DPS rotation in OT situations

My situation: I share tanking duties with a prot warrior. The two of us have been tanking together for the same guild since Lucifron in '05. At this point, we pretty much switch off on who MTs any given boss and who dps's or handles OT duties if called for.

Recently we've been really focusing on maximizing raid dps on more difficult encounters, and I started wondering, what's the best way for an OT to maximize their DPS when not tanking anything?

I'm not talking about the fights where I can just jump into Ret spec/gear. I mean the fights where I have to tank adds or swap the Boss with my co-tank. Fights like: Cho'gall when the other tank has grabbed him after a Fury and the Big Add isn't up yet; Twilight Council during Phase 3 if you're not the MT; Halfus after adds are dead and the other tank has grabbed Boss so stacks can fall off you (bubble already used for sake of this discussion); etc.

Up until this point, I've just continued to use my 939 rotation with SHotR or maybe Inq. But is this optimal? Are there any variations/changes that would pump out more DPS? I realize the basis of Threat is Damage.

For purposes of this discussion:
- in Prot spec, with full on Prot survival gear.

If I am not mistaken, 939 emerged as our standard rotation due to maximising our threat, back when we all reckoned it might be relavent, so it is likely to be your best bet for DPS as well.

If you are looking to maximise raid DPS, you'll want to swap tanks periodically so that both of you get vengeance.

Koatanga wrote:If you are looking to maximise raid DPS, you'll want to swap tanks periodically so that both of you get vengeance.

Vengeance falls off so fast that I doubt this is a very high RaidDPS increase (if any at all). While one is building up his vengeance, the other tank is losing it.

Possibly, but if the tank is capping vengeance, then there are vengenace-producing events that are not yielding additional vengeance. Tank-swapping would utilise those unused vengeance events which might yield a net gain.

If the MT is not capping vengeance, then yeah it would be a loss.

have a warrior/druid OT. warrior gets partial vengeance and unlimited rage when not targeted and the druid can go kitty.

Arizair wrote:have a warrior/druid OT. warrior gets partial vengeance and unlimited rage when not targeted and the druid can go kitty.

And while that's optimal from a Strategic standpoint, my question was more a Tactical one. IE, when you find yourself in the situation where your OT has just grabbed the boss off of you so that say, debuff stacks can fall off of you, and you won't be taking aggro back for a bit, is there a rotation better than our regular 939 for pumping out a little DPS. Because it will happen in the current raid content.

Vengeance falls off about 10-11 seconds after your last damage taken,, or at least is down in the sub-10% range...

Warrior of also does not have unlimited rage, my warrior tank complains about that... But they DO get vengeance from vigilance, and generate some of their own rage....

Taunt swapping every 10 seconds is probably not worth it, you'd end up with both tanks averaging 50% vent. Best dps is probably going for soft cap exp, some hit, and pally MT and warrior OT as often as possible ... Will give a combined ~125-150 vengeance, warrior will be slightly the starved.

You can skip the hit, but expertise Alone is our strongest secondary dps stat for the least cost(~481 rating)