969 rotation unnecessary?

Yeah, a lot of times I'll go 9696- and drop Consecration. Alternatively, in Naxx, I'll swap one of those Consecration spots for Exorcism or something.
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I do not use it either but I'm not a faceroller. I just hate the idea of using a tight rotation like that when it's not really necessary.

In 95% of encounters I have found threat to be a non-issue (I'm usually upwards of 2x the next on the list in threat and most mobs are tauntable) and once i have that nice lead I focus on survivability of myself and others in my raid. My main priorities is making sure I always have holy shield up, that I judge light at every opportunity and that I have sacred shield up at all times. If I'm way ahead on threat I spend a lot of time spreading sacred shield around on others who I know are taking damage. (if I have a holy pally in the raid I can trust I let them do the sacred shielding but often I do not) The way I see it the more I help my healers out the less they have to heal and the higher % chance we are successful.

On single target encounters I tend to focus most of my threat efforts on trying to keep shield of righteousness and hammer of righteousness on cooldown as much as possible. If I can fit it into my rotation I'll throw consecration and avengers shield into the mix, on undead I'll use exorcism and holy wrath. On multi-target situations my focus is switched to consecration, avengers shield and hammer of righteousnees, with shield of righteousness being thrown in when I can fit it.

I almost never lose aggro and while I know doing this gimps my DPS a lot it really hasn't been much of an issue on most fights. On fights with tough enrage timers I'm more likely to stick to a tight rotation to max out my dps. As with everything taking the situation into consideration and adjusting is the key to success. Mindlessly mashing a 9696 macro at all times you are tanking is fail imo.
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When it comes to the 96969 rotation, I generally follow it with my simple macro's.

I have one macro set to the 9-second cooldowns:

/castsequence reset=10/combat Holy Shield, Judgement of Light, Consecration

and another set to 6-second cooldowns:

/castsequence reset=10/combat Hammer of the Righteous, Shield of Righteousness

Mind you, this isn't the ideal rotation; I don't seal twist for the increased judgement damage, and I don't use Avenger's shield. What it does do... is give me two buttons that I can just keep flipping between without putting too much thought into it. On a boss-fight I don't have to track my cooldowns to think about where I am.

In terms of Running out of mana. The question is - are you running out of mana on Trash mobs, or bosses?

Trash mobs - If you seriously expect to get a full rotation in before a mob is dead, you have one of two problems. Your DPS sucks, or you're wasting threat/mana. If you're DPS sucks, get new ones. The other part takes a bit of practice.

There is a certain artistic feel to tanking when you're forced to learn exactly how much threat you need to put on a mob. This is something that you have to poetically woo the mob over and quiet nicely to it, "You're going to keep attacking me until you die; Never you mind that I'm attacking the next mob".

Bosses - Use sanctuary if it's an issue (I always use it anyways). And pop Divine Plea.
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Aleyona of Srs Bsns.
This post is flame-proof. Why? Because I really don't care what you think or say!

Does anyone not use macro?

I like to have them on 1,2,3,4,5 on my main action bar so I can see the cooldowns (I havent found any cooldown addons I like). Then I have them bound seperately to the hotkeys I always had. ctrl-r, ctrl-space, scroll up, ctrl scroll up, F.

All my skills are tied to some easy to to press in action hotkeys. Ones I need to cast while running are made to be able to do so with my mouse controling the camera.

I find my self when I am mindlessly grinding a boss down just dancing the 5 number keys, then if I need to move around I use my easier hotkeys. On easy hotkeys its easy to leave the rotation and come back efficiently without thinking. Judge, shield slam and away you go.
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Limitation strictly defined by motivation - Edan
Warning. I edit my posts.

i just spam whatever is up, it's never been a big deal
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if your not casting shieldlol and hammerlol every 6 seconds that will hurt your numbers big time.

More so then losing or delaying one of the other skills.

So the question is how do I keep ?6?6? going even if I don't do my normal other 3?

I find mindless smashing ends up with the key skills being ready at the same time and wasting too much (1.5sec/6sec = 1/4) efficiency for that cycle.
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Limitation strictly defined by motivation - Edan
Warning. I edit my posts.

Because threat is such a non-issue, maintaining the rotation at all times shouldn't be a priority. As long as you're using all of your abilites, you should be fine methinks... That being said, I don't think there's any actual harm in being able to maintain the rotation if you can do it effortlessly. I try to stick to it when I can as my own personal satisfaction of having a button to press every GCD, (unlike when I'm dpsing as ret. Kinda sad that prot has a smoother rotation than ret but whatevs...)

But if you don't have the situational awareness to break your rotation when you need to during an encounter then I think that's something you need to work on. We have a DPSing DK that wants to start tanking, but when he's dpsing I already have to call out to him when he has to do anything that requires moving/dpsing adds etc, cause he's too focused on his actionbar to notice changes in his environment.

If you don't like having to maintain a rotation on the other hand, I'd think you could always work on a "priority" setup, where you prioritize certain abilities and try to keep them on cooldown as much as possible... kinda like ret dpsing... I do this when I have to do something that will break my rotation (Taunt, interrupt, bubble wall etc.) until the cooldowns line themselves up again.

My priorities are as follows:

multi mob trash might be something like...

HS > HoR > Cons > SoR > Judgement
(Look! it's 9696 O_o)

Whereas Boss Tanking might be more...

HS > Judgement > SoR > HoR > Cons

Hatefuls can hit up to 26K, You cant survive 2 hits, even if youre a druid
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Lies! You just don't want us to see your super secret strat involving Voodoo Gnomes!