No Ret. Rotation... Follow

Mostly that, yeah. And when two abilities come up at the same time, try to use the one with the shorter CD first.

CS before Judge, Judge before DS. If you don't, they come up at the same time again. Judging before CS every time would be the same as making CS an 8 second CD.

Wow. No, not at all. There are multiple threads on this very topic, scroll down and read Goggy's DPS plateau thread for a very good one.

I differ from the previous advice here in that I am a "highest damage gets priority" not "shortest CD gets priority"--firing a CS, DS, CS when I could do judge DS CS makes no sense.

The pally rotation is very situational as well, you have to know how to juggle priorities in single target vs trash situations, and be ready to use your other pally abilites when the boss situation calls for it.

EDIT: And its not that pally dps dosent require a rotation, or that "button mashing" is better than thinking, but that with the set of CD's that ret has, any rotation is absurdly long, like 20 cycles something, such that no one could remember it. There is simply no way to create a short repeatable cycle with the current state of ret that wouldn't suck completely.

Edited, Mar 4th 2009 4:54pm by Tsarducci

Agree with Ehcks, prior to the 4piece T7 I would judge, CS, DS, Conc then First Come First Serve which would mean the next would be CS, Judge, DS. Skip conc or DS whenever it would clip the cooldowns of judge or CS. Your rotation should start over from the beginning after about 3-4 rounds (back to judge, CS, DS, Conc). Post 4piece T7 its pretty much Judge, CS, DS, Conc and repeat for boss fights skipping conc and ds again if it will clip judge or CS. For mob packs more than two use conc, DS, judge, CS. This time changing priority to conc and DS.

keep in mind that CS is a glorified auto-attack. it does proc seals but gives no other bonus elsewhere.

DS: procs seals. multi-target. heals. semi-range. procs DoT. used with Libram
Judgement: ranged. spell dmg. multiple debuffs. replenish. procs DoT. hardest hit.

our spell CDs WILL collide. you need to choose which ability you would rather postpone for the sake of another. i have stuck to the philosophy that CS gets the backseat in any of these situations, thus CS remains lower on the dmg done list and the CS libram(s) becomes less effective to me.

Don't forget about Exorcism and Holy Wrath when fighting undead. If you have all of them going, you pretty much always have somethign ready to cast. I also use DoTimer's cooldown timer to see whats available without having to look at my bars.