Paladin boxing with shammys.

[Vyndree]

Correct. But as you level your spelldmg also goes up.

Downranking is efficient where mana is a problem. If you can rank 1 consecrate 5 times, but max rank consecrate only 2 or 3 times, you're still winning by doing consecrate rank 1 given the correct amount of spelldamage.

It's up to you to determine what that correct number is and when downranking is appropriate. My personal philosophy -- when in doubt, downrank.

In most of my videos, you'll notice that I rarely, RARELY heal my paladin during a fight. This means my mana pool needs to last me the whole time. If I were taking steady damage that required healing, I'd gain mana back and I could use max rank consecrate. But, as it happens, I was lacking in the mana department, not the threat department.

[Poolboy]

My Pally owns keys 1-4 on main hotbar, while the dps/utility owns 5 to '='. My Priest operates largely from the numpad.

[BobGnarly]

The nice thing about a paladin tank is that they build threat off getting hit, as opposed to my warrior which must be proactive to build threat. If you just put up righteous fury, blessing of sanctuary, and retribution aura, you can usually just stand there and be fine. Add consecration in and your golden. IMO, this is why a paladin makes such a great multibox tank.

As for the button thing, I have some overlap on my buttons, but it is a non-issue because of how they overlap. For example, my lightning bolt spell is also a seal. However, since I'm targeting an enemy, the seal doesn't really do anything (except cause the glowing hand, which I just click 2 again to get rid of). I also mouse click my judgments, but that's really just because I've been too lazy to figure out something better.