This is a thread for protection paladins. Perhaps you play a different type of paladin.

1) When tanking, leaving divine shield up is a disaster because all of the mobs will go attack someone else... in raids this means extremely quick death for your skirt wearing friends. The first macro allows you to cast divine shield, thus wiping off all the bad spells that have been cast on you, even things like malevolent strike from Halfus that can not be dispelled by anyone. Then when you immediately press the same button again, it will cancel the divine shield so that the boss doesn't go kill your friends.

2) When protection paladins cast divine plea, it gives us 3 holy power. The second macro gets you the 3 holy power and then cancels the divine plea so you can heal yourself without it being cut in half. Generally, it's not hard for us to get back to full mana using judgement so the mana part of divine plea is not very valuable.

I'm not an idiot, I know what a Prot paladin is and why it's different. I tank, dude. In response:

1) Then shouldn't the macro be reversed? Cast Divine Shield first, then wipe it? Wiping it then casting it again is just bad macro logic. You'd have to use it once initially to "cancel" the aura that isn't even there, then hit it again to cast it, then hit it AGAIN to ACTUALLY clear it. Seems like it would be easier if you'd cast THEN clear.

2) I was not aware Divine Plea gives us 3 holy power. It doesn't say that anywhere in the tooltip, and I've never actually used the spell myself because I've never been that hard up for mana.

Wait. Got it. The /clearaura isn't a separate step, it's used immediately when the button is pressed, but just before Divine Shield. Still don't know why it wouldn't be second, though, but at least I understand why it would be two button presses instead of three.

There's a talent in the Protection tree that makes Divine Plea give you an instant 3 Holy Power. So that's why that one isn't useless.

The first (Divine Shield) macro is intended to press twice in quick succession, so that you cancel the bubble directly after applying. That way, you can keep tanking instead of being invulnerable for 12 seconds (but unable to do anything).

I think its a shame that some of these have been so far downrated. I mean sure the initial attitude wasnt exactly endearing, but this shows just how good Matt's articles are that someone learned something new and slightly sharpens their Protadin performance as a result.