Typically these are interchangeable- if I was a DPS I’d use my attacks on the mouse instead. For tanking, I try and sort them by relative cooldown- with 969, I pick one of the 9s, then a 6, and then another 9. With a rotation I’d likely do a similar thing.

Anyway, on the bars I have Judgements and Shock- used often, but not primary to healing, and a couple of Hand-cooldowns. I must admit that Freedom is the least used; Protection is a lifesaver but overused; and I don’t usually need Sanc.

Above them on the clickbars are my minor cooldowns- Avenging Wrath and the like; as well as my other ‘rotationals’- Beacon and Shield. They’re both keybound for transitions, but I prefer to click Beacon if I can because this often interferes with GCD- which leads to wipes.

Usually once I get used to the cooldowns and the situations they’re used in, I adjust accordingly. Admittedly, I’m still training myself on most, but I know that thoroughput + FoL = mini Holy Light. I’m going to have to try and work DivIllum into the mix (experience I’d think, preempting the big strikes for maximum impact) and Aura Mastery, as well as using Hand of Sacrifice as my Pain Suppression. I’ll get there in the end- but using Divine Illumination as means to it will likely help a lot.

With the exception of shape shifting abilities I could switch to an alt fairly easily because each key has about the same function
and so even if I had not played that toon recently I would have a general idea of where each ability should be.
This becomes way more important since I only play casually and don’t want to memorize lots of new stuff for each toon.

However, when I levelled my destro lock alongside my wife, I had a Cooldown Revelation – in relation to levelling at least. The reason was, she complained endlessly about me dominating on damage done (by a factor of 2 to 3- and yes, we had recount still switched on for levelling) even though I was in the same cruddy gear as her shadow priest. The reason was that I was using two short-medium cooldown (10 and 12 seconds) abilities in my opening attack salvo (immolate-conflagrate-chaos bolt) and doing lots of upfront damage. My subsequent casting (incinerate spam) would have been much less DPS, except obviously by this time the mob was dead. Then, of course, by the time we had looted and run to the next mob, both cooldowns were up again and I could unleash the same spells.

The point being, when there’s time to be spent running around, or waiting for the next pull, that’s not time where you’re regretting not having the ability to use the spell, as you wouldn’t be able to use it anyway.

So now when I look at say a 30 second cooldown ability like Conc. Blow – I think “well, a good 15-20 seconds of that will be spent running to the next mob, so it’s only really 10-15 seconds of actual waiting”. Now when levelling other characters, I tend to use my medium cooldowns ASAP. More fun that way anyway!

As an aside, Concussion blow is a fab dps cooldown anyway – decent damage, and if you time it right after a revenge and/or sword and board proc, you can make sure that the enemy eats a shield slam /revenge to the face with no chance of dodging or parrying! A good time to use shield block as well… Shield Block -> Force a Revenge proc (don’t use it) -> Conc blow -> Huge Shield Slam -> Revenge -> Devastate for a lucky Sword and Board proc = fun

Divine Favor, it forces a crit on our next healing spell. I have this spell macro’d to both Holy Shock (our instant-cast) and Holy Light. I never forget to use it, because it’s just there. It’s not important enough to save the day, imho, but it helps a whole lot to get that forced crit out once every 2 minutes.

I like the idea of just attaching it via macros to my other abilities, but share your concern about needing it off cooldown to mitigate punchy attacks like a fully charged Festergut or Sindragosa’s breath. Perhaps the answer is something akin to what I have done with Maul. In the world of endless rage, I have attached Maul to every single one of my attacks using a macro. It is great because I do tons of damage (especially with Glyph of Maul) and never waste a drop of rage.

The problem is that, since I have Glyph of Maul equipped, my macros turn me into an automatic multi-target attacker. This presents a challenge on Deathbringer Suarfang as I was constantly Mauling Blood Beasts. Sure, I could just swap glyphs for the fight, but that gets expensive after a while. My workaround: I perfectly replicated my primary action bar on my second action bar only without the Maul macros. That way, with a simple shift-scroll wheel, I could turn my Maul macro off and avoid attacking anything other than my primary target. Currently, I hot swap bars mid fight right before the Beasts come out and then swap back once they are out of range for maximum threat, but minimum Blood Power.

I could see this same system working for Barkskin auto-macros. Have one bar where every one of your attacks also triggers Barkskin and have another where you need to select Barkskin separately to activate it. You could then have maximum Barkskin up-time where you do not need to be selective about its use, but still be able to swap into discretionary mode for particularly challenging encounters. Perhaps I will give this a try…

For the most part, I have managed to make my main bar the focus of my rotation. With my finishing moves clumped together – rip, ferocious bite, maim. finishing off the bar with pots, and the “help” invisibility button.
Above the main, I have my shred, swipe, savage roar, survival, tranquility brez and my macro for innervating the healer.
My other bars are filled with such things as fishing, eating, instant “grats”, heartstone.

of course these bars only exist when I am in kitty, the main changes completely when I ahve to pop out of kitty and heal or do ranged damage in elf form.

My cooldowns are mostly unorganized, but work for the way I play my kitty.

Using macros in a logical way to combine abilities limits what you have to clutter your UI with and with Bartender4 gives a clean and useful layout. When the new patches come my default UI isn’t a pain to get used to since every bar isn’t filled to the max with various items and abilities.

I’ve basically set up my druid tank and pally tank bars exactly the same. Taunts are located on the same key, as are ranged pulls, O.S. buttons, trinkets, healthstones, pots. I try to make my tanking buttons as similar as possible so that I can swap between them seamlessly. I’ll also be doing this with my warrior as I bring him up.

I never really thought about button placement, though since you mention it, I now realize that the ones I actually click on the most are located right in the middle of the screen. I think it made sense to me since you can keep your mouse right there in the middle of the action incase you need to select another target or whatever, yet keep the long cool down buttons handy and ready to pop.