Post by runtodarkness
<Intro>
Whenever I see somebody who is asking whether or not they are geared, I take a little look at their gear and then give them my biggest advice I have to offer. First off, gear is a relatively flexible thing. If you're over like 23k and 540 def then go ahead and OT naxx10. However, if you don't know what I'm about to impart on you then you have just decreased your threat output, your holy shield uptime, your consecration uptime, and your overall handle on mobs that you are tanking.
<Requirements and Setup>
This is called the 969 rotation. Requirements are simple:
-No
Glyph of Consecration.
-One point in
Improved Judgements (Just 1 sec off).
In order to do this you will be separating your core abilities into two groups, the 9 second and the 6 second cooldowns.
Let's start with the 9 second cooldowns:
-
Holy Shield-
Judgement (preferably wisdom, but after 3.2 it will not matter)
-
ConsecrationYou may notice that consecration and holy shield are not truly on a 9 second cooldown, but for the purpose of example we will treat them that way. You will not have consecration running for 1 second. Deal with it. Holy shield, on the other hand, has a 10 second duration, so that will always be up.
Now we have the core 6 second cooldown abilities:
-
Hammer of the Righteous-
Shield of Righteousness<Meat and Potatoes>
Now, this rotation is accomplished by using an ability with a 9 second cooldown, then a 6 second, then a 9, 6, etc... Hence the name of "the 969 rotation."
This really can be tweaked, tanking is not as cut and dry as people would expect it to be. You really do have room to do things the way that works out for you, but here is how I do it:
I have my hotkeys 1-5 bound to my spells in the following order:
1:
Holy Shield2:
Hammer of the Righteous3:
Judgement4:
Shield of Righteousness5:
ConsecrationThis makes starting this rotation incredibly stupid-easy. You just press the buttons 1, 2, 3, 4, and then 5 in succession. Easy stuff, but how do you go on from there?
That is where this rotation starts to get slightly tricky, yet still easy. If you are watching your cooldowns, you will see that
Hammer of the Righteous should be up next, followed by
Holy Shield. I'm not going to go through this entire process but basically you cut up the rotation into understandable chunks. If you were to treat the 1-5 keys as stairs, it descends in a way while still going up...
If that was total greek to you just know that here's how the numbers work out in the end:
If you sit on a target dummy for a while doing that you start to realize it's INCREDIBLY simple.
*By the way, these are just stuck in groups because if you test it a little you realize they fit together that way, the sequence still just goes from left to right.*
<Substitutions>
By popular demand, I'll go through how to substitute spells!
Basically, this rotation goes off of using spells when they come off of their cooldown, but you do not necessarily HAVE to use something when it is up. Let's say you were to skip something, if you chose wisely it would have no lasting repercussions and would possibly benefit you.
By skipping something, I mean that you would fill that slot of GCD with a different spell. If you were tanking in Naxx, perhaps instead of casting Shield of Righteousness, you may find
Holy Wrath to be more befitting.
In this event, you would do exactly as what was written above, but let's throw in a different key.
For purpose of ease, we will assume
Holy Wrath is your 6 hotkey.
If you noticed, in the first section hotkey 6 was pressed instead of 4, basically you've just used Holy Wrath instead of Shield of Righteousness.
<Conclusion>
The benefits of this rotation are that you maintain optimal usage of your core abilities, you can handle multiple mobs, and once you get more familiar with the rotation you can start swapping around spells, starting at a different point, throwing in other spells in something else's slot, the list goes on.
If you find anything else that I could improve upon, that you may have found difficult to understand, or otherwise just comments questions and concerns, please feel free to comment.
<A Last Minute Piece of Advice>
Like I said earlier, tanking isn't all that it's worked up to be. You're not perfect, but you have people relying on you. You make mistakes, but don't feel like you have to do everything by the book. While in WoW being "unique" is synonymous to "sub-optimal," you're allowed some room to do your own thing.
Look at my paladin down below. I've never seen ANYBODY who uses my spec, but I've never had a problem with it. Plus,
Aura Mastery makes a great flexible "Oh $#!7" button!
<Useless Stuff>
Another nice thing is if I could get one of those nice posts that stays up top at all times... But I'm not begging here...
Post by runtodarkness
The only thing you may want to add is how to substitute with minimal impact (like subing a judgment since it will last 2 rotations).
Actually I'd consider this a common misconception... Seeing as lots of paladins use
Libram of Obstruction I would find that you may have a better time substituting out Shield of Righteousness because it will have no loss of block value, that or Hammer of the Righteous.