Pally Is Almost Perfect

[Februs]

Starting in Shield Oath: Fast Blade > Fight or Flight > Riot Blade > Sword Oath > Circle of Scorn > Goring Blade > Shield Oath. Notice how you lose very little down time in the GCD between Sword Oath and your next GCD ability, making it better than what you are making it out to be.

Not quite. What you're suggesting assumes that the Pld swaps back instantly after they apply their DoT, but that is not optimal. To maximize their Dps, Pld's should be remaining in SwO for the entire duration of FoF (unless boss mechanics require otherwise). Swapping back immediately after applying Goring blade is actually a potency loss, because you are losing out on roughly 17 seconds of increased dmg output. For a full rotation of 30 seconds (FoF's CD timer), and assuming you are beginning your rotation with a FoF buff to your enmity, you're actually looking at using FoF at the beginning of a Goring Blade Combo to maximize potency. The rotation looks like this:

> SwO > FoF > Fast Blade > Riot Blade > Goring Blade > Fast Blade > Savage Blade > Royal Authority > Fast Blade > Savage Blade (FoF falls off here, at 20 seconds)> Royal Authority > Shield Oath (oGCD's are not included, because they are rotated in between GCD moves)

The reason it works out like this is because of the timing of a Pld's first use of Fight or Flight, which is typically used at the beginning of a Pld's enmity rotation to secure aggro. FoF's cooldown is 30 seconds. In that time, at a full 2.5 seconds, Pld's can use 12 GCD moves. That's four of their combos (2.5s x 3 =7.5s per combo. 7.5 x 4 = 30s). FoF will be back up just in time for the fifth combo. Meaning, to buff the entirety of a single Goring Blade combo and two consecutive Royal Authority combos, the Pld swaps oaths at the start of their GB rotation.

Circle of Scorn is not included in the rotation, because it's Cool down is actually 5 seconds faster than FoF, meaning that it's up one full combo in advance of FoF. A Pld could wait to pop it, but waiting 5 seconds to pop CoS every time FoF circles around will start to stack by the end of the fight, so it turns out to lose you more dps in the long run.

Enmity is also not an issue in this rotation. Pld's tend to use FoF at the start of their enmity rotation (Ie: Shield Lob > FoF > Fast Blade > Savage Blade > RoH > Fast Blade > Riot Blade > Goring Blade > Fast Blade > Savage Blade > Royal Authority / RoH depending on how much of a lead you need on enmity), thereby securing enmity at the start of the fight. Before 3.2, Pld's could hold enmity doing this no problem and were never at risk of losing hate when swapping to SwO during the duration of FoF. Given that enmity has been increased on both Shield Oath and Savage Blade post 3.2, Pld's should have even less trouble holding hate when doing this.