Spell Rotations and AoE threat

I recieved a comment over the weekend from Alystira asking about spell rotation and multi-mob aggro. There's a couple of different rotations I use.

If I'm able to use Avenger's Shield, then it goes as follows:

1. Avenger's Shield
2. Holy Shield and Seal of the Crusader up as the mob approaches
3. Judge Crusader (or Judgement of Wisdom if the raid has a Retribution Paladin)
3. Seal of Righteousness
4. Consecrate (if no CC'd mobs near)
5. Judge Righteousness
6. Renew Holy Shield
7. Repeat steps 3-6 until the mob's dead.

If I can't use Avenger's shield, then I'll do the following:

1. Seal of Righteousness and Holy Shield up as I approach the mob
2. Judge Righteousness
3. Seal of Righteousness
4. Consecrate (if CC allows)
5. Switch to Seal of the Crusader (or Wisdom) just before the Judgement cooldown's up.
6. Judge Crusader.
7. Seal of Righteousness
8. Renew Holy Shield
9. Renew Consecrate (if allowed)
10. Judge Righteousness
11. Repeat steps 7-10 until mob is dead.

I used to really like Seal of Vengence, but I've found it's pretty situational, and I only really use it on fights like Warbringer O'mrogg in Shattered Halls where there's an aggro switch. Generally, SoR gives faster and more reliable aggro generation, which you need with trigger-happy nukers.

As for AoE tanking, I find it incredibly straightforward. The basic tools are Holy Shield, Retribution Aura and Consecrate. If you outgear the content you're AoE tanking, or you have multiple Paladins, then Blessing of Sanctuary can also give you some valuable aoe threat.

Consecrate is basically the bait to lure the mobs towards you. It offers a good amount of threat and scales decently with Spelldamage. However, make sure if you're using any CC, that they know to apply it before the mobs reach you. Failure to do this will result in annoyance and in extreme cases death. Probably not your death, since you'll be being spam-healed, but some caster's death.

Holy Shield and Blessing of Sanctuary are the meat of your AoE threat. Holy Shield does the most damage, but it only has a limited amount of charges, so if you tank a lot of mobs it'll get burned through very quickly. Blessing of Sanctuary on the other hand gives about one-fifth the threat of Holy Shield, but to any attack you block. In massive AoE situations it can be the difference between a mob sticking on you, or it coming loose and gibbing a Mage.

Finally, we have Retribution Aura. Again, this is a situational flavor. If you're feeling undergeared, you may prefer Devotion Aura, but these days I use Retribution almost constantly. It gives you a flat 26 Holy Damage on any attacker hitting you, which is about 50 threat. With the 2-piece T5 bonus, this become about 80 threat, which is a small, but significant amount of aggro.

Generally speaking, you should be able to generate enough passive aggro from these abilities to get the job done. If you find yourself losing aggro on mobs, then I'd reccomend tab-targetting between various foes and hitting them a couple of times with Seal of Righteousness, or even a Judgement if it's available.

All in all, there's not a big mystery to Paladin tanking. Just watch your cooldowns and try to spread the aggro around as liberally as possible. I'm probably going to get flamed by some Pallytank with a more complex analysis of the subject, but from my own experience, the above works fine for me.