Burning Crusade Classic Protection Paladin Guide : Rotation

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Opener

• Buff Righteous Fury
• Buff whatever Blessing you've been assigned
• Devotion Aura
• Seal of Wisdom
• Avenger's Shield (can be combined with a Misdirect from your Hunters)
• Consecration. If the boss is moving towards you, move to the back edge of your Consecration so to the boss gets a tick before they reach melee range.
• *For some bosses, you'll be running in and want to 'flip' the boss. This means running through them, and setting up on the other side. The boss will spin around, putting their backs to your melee.
• Holy Shield
• Judgement (this should be the Judgment of Wisdom debuff on the boss)
• Seal of Vengance (build)
• Exorcism (If the boss is Undead or Demons

Rotation

Holy Shield on cooldown. As soon as it's under 2 second on the cooldown, start spamming your Holy Shield button. Holy Shield must not drop off. That is your primary objective.

Consecration on cooldown. Consecrate will always come after Holy Shield. Even though Consecrate’s cooldown is shorter than Holy Shield’s, there is no way to move Consecrate to before HS without having to delay HS because of the Global Cooldown. 

Judgement on cooldown. Judgement is not on the Global Cooldown. Unlike Consecrate, you can (with little practice) move Judgement ahead of Holy Shield without interfering with HS coverage. 

Build your Seal of Vengeance debuff to 5 stacks. 

Seal of Righteousness. As soon as you hit 5 stacks with Seal of Vengeance, switch to Seal of Righteousness. Watch your Seal of Vengeance stack. As soon as its down to around 4 to 5 seconds, switch back to Seal of Vengeance to refresh the stack. Once the stack is refreshed, switch back to Seal of Righteousness.

Seals are on the Global Cooldown, and you’ll need to delay re-sealing until after HS when making the transition.

If you are hurting for mana, and your healers or not, you can substitute Seal of Blood for Seal of Righteousness. Seal of Blood will damage you, and when you healers heal you, Spiritual Attunement will give you some mana.

Cycle 1: HS, Judge, Seal, Consecrate

Cycle 2: Judge, HS, Seal, Consecrate

Cycle 3: Judge, Seal, HS, Consecrate

Repeat Cycle 3 until your Judgement ability catches up to Consecrate, then return to Cycle 1.

If you need to use other abilities or consumables, you can always defer Judgement and return to Cycle 1 without interfering with Holy Shield coverage.

When including Exorcism into the rotation, if you perform your first Exorcism immediately after Holy Shield, you can safely use Exorcism every time the cooldown is up without interfering with Holy Shield coverage. If you have Improved Judgement, you can alternate having Exorcism just before/after your Judge/Seal/Consecrate during successive cycles with near perfection.

Mana Deficit Situations

When you’re spending mana faster than it’s coming in, JoW is on the boss, and your potions are on cooldown (or perhaps it’s a farm run and you aren’t willing to blow a pot), there are a few things you can use to either reduce your mana output or increase damage taken.

Option 1: Decrease mana costs

Stop using Judgement. If you’ve stopped using Judgement, begin downranking Consecrate.

Option 2: Increase damage taken

This is less preferable than Option 1 because it puts the responsibility of regenerating your mana on your healers. 

Seal of Blood. Normally, mana problems are related to a lack of incoming damage and mana regen from Spiritual Attunement. As mentioned, Seal of Blood will damage you.

Changing shields can (depending on your stats) allow you to make a controlled increase in damage taken by having less armor and less block value.
If all else fails, you’re mana starved, DPS is catching you in threat, you’re in no danger of a damage spike killing you, and your healers have mana to spare… give your healers fair warning and press your “sit” key. This will result in the next hit against you (assuming it isn’t spell damage) to crit. Assuming your healers aren’t asleep, you should have mana incoming.
Mana Surplus Situations
The boss is hitting you for enough that incoming heals are keeping your mana bar topped-off. You’re able to use the Improved Judgement cycle to maximum effect and your threat is as high as it can possibly be. Right? Wrong.
If your mana bar is full, you aren’t generating your maximum threat. But how do you increase threat when you’re using abilities as fast as they cool down?

Avenging Wrath: This ability is a major boost to your threat, especially when combined with other buffs, such as Power Infusion and Bloodlust/Heroism.

Spiritual Attunement generates threat. If you gain mana from a heal, it causes threat for you. If your mana bar is being consistently topped off, re-cast your current Seal while waiting on cooldowns to spend some of it. If you’re still being topped-off, re-cast Righteous Fury instead to dump a larger amount. Turn that mana regeneration into extra threat. 

Avenger's Shield: In some cases, you may be able to work in an Avenger's Shield. Generally speaking, this will not be a good idea for most bosses, as you risk eating a crushing blow while you're casting. However, on bosses that have casted abilities (e.g., Void Reaver's Pounding), you can hurl a Holy Frisbee with no danger of being hit by a crushing blow. If you want to live on the edge, you may be able to get an Avenger's Shield off between melee attacks on slow-hitting bosses (though this greatly depends on the accuracy of your timing, latency, and the absence of a parry-hasted attack).