however, you also lose 457 BV for that period, but you said it was a risky rotation). If it is less than that number, however, you are better off judging.

Now to look at your AW rotation:

00.0  J
01.5  ShoR
03.0  HS
04.5  HotR
06.0  HoW
07.5  ShoR
09.0  HoW
10.5  HotR
12.0  HS
13.5  ShoR
15.0  HoW
16.5  HotR

You never actually gain an extra global cooldown, but it is a viable rotation in terms of cooldowns. However, I would be surprised if HoW does more damage than Consecration a 25 man stat levels (plus consider my thoughts on replacing judgment).

[jere]

Added a new section that I think you guys/gals should read:

Rotation Analysis at Maintankadin: This is a really good thread that covers, in depth with MATLAB, how our different stats scale, how to improve the 96969 rotation, which seals to use and many many other things. I would highly suggest reading it. Maintankadin :: View topic - Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work) This goes down into the nitty gritty, checking everything from different talent builds and glyphs to the use of reckoning.