969 rotation unnecessary?

well I took a bit of time and did some practicing during one of our ten man Naxx nights. I have the rotation pretty much etched into my fingers now. the thing that sold me on its importance is the dps records for 25-man patchwerk. My dps during "mash random button" week was about 1600-1800; the next week, i used the proper 969 rotation and got over 2600 dps for the fight, almost 1000 dps improvement.

969 is awesome, requires practice/macro yes, but just plain awesome. If prot paladins continue to scale like this, I'll be passing our lazier dps players by the end of ulduar or sooner. I already outdps our bear druid =D

I do hope that the upcoming changes make us work for threat/surv. As the game is right now, aside from 25OS+2/3, I can tank every boss just by throwing up JoL, Auto-swing, alt-tab maintankadin. My rotations are super sloppy, why? Because they can be.

The game lets us slack too much to the point where "why use 969?" becomes a major discussion. They've almost eliminated the "you must do this to do this". Hardest part of raid is loot distribution with the laggy servers.

I suggest, learn 696969696969 spam rotation, know its uses. Adapt to your play style. I don't use 2xSHoR to tank. However I tank with a mongoose'd http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40491
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GM of Sunset on Dragonmaw

pretty sure ive taken some that are less than 20k. but i could be wrong. either way i like to dodge them all together.
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It's possible especially if you blocked it. Druids don't really get hit quite that hard, at least once they get a few epics. He can hit plate for that much but just looking at a few mid range WWS reports, he seems hit bears on average in the 18.5 - 19k range and tops out just under 25k.
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http://armorylite.com/us/frostmane/fridmarr/

What this essentially comes down to is theory vs reality.

In theory 96969 is the optimum rotation, assuming no lag, assuming that you dont screw up the rotation, assuming you dont currently "cheat" and use rank 1 shield slam. so on, and so forth.

The reality is that it is not needed. In my experience I have not NEEDED kings for any encounters, and I also have had no issues with threat so far.

I look for ways to maximize use of abilities that I find to be the most useful. In regards to the libram of obstruction, I normally try to hit judgement right before holy shield slam to maximize the effect.

my priority falls something like this:
Holy shield. ( I attempt to keep this up 100% of the time obviously)
Holy Shield Slam (I know its not called that, but thats what it is) rank 2
Holy Shield Slam Rank 1 (I know this is currently a bug, but big numbers excite me)
Hammer of the righteous
Judgement (with the understanding that if possible, I hit this b4 my shield slams)


And as I stated previously the reality is that I do not need extra threat or perfect mitigation, and I have successfully MT'd everything for my guild with this attitude.

Using holy shield right after judgement does not maximize the damage reduction from the BV libram unless you allow it to fall off consistently in the first place which is just senseless.
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I've only tanked the early level 5-mans so far, but it seems they've changed the focus on boss fights to make them even more chaotic even for 5-mans. 90% of classic 5-man bosses are pure tank and spank, and 80% of tBC ones are. On the other hand, pretty much every boss fight I've done in the first three WotLK 5-mans has involved a lot of switching targets and running around, knockbacks, stuns, and other chaos that makes it so you'll rarely get more than a 10 second window to fall into your rotation. It's not a matter of whether or not it's easy with practice, it's a matter of priority - I want to keep holy shield up, I need to be able to rapidly adapt to my situation, and threat has generally taken a lower priority over these things. It's ridiculous to think learning to move and cast at the same time or macros will solve this - seeing as a lot of our abilities rely on melee range, and aren't castable when running between mobs or knocked back.

I dunno, maybe with raid bosses you can just sit there and mash your rotation, but that hasn't been my experience so far, and I hope they aren't so boring and predictable that they don't require rapid adaptability, because I've had a lot of fun with wotlk instances so far.

The 96969 is NOT perfect, as a lot of people seem to think. You sacrifice a second without consecration (bad when there is a lot of adds), and you cast HS one second later than you can. Yeah, it's still up because of the 10 second duration, but you're cutting it closer - if something else takes priority at the 9 second point (eg having to hop someone), particularly combining that with a stun, you can end up with HS down for a few seconds. Since a lot of the abilities in our rotation are purely threat gen, I only feel the need to prioritize it over mitigation in situations where I'm at risk of losing threat - which usually isn't an issue after the first 10-15 sec. Yeah, DPS helps the raid, but as a tank my priorities are keeping myself and the party/raid alive, and often HS ASAP or more Cons to pick up adds or a number of other things is a lot more important.
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Shroomous
72 Draenei Protection Paladin
Proudmoore

I get up to around 30-32k hp for patchwerk OT (however, lately I Mt it, due to superior threat) and then pile on avoidance. I have never had any issues with this set up. The only reason you should ever take consecutive hateful's is if your healers get you above melee/other OT hp, and not up above 26k. Which means that they are doing it wrong. you ought to be getting full healed anytime u drop.