Overview

Ah the tankadin.  We love those front loading, face smashing, light wielding, shield throwing, ground anointing,  judging fools.  Their threat generation has long been king dinagling and we’ve all loved it.  This article will take a look at the “969″ rotation, but in a very simple way.

The “969″ rotation refers to the rotation of greatest threat generation for Paladin tanks.  It is named as such because it refers to alternating 9-second and 6-second cooldowns throughout the rotation.  Now some of the abilities aren’t actually on a 9-second or 6-second cooldown (like consecration )…but the 969 refers to the average I guess.

You can find all the theory crafting you ever want at the maintankadin forums , inclulding Matlab simulations and the works.  A great resource for sure!  But I like to simplify things, and to that end I’ll share with you what really made it clear to me…the 969 is really 2-button WOW!

So I like simple things.  And like most things in The World of Warcraft, smarter and more dedicated people have figured it out all out for me.  Thank God for the Internet and Google.  The video at the top of the post gives the idea of the 969 rotation…and now to make it totally simple.

2-button WOW

All you have to do is write two macros.  They are cast sequence macros that look like this (as figured out by tommyxlos).  Here is a good resource to help understand the castsequence command and how to customize it.

Macro 1: /castsequence Hammer of the Righteous, Shield of Righteousness

Macro 2: /castsequence Holy Shield, Judgement of Wisdom, Consecration

You can see the implementation in tommyxlos’ video.

The Problem

Here is the problem with 2-button WOW…it is not flexible.  In my opinion, what makes a great tank is situational awareness.  Anybody can press buttons or click icons…and the threat mechanic will do the rest as far as aggro is concerned.  But what makes a good tank is when and how to abilities are used.

There are many times when I will throw the shield at one mob, say a caster so he is silenced for two seconds and pulls, and then run to the other mobs and, say they are undead, Holy Wrath to stun them in place, consecrate, judge one of em, Hammer of Justice when Holy Wrath wears off, Holy Shield, consecrate again, and so on.  This pull was not the 969 rotation because of mob placement and type (i.e. situation). It may have been close, but 2-button WOW would not have worked as well.

Other examples are plenty.  That being said, I did give 2-button WOW a go for the last week and it works great for tank-and-spank bosses.  Perhaps it’s just play-style and preference, but I prefer to implement the 969 rotation manually for the added flexibilty.