Ret loses Spiritual Attunement. Opinions?

[Lissa]

Delaying abilities isn't smart. The 969 rotation isn't a priority rotation, it's a CD rotation. If anything comes off cooldown simultaneously with another because you've delayed it, you have to judge on the spot: Which is more threat? Is it worth breaking the rotation for a small threat boost right now? Is there a secondary reason aside from threat why I can't choose to replace this?

Of course, you can adhere strictly to the 969 rotation, but that isn't optimal.

I'm not sure I would say that it isn't optimal. The thing about the 969 rotation is it setups so that every single CD is used optimally for threat generation/damage mitigation. The problem that comes about is that there isn't a whole lot of things in that rotation that you can drop to keep your threat up or your mitigation up. Dropping or delaying HS to me is big no-no, it builds threat and gives you more mitigation. Judgement is damage and gets you either health or mana back. SoR and HoR are your big threat moves. Consecrate gives you a good amount of TPS due to it sitting under the boss in question (for 8 to 10 seconds depending on glyph). While Exorcism may give you more threat than HS, Exorcims lowers your mitigation, it's not going to equal the threat of Judgement, HoR, or SoR, and Consecrate may be the only good choice to it to be put in due to the mana cost of Consecrate.

More as a point, if you (general you that is) have two things coming off cooldown at same time with 969, you're doing something wrong. As you've (specific) said, it's a cooldown rotation, but if two things are coming up, you (general again =p) either hit two of the same cooldown length items back to back (either two 6s or two 9s) or you're mashing buttons.

Even though the original author quoted by Mord states Exorcism is a DPS boost, I only see it being of use where you're either off tanking to maintain threat for somekind of aggro drop for the MT (like Archavon) and times where you can skip HS cause you're not taking direct hits.