The Light and How to Swing It: The Tankadin for Dummies Again II
by Zach Yonzon 
Mar 17th 2009 at 6:00PM
The cool thing about a Paladin tank's rotation is that it's incredibly neat. As I mentioned, you'll need to pick up a point in Improved Judgements to make Judgements have a 9 second cooldown to make it all fit, but since you'll pick up Deflection from the Retribution tree, anyway, it's easily the next point. We'll talk about the talent tree next time, but for now you can familiarize yourself with the 9696 Rotation, which will squeeze the most out of your abilities with virtually no idle time.
A Protection Paladin's two bread and butter nukes, Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous, are both on 6-second cooldowns. You will want to cast both abilities every time they are up, and if you space it out, you'll have enough room to insert other spells in between. In comes the 9-second cooldown spells such as Holy Shield, Judgement, and Consecration. Alright, Consecration has an 8-second cooldown, but that's about as imperfect as this rotation gets.
What you'll have, essentially, is a rotation that looks like this:
6-second ability A
9-second ability A
6-second ability B
9-second ability B
6-second ability A
9-second ability C
6-second ability B
Confusing? Not really. Jason from Sacred Duty has a pretty good article up over at his site detailing some macros which you can use to make the rotation easier. You could throw up a Holy Shield once you've generated some aggro to start off things, but it's really up to you. Holy Shield is just a good first ability to put up because it's basic mitigation. From there it's Shield of Righteousness > Consecration > Hammer of the Righteous > Judgement > Shield of Righteousness > Holy Shield, etc., and rinse and repeat.
Note that this isn't a hard and fast rule. If you'll need to squeeze in an ability such as Exorcism or Holy Wrath, don't hesitate to do so. It'll be easy enough to get back into the rotation once you're used to it. Or if you're using Jason's macros, it might even be easier. This rotation will help you establish optimal threat and should have you on top of the threat list by a considerable margin.
In cases where you lose threat, several abilities will help you reestablish it. Righteous Defense is the default spell for this. It is a multi-target taunt that is normally cast on the target of the mob you want to taunt. Blizzard fixed this in Patch 2.4 so you don't have to make fancy macros for it to work, so you can cast it freely on the mob you're taunting or the mob's target. If you want to make sure the taunt works or hits -- since it uses our spell hit -- use Glyph of Righteous Defense. Of course, Blizzard also introduced Hand of Reckoning in Patch 3.0.8, which is a ranged, single target taunt that deals minimal damage.
Both spells are great tools for reestablishing aggro, particularly for bosses that wipe threat. As mentioned earlier, this is why Seal of Vengeance helps, because the DoTs continue to tick, helping you generate aggro even while the mob isn't on you. Note also that neither taunt spells are on the Global Cooldown, which means they can be macro'd with a spell such as a Judgement. This is important because there will be times when taunting a mob a split second sooner can mean the difference between a wipe and a boss kill. Having any ability on cooldown shouldn't stop you from taunting a mob.
That's all we've got for today. Next time, we'll take a look at the Protection talent tree, the current popular build, and the potential changes we've got in store for Patch 3.1. Paladin tanking stands to gain the most from the upcoming patch, and it's an incredibly exciting time to be a tank. There is a lot more to learn about tanking, and as the title of this series suggests, these are all basic information. We'll discuss a lot more about tanking in the next Light and How to Swing It, such as key talents, uh-oh buttons, and more.
If you want to dive right into the math of things and discuss more of the subtleties and strategies of tanking, there are several resources I'd like to recommend to you. Maintankadin is one of the premiere sources of Paladin tank information out there, and I strongly recommend aspiring tanks to go there to learn from the best minds in the game. The same goes for the Elitist Jerks community, which also has enthralling and informative technical discussions about Paladin tanking (or tanking in general). I mentioned that tanking is about the most technical play style in the game -- well, you can't get any more technical than Maintankadin or Elitist Jerks, who crunch numbers in ways you'd never have thought they could be crunched. Normally, I leave readers with the recommendation to go out and hit things. This time around, I'd like to say go out there and get hit.
The Light and How to Swing It tries to help Paladins, those champions of the Light, tackle the Wrath of the Lich King. It's a good time to play the class, which in the best state it has ever been in years. Read Zach talk about raiding as Retribution, or the first part of Tanking for Dummies.
A Protection Paladin's two bread and butter nukes, Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous, are both on 6-second cooldowns. You will want to cast both abilities every time they are up, and if you space it out, you'll have enough room to insert other spells in between. In comes the 9-second cooldown spells such as Holy Shield, Judgement, and Consecration. Alright, Consecration has an 8-second cooldown, but that's about as imperfect as this rotation gets.
What you'll have, essentially, is a rotation that looks like this:
6-second ability A
9-second ability A
6-second ability B
9-second ability B
6-second ability A
9-second ability C
6-second ability B
Confusing? Not really. Jason from Sacred Duty has a pretty good article up over at his site detailing some macros which you can use to make the rotation easier. You could throw up a Holy Shield once you've generated some aggro to start off things, but it's really up to you. Holy Shield is just a good first ability to put up because it's basic mitigation. From there it's Shield of Righteousness > Consecration > Hammer of the Righteous > Judgement > Shield of Righteousness > Holy Shield, etc., and rinse and repeat.
Note that this isn't a hard and fast rule. If you'll need to squeeze in an ability such as Exorcism or Holy Wrath, don't hesitate to do so. It'll be easy enough to get back into the rotation once you're used to it. Or if you're using Jason's macros, it might even be easier. This rotation will help you establish optimal threat and should have you on top of the threat list by a considerable margin.
In cases where you lose threat, several abilities will help you reestablish it. Righteous Defense is the default spell for this. It is a multi-target taunt that is normally cast on the target of the mob you want to taunt. Blizzard fixed this in Patch 2.4 so you don't have to make fancy macros for it to work, so you can cast it freely on the mob you're taunting or the mob's target. If you want to make sure the taunt works or hits -- since it uses our spell hit -- use Glyph of Righteous Defense. Of course, Blizzard also introduced Hand of Reckoning in Patch 3.0.8, which is a ranged, single target taunt that deals minimal damage.
Both spells are great tools for reestablishing aggro, particularly for bosses that wipe threat. As mentioned earlier, this is why Seal of Vengeance helps, because the DoTs continue to tick, helping you generate aggro even while the mob isn't on you. Note also that neither taunt spells are on the Global Cooldown, which means they can be macro'd with a spell such as a Judgement. This is important because there will be times when taunting a mob a split second sooner can mean the difference between a wipe and a boss kill. Having any ability on cooldown shouldn't stop you from taunting a mob.
That's all we've got for today. Next time, we'll take a look at the Protection talent tree, the current popular build, and the potential changes we've got in store for Patch 3.1. Paladin tanking stands to gain the most from the upcoming patch, and it's an incredibly exciting time to be a tank. There is a lot more to learn about tanking, and as the title of this series suggests, these are all basic information. We'll discuss a lot more about tanking in the next Light and How to Swing It, such as key talents, uh-oh buttons, and more.
If you want to dive right into the math of things and discuss more of the subtleties and strategies of tanking, there are several resources I'd like to recommend to you. Maintankadin is one of the premiere sources of Paladin tank information out there, and I strongly recommend aspiring tanks to go there to learn from the best minds in the game. The same goes for the Elitist Jerks community, which also has enthralling and informative technical discussions about Paladin tanking (or tanking in general). I mentioned that tanking is about the most technical play style in the game -- well, you can't get any more technical than Maintankadin or Elitist Jerks, who crunch numbers in ways you'd never have thought they could be crunched. Normally, I leave readers with the recommendation to go out and hit things. This time around, I'd like to say go out there and get hit.
The Light and How to Swing It tries to help Paladins, those champions of the Light, tackle the Wrath of the Lich King. It's a good time to play the class, which in the best state it has ever been in years. Read Zach talk about raiding as Retribution, or the first part of Tanking for Dummies.
