Preparing Your Tankadin for Patch 3.0: Part 5 Threat Rotation

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10/6 - Part 1: General Tanking
10/7 - Part 2: The New Seal and Judgement System
10/8 - Part 3: Changes to Existing Talents and Spells
10/9 - Part 4: New Talents, and suggested Trees
10/10 - Part 5: The New Threat Rotation or 96969
10/11 - Part 6: Threat Stats for Protection Paladins and Tank Gear Reitemization
10/12 - Part 7: Inscription and Glyphs
10/13 - Part 8: Comparing the 4 Tanks10/14 - PATCH DAY!

So how do we combine our new tools with our changed tools with our old tools to make an effecient and potent rotation.

Let me introduce the 96969 Threat Rotation. Most of what you will see here is is based on some excellent work done by Psiven of Prodigy on the Moonrunner realm, and used with permission.

The rotation comes from a recognition that most of our threat skills come with either a 6, or 9 second cooldown. Right now we only have 1 skill with a 6 second cooldown, and that is our new Hammer of Righteousness. At Level 75, we will get another 6 second cooldown with Shield of Righteousness. Anywhere you see (free) in the below rotation is a place where Shield of Righteousness will be used once you hit 75.

This means that you need to be able to treat Consecrate/Judge/HS as 9sec cooldowns. Consecrate is an 8 second cooldown. Holy Shield was changed to an 8 second cooldown. Judgement is a 10 second cooldown, but if you take Improved Judgement, it becomes either a 9 or 8 second cooldown.

So why not use 86868? We treat the 8 second cooldowns as 9 seconds to allow for some lag, and for the fact that the Global cooldown is 1.5 seconds. 6+1.5+1.5 = 9.

In order to use a 96969, you need to take 1/2 Improved Judgement, and not take the Consecration Glyph which changes it's cooldown to 10 seconds.

If you have 2/2 Imp Judgement, you can sacrifice the GCD at 10.5 to cast at 11.0. This lets you recast by 19, but you can't cast it anyway until 21.0! Those two seconds you gained are completely wasted. Similarly if you take 0/2 Imp Judgement, you can't Judge a second time at all until 13.0, but there's no open GCD until 16.5 unless you want to push back your entire rotation by a second which would cut your TPS by ~7%. Waiting until 16.5 to Judge leaves you judging as if your cooldown was 13.5sec, then 12sec, repeating so a loss of about 29% of your Judgement damage relative to the 9sec cooldown.

This rotation involves Seal twisting on some of the free Global Cooldowns. Do this only if you have the mana coming in from Spiritual Attunement to support it. Do not let your Seal of Vengeance stack fall off trying to get one more swing from Seal of Righteousness.

If you are fighting a demon you will most likely see better results from using these rather than twisting: Exorcism every 18 sec, and Holy Wrath every 30 sec.

Exorcism will conflict with Avenger's Shield /Holy Wrath at times, at a guess priority should be Avenger's Shield > Exorcism > Holy Wrath

The final rotation:

Prep Seal of Vengeance (Corruption)
00.0 Holy Shield
01.5 Hammer of the Righteous
03.0 Judgement
04.5 (free) <-- data-blogger-escaped-avenger="" data-blogger-escaped-s="" data-blogger-escaped-shield="" data-blogger-escaped-span="" style="font-size: 78%;">*This is your 'loop' point
06.0 Consecration
07.5 Hammer of the Righteous
09.0 Holy Shield
10.5 (free) <-- data-blogger-escaped-12.0="" data-blogger-escaped-13.5="" data-blogger-escaped-15.0="" data-blogger-escaped-16.5="" data-blogger-escaped-18.0="" data-blogger-escaped-19.5="" data-blogger-escaped-21.0="" data-blogger-escaped-22.5="" data-blogger-escaped-24.0="" data-blogger-escaped-25.5="" data-blogger-escaped-27.0="" data-blogger-escaped-28.5="" data-blogger-escaped-30.0="" data-blogger-escaped-31.5="" data-blogger-escaped-33.0="" data-blogger-escaped-34.5="" data-blogger-escaped-avenger="" data-blogger-escaped-consecration="" data-blogger-escaped-free="" data-blogger-escaped-hammer="" data-blogger-escaped-holy="" data-blogger-escaped-judgement="" data-blogger-escaped-of="" data-blogger-escaped-righteous="" data-blogger-escaped-righteousness="" data-blogger-escaped-s="" data-blogger-escaped-seal="" data-blogger-escaped-shield="" data-blogger-escaped-span="" data-blogger-escaped-the="" data-blogger-escaped-twist:="" data-blogger-escaped-vengeance="" style="font-size: 78%;">*Loop

Using this rotaion, Psiven has constructed a graph showing expected TPS with various weapons.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Another nice write-up! To me, the pre-level 75 rotation is a little problematic (in terms of sheer simplicity) with the 30-second CD of Avenger's Shield in play. It shares its "casting point" with the other "substitute" seal-twisting, so I'm opting to do nothing (maybe do a creative emote, perhaps? or find something else to burn a GCD?) at 34.5 seconds, leaving SoV ticking away and casting AS at 40.5 seconds (36 seconds after first AS cast), then twisting a SoR at 46.5 seconds. The following will be my personal KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) approach, with the initial (and alternating - 3rd, 5th, etc) HS as my "loop points":

00.0 HS
01.5 HotR
03.0 Judge
04.5 AS
06.0 Cons
07.5 HotR
09.0 HS
10.5 Seal oR
12.0 Judge
13.5 HotR
15.0 Cons
16.5 Seal oV (oC)

18.0 HS
19.5 HotR
21.0 Judge
22.5 Seal oR
24.0 Cons
25.5 HotR
27.0 HS
28.5 Seal oV (oC)
30.0 Judge
31.5 HotR
33.0 Cons
34.5 /slap *insert boss here*

36.0 and beyond - rinse/repeat


After acquiring Shield of the Righteous, it will be a seamless 18-second (least common multiple of 6 and 9) rotation with Shield of the Righteous in the mix:

00.0 HS
01.5 HotR
03.0 Judge
04.5 Shield oR
06.0 Cons
07.5 HotR
09.0 HS
10.5 Shield oR
12.0 Judge
13.5 HotR
15.0 Cons
16.5 Shield oR
Rinse/repeat

Ah, the joy of /castsequence =) Spam-tanking at its finest!

Lastly, the TPS comparisons by weapon - were they done with "naked" weapons, i.e. no enchants? Or are they assuming +40 spellpower, or Potency (which seems like a possible alternative)?
October 10, 2008 at 11:25 AM
Unknown said…
Regarding seal twisting;

being a Horde Paladin, this hasnt been an option yet, however i'm excited to get Seal of Vengance. It's always been the one thing that made alliance pallys superior.

regardless, it is simply alternating seals following judgments, keeping SoV stacks up at all times?

I'm under the impression that the SoV stacks are the benefit, not the actual swings themselves, and SoR swings provide better threat?
October 10, 2008 at 12:33 PM
Honors Code said…
The weapons were done without enchants. The theorycrafting I've seen shows Potency and Spell Power are pretty close as far as their threat benefit.
October 10, 2008 at 2:02 PM
Honors Code said…
I'll talk about Glyphs on Sunday, but one Glyph doubles your Avenger's Shield damage. Plus in 3.0 Avenger's Shield is instant cast. I believe you will want it in your rotation.
October 10, 2008 at 2:03 PM
Honors Code said…
Once you have a full stack of SoV, swinging your weapon with SoV up does nothing but refresh the stack.

Seal of Righteousness would do the Righteousness damage. But Seal Twisting is very mana costly so you have to judge if you have the mana to get away with it.
October 10, 2008 at 2:04 PM
Ardent Defender said…
I usually pull with AS instance wise so my rotation will be different with it.

I kinda prefer to if seal twist with SoR to do it right after HotR. As HotR refreshes all Vengeance/Corruption stack for maximum time duration then seal twist.

Just my personal preference though.
October 11, 2008 at 1:53 PM
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