Attack Cycle:
We have many new attacks than we did before. Gone are the days when we could rebuff the raid while tanking (which I've really done during Bear fights and in Hyjal). Instead, our threat is far more active. This is great for two reasons. First, it gives us much higher threat than before. Second, it increases our damage, which is great for soloing or just contributing to the raid DPS in general.
The way the new attack cycle works is a 969696 rotation. What that means is that some of our abilities are on 8 or 9 second cooldowns (Holy Shield, Judgement and Consecration) and other abilities are on 6 second cooldowns (Hammer of the Righteous, Shield of Righteous, Hammer of Wrath). Basically, we will be using the same cycle of nine-second cooldowns every time, fitting in 6 second cooldowns when available.
Our basic cycle is now:
Holy Shield - 6 - Judgement - 6 - Consecration - 6
We don't have Shield of the Righteousness yet, so we will only be using every other 6 second cooldown for Hammer of the Righteous. As such, our rotation will look like this
Holy Shield - Hammer of the Righteous - Judgement - ? - Consecration - Hammer of the Righteous
followed by...
Holy Shield - ? - Judgement - Hammer of the Righteous - Consecration - ?
And repeat. Skip consecration when low on mana or when you might break CC.
Those ? are not completely useless however. Avenger's Shield is now instant, so it can be used there. On undead mobs, Exorcism can be used there every 15 seconds. The best part is that Hammer of Wrath is now instant as well, and has a 6 second cooldown, so when the mob is under 35%, you can put it in for every other cooldown. Chances are, your seal will wear out during a long fight, so put a refresh here under ?.
I found the best way to think of it isn't in terms of a complete cycle, but just to think in terms of Holy Shield-gap-Judgement-gap-Consecration-gap, fitting in other instants when they are available in the gaps.
Seals:
Our seals have changed quite a bit. For one thing, they last two minutes now, and are not used up when you judge them. There are different seals useful for different things:
Seal of Corruption:
This will be our main tanking seal. It is the Horde version of Seal of Vengeance. It applies a stacking DoT (up to five times) that ticks for holy damage and increases the damage of our judgements. There are two important things to note about it:
It is applied by Hammer of the Righteous. Therefore, we can stack it on mobs that we aren't attacking directly because they will be hit by the Hammer.
It is a DoT. That means that once you're tanking something, it can't be CC'd, so be careful.
Seal of Corruption has some interesting effects. For one thing, it doesn't do its DoT per hit, which means that abilities like Reckoning are less useful than they used to be. It also means a fast weapon is good, especially on trash, since it can get the five stacks up very quickly.
Seal of Wisdom:
Seal of Wisdom is a good soloing seal, as it gives us the ability to regain huge amounts of mana, enabling us to solo basically indefinitely. It is also useful when offtanking and threat is not an issue (when your mob doesn't have the skull on it, you're going to build up tons of aggro, anyway).
Seal of Light:
Seal of Light is in general the weakest seal that we will be using. However, it is priceless when AoE soloing. You'll be getting nearly infinite mana through Blessing of Sanctuary, and Consecration will be doing your damage. Instead, sealing and judging light will keep you at max health (within reason), allowing you to AoE solo indefinitely.
Weapons:
Our weapon needs have changed substantially. Instead of a spell damage weapon, we want to use a high-dps tanking weapon. This is because Hammer of the Righteous does damage based on your paper-doll DPS. A spell damage weapon is still useful in large AoE tanking situations, however.
Other Gear Considerations:
We've lost the Anticipation talent, so we lost 20 Defense. Make sure you're still at 490.
Strength is now our best threat stat, followed by Hit and Expertise, AP, Crit, Agility, and Spellpower, all of which are about half as useful as Strength. The consolidation of hit and spell hit is very nice, though, and even though it is less TPS than strength, having a decent amount of +hit and +expertise will flatten out our threat, making it more predictable.
102.4% block or avoidance is no longer as useful as it was, but it is still not a waste. Being able to block every attack is one of our strengths, and with our BV so much higher, unblocked hits will feel like mini-crushes, even though they're not. You don't have to go out of your way for it anymore, but be aware that keeping 102.4% is still a worthwhile goal. Since Libram of Divine Purpose is now useless to us, Libram of Repentance is a good choice, and should keep you at 102.4% if you were uncrushable with another libram before the patch.
Blessings:
The blessings we need have changed (as have the blessings themselves). In most situations, our order of preference will be:
Blessing of Sanctuary: Now Blessing of Sanctuary reduces incoming damage by 3% and restores 2% of our mana on any block, dodge or parry. This is priceless, and adds up also to more threat (we get 50% of our mana regen from this back as threat). It should be our first choice in every situation, every time.
Blessing of Kings: This still effects us the way it used to, but now Strength is also our best threat stat. More stamina, dodge, armor, threat, intellect and mana regen (since 2% of our mana becomes higher the more int we have). Woo!
Blessing of Might: Since we get threat from attack power now, Blessing of Might is a great addition to our damage and threat. In high threat situations, this may even be better than Kings.
Blessing of Wisdom: Blessing of Sanctuary gives us tons more mana. But, we may as well take it if there are extra paladins.
Glyphs:
There are really only two tanking glyphs available on patch day (the other new glyphs require WotLK herbs that aren't available yet). While there is another one that increases Spiritual Attunement by 2%, we will have so much mana after the patch, this shouldn't really be a concern:
Glyph of Judgement: Increases damage of all judgements by 10%. This isn't a lot of threat, but since there really aren't any other options, I'd suggest this one.
Glyph of Righteous Defense:
This increases the chance of our taunt hitting by 8%. Finally, we get less resists, which is nice in any situation where this is important.
Panic Buttons:
Paladins have a new panic button and their old one has been greatly improved.
Our new one is Divine Protection. It reduces all damage against us by 50% for 6 seconds. It can be used every 5 minutes. It stacks multiplicatively with AD, so we get 65% reduction when under 35% health.
Our old one is Lay on Hands, but it's much better. Lay on Hands is now on a twenty minute cooldown, and doesn't drain our mana, so it will usually be available once for every boss fight. It can be glyphed to provide 20% more mana when used, but the glyphs are probably better used elsewhere.
Soloing:
All of our DPS abilities stack with AP now, so our soloing strategies change quite a bit.
For AoE soloing, get an Petrified Lichen Guard with a shield spike and do it like you used to, using the strategies I mentioned under Seal of Light above.
For single target soloing, put on your ret gear with a shield and dps weapon, put up Blessing of Sanctuary and go nuts. We kill much, much faster with this set up, and since everything stacks with AP and Hammer of the Righteous is based on our paper-doll DPS, things die twice as quickly this way. Your shield block value is increased by strength, so, if you use Holy Shield, things won't hit you very hard even in ret gear.
I hope you've enjoyed this guide. If you have any suggestions, feel free to add them and I'll try to include them in the guide.
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