Contents

1This is the thread to be retired 2Recommended L85 survival-oriented raid tank spec 3Notes on skills and talents 3.1Diseaseless Blood (better described as not using IT & PS) 3.2Abomination's Might 3.3Other points 4Professions 5Priority (formerly known as rotation) 6Stats

[top]This is the thread to be retired

See Carebare's post.




This thread is about tanking in Cataclysm
Don't discuss levelling specs, DPS specs, 5-man tanking or other off-topic issues.

As OP, my job is to keep the EJ OP updated with the widely-accepted facts about DK tanking.
Thus I cannot be the primary researcher, writer or theorycrafter. I will rely on the community to mull over and analyse the game, and I'll reflect our common understanding here.

Note that on the complex theory issues, there has not been enough discusion and consensus yet. For example: do we gem for mastery or stamina; will blood parasite be useful at L85; is it worth a tank being sure he has depleted FU or B runes before using an RS to ensure a useful rune procs; will desecration be useful for tanks or will Lichborne self-heal via DC be more useful; and is reforging for Haste more worthwhile for threat than strength?

The target information architecture for this post is outlined and can be discussed in another thread. Please look there to understand what content is slated for the future for this post. It would be helpful if any contributions used that structure (ie. use a heading I had provided).

How to help update this OP
If you'd like to contribute specific snippets of knowledge to this OP, find a section heading I outlined, and write your piece in a PM or reply (just beware EJ rules).

[top]Recommended L85 survival-oriented raid tank spec

The best spec for L85 endgame raid tanking, which has a survival bias is 33/6/2.
The discussion of it, including the use of Lichborne as a tanking cooldown (with self-targetted death coils) is over a few pages.

Two points in Abomination's Might could be used there, or move to BCB or Crimson Scourge. Most endgame raid tanks think Crimson Scourge is a waste of points.

Essentially, Lichborne is a survival talent. After you have picked up the mandatory 31-pts for Blood tree, there aren't many discretionary points that remain, and the only additional talent to assist progression is Lichborne. A tank's first job is to survive, second to have threat, and the third factor is utility.

The alternative use of points are to go into Unholy for utility.

Utility: In 10-man raids, there is a chance that Desolation in Unholy could have more utility than the gain from an additional Lichborne, but only your raid comp and level of progression will allow that decision to be made fruitfully. There are some arguments that having a 100% spell hit on mind freeze (via Virulence) has merit too, if raid encounters require the tank to be interrupting.

Glyphs: In the Lichborne spec, the recommended glyphs are linked. Primes: DC, RS and HS are ideal. Majors: you can be flexible, but DRW and VB are the best two. Third slot up to you. Minors: Death's Embrace is only mandatory. Other two slots are flavour.

Glyph of Rune Strike has more threat than DS or HS. Analysis here.

[top]Notes on skills and talents

[top]Diseaseless Blood (better described as not using IT & PS)

At L85, with Outbreak, you will use diseases since there is no trade-off with DS. Use Outbreak. (At L80, diseaseless blood was tanking without using IT or PS for diseases.) DS does not scale with diseases. HS does, for threat. You can swap the IT/PS for an extra DS, which is a good trade-off. Diseaseless also means that you should not spec into epidemic, blood caked blade or crimson scourge.

Key issue with diseaseless is someone else must reliably put melee attack speed debuff (normally from frost fever) onto the boss. Realistically, the tank will be applying that in a number of situations because DPS will be moving around.
Discussion started here.

Key point: 'diseaseless' is more a statement about blood fever (from PS) being a lower priority, thus allowing you to skip the crimson scourge talent, and that frost fever is important for its debuff, not for its threat

[top]Abomination's Might

The talent is about the buff. You should take Abom Might if you're not sure your raid composition will provide the buff. Whilst the 2% strength will provide less single-threat than BCB (although the strength does scale AOE attacks), the buff is crucial for the raid.

To decide who in your group should offer the buff, consider:
* Hunters get nothing extra from talenting for the buff, though it only costs 1 pt.
* Enhancement Shamans like that talent as it gives a lot of Expertise, even though it takes 2 pts.
* All Paladins get Might (which now also gives mana regen) for free, no talent spending. However that doesn't replace the stamina buff from Blessing of Kings or Gift of the Wild, which tanks would prefer. If you have two in total of both/either, you can cover Might at no cost. (source)

[top]Other points

Death Strike and Blood Barrier
Physical damage absorption barrier only (not magical).
DS is not multiplied by Vampiric Blood.

Details:
Blood Shield scales w/ a direct 1:1 ratio from your Mastery % of the DS heal to Shield (ie a 15k DS heal = 15k Blood Shield at 100% mastery). Yes, you can increase this above 100% also, as seen in the results below.
Blood Shield does not stack.* (Clarified in his post)
Blood Shield absorbs only Physical Dmg.
Blood Shield is affected by Imp DS talent (the wording on this may need to be edited, but what I'm saying is that picking up 3/3 Imp DS will yield a larger heal and equivalent shield).
Blood Shield is NOT affected by Vampiric Blood, Death Strike is.
Formula for DS and Shield are here.

Icy Touch
It is no longer icy slam. It does not have a big threat multiplier.

Scent of Blood
Two points is the minimum, three has benefits but 2/3 should be fine. Source.

Dual-wield tanking is FAIL
Dual wield tanking is no longer viable. Any minor benefits are outweighed by the immense threat loss from all your strikes only taking into account the damage from your main hand weapon.
Any further posts suggesting Dual Wield tanking may be viable would need to provide solid evidence of a significant benefit to outweigh the threat loss. See post here for trade-off calculation.

[top]Professions

Discussion has started on this post. Please contribute. It appears the usual suspects remain the best choices, so you do not need to change professions, plus at L85 they will not be as large a relative gain over your base health as they are at L80 (since gear is scaling up more than professions).
Question is whether BS/JC become superior because they allow Mastery stats, which no other profession offers.

[top]Priority (formerly known as rotation)

There is no rotation, except a few opening moves you can reliably chain together. Rotations are irrelevant and impossible now due to Runic Empowerment.
Priority is what matters. Use DS with 5s gap so you maximise the self-heal and barrier. Use RS for threat. Use HS for threat, with diseases from Outbreak.
Tanking in 4.x is more fluid, you will make more decisions, by looking at your current rune state, health, and threat, in order to choose whether to DS, HS or even apply diseases with IT/PS.
Discussion here.

Factors to consider (source):
- keeping one of each rune refreshing to keep runes cycling
- setting up RE procs by having runes waiting to refresh
- timing DS to follow big damage effects, giving a bigger heal and bigger blood shield
- timing DS to not clip previous blood shields where appropriate
- keeping blade barrier up
- Blood Tap: with the extra rune refreshment on Imp BP, and RE procs, you can expect to re-use the Death rune multiple times.

[top]Stats

Parry and dodge have the same rating and diminish at the same pace. They're equal now.
Reforge for Mastery, unless you need to reforge for hit/expertise (threat).


Taunt is now on melee hit table, so 8% hit will mean you never miss a taunt. The taunt glyph is gone.

Updates
I will update this weekly if there is new content to add.
Note that:
(a) if you're an experienced endgame tank and bias decisions to survival talents, you actually can't go wrong. Also read first two replies below.
(b) you can have discussion on specific topics at pwnwear.
(c) over time EJ will work out what the optimal decisions and trade-offs are, and this OP will get updated
(d) I'll try to cross-link to the post in EJ or pwnwear which discussed the issue I have included in the OP.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

This is the base spec to maximize survivability. Blood Tap's reduced cooldown works quite well with the 4piece bonus.

From there, you have two points to work with because the level cap is 80.

Prime glyphs are all direct ability increases, with very straightforward benefits.

Death Strike - Even with our RP generation much much lower, this is still very good.
Heart Strike - Another hefty boost to a primary skill. I consider this and DS required.
Death Coil - Only best used for a Lichborne spec.
Death and Decay - Useful for AoE situations over the RS glyph.
Rune Strike - Single target glyph used over DnD glyph.

Pick DS and HS glyphs, then interchange the other three as you need.

Major glyphs are less mandatory, but still offer powerful bonuses.

Dancing Rune Weapon - Turns DRW into an extremely powerful threat cooldown.
Rune Tap - Adds an AoE heal to RT, useful for fights with AoE damage.
Vampiric Blood - Awful tradeoff. Not useful in WotLK.
Bone Shield - 15% movement speed while BS is up sounds useful, but it falls off very fast. It's not much of a bonus if you're just using Bone Shield as a cooldown, and you'd never rely on Bone Shield to be up if you needed it for the movement speed. You could use this to run around Dalaran faster.
Blood Boil - Awkward or kind of pointless without Pestilence glyph.
Pestilence - Useful for trash.
AMS - Increased duration on AMS is situational. It's useful for extending coverage for preventing debuffs or for situations with magic damage happening in a specific window.

Pick DRW and RT, adjust your third glyph as you see fit.

Minor glyphs are minor.

Blood Tap - Obviously important to not hurt yourself, especially with BT's increased usage.
Death's Embrace - Required for a Lichborne spec.
Raise Ally - Makes dead raid members less likely to die again in undeath.
Resilient Grip - This now resets Death Grip's cooldown when the target is immune to it. Bosses are immune to Death Grip, but are still affected by the taunt. Basically unlimited taunting.

Pick BT and RG.

Important changes to be aware of:

-The rune change. Runes of the same kind only regenerate one at a time. This has cut the number of available runes in half, making our runes less flexible for tanking.
-Runic Empowerment is a 45% chance on DC/RS to refresh any rune that is fully depleted. You generally want to save these procs up for another Death Strike.
-This means that we have a priority system, not a rotation. Healing with Death Strike is the main priority. You also want to keep diseases and Blade Barrier/Scarlet Fever up. Excess blood runes are spent on Heart Strike.
-Death Strike heals based on incoming damage. Using a Death Strike after a large burst attack is more effective than using it before. DS also puts an absorption shield that absorbs PHYSICAL DAMAGE. Death Strike does not require diseases to heal.
-Vampiric Blood and Icebound Fortitude are free.
-AMS does not generate RP anymore.
-DRW is now also a defensive cooldown with the bonus to parry.
-WotN now has a proc component that allows for a free Rune Tap.

I know alot is still in the 'grey area' in regards to 4.0, how it is now on the PTR, and how it will be once it goes live.

I have spent quite a bit of time on the PTR w/ the current DK changes and have somewhat of a decent feel to see where Blizz is trying to take DK tanks with their rotations / talents / cds /priorities / etc. However, I am sure there will be some more minor changes between now and the next 10 or so days until 4.0 is released and even then more will be coming.

One of the largest changes is the rune system. Basically what it turns into is playing with procs off of DC/RS and PS. Being able to refresh a rune through DC/RS and get a free Blood boil off when using PS make the rotation a bit more 'complex' in some ways, but it has a solid feel once you get some rhythm to it. RT being on a 30 second cooldown (talented) also gives you a bit more freedom with runes. I do want to point out that people should not worry, there aren't many times where I've found myself sitting there without anything to do and waiting for runes to come up.

Other than the rune recharge rate, our rotation is a bit different, along with threat gen, cd usage, specs, flow of incoming healing, and importance of DS, and with many more changes are going to make this entire transition into 4.0/Cata 'interesting' to say the least.

Right now for ICC and RS I think the only 'new' area that can be covered is spec/glyph choices/rotation since no new gear is being added:

Spec:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft



Glyph Choices:

Prime:

These are a bit more straight forward than the two lower teir glyphs. There isn't much flexibility for a raiding situation where you are tanking a single boss.

As discussed in the older DK endgame tank thread, DnD and DC aren't any type of main focus for a DK tank who is tanking raid bosses. Two fights in ICC where DnD is even used, and even then its not mandantory. With the new Runic Empowerment it will put a slight bit more weight on DC, but even then you are better suited with another glyph choice (unless I missed something about a threat modifier being added to DC).

-Rune Strike- This will be a huge source of your threat as well as a means to activate Runic Empowerment.

-Heart Strike- Your main blood rune usage ability.

-Death Strike- The important of DS is already known. It is the strong point of being a DK tank and one of our main means of mitigation.

-Death Coil- Mandatory if you are using the above spec which includes Lichborne.

-The new DnD glyph is only good for trash/AE fights only (Halion add tank / LDW / VDW).


Major:

-The new DRW glyph is going to be pretty important, especially with the removal of IT's threat modifier (based on removal of the threat tooltip and seeing decreased threat values on PTR). There are too many people that complain about the RP cost of applying it, but it's easily applicable w/in the first 10 seconds of any encounter which will (glyphed) provide a huge TPS increase along with the 20% parry gain.

-Bone Shield will be somewhat situational, but I do see it being up long enough to be able to rely on the runspeed in certain boss situations. LK comes to mind upfront just because movement on that fight is constant and almost anytime you have it active, it will be beneficial. Sindragosa, Halion, Putricide (depending on your guilds strat), Rotface (depending on strat), all could also make use of the glyph.

-Initially it was pretty undecided on glyphing VB for a Major, but after quite a bit of testing on PTR/Beta I have turned into a pretty big fan. RT being on a 30sec cd along with how often you are using DS and how important incoming heal values are make the 15% healing gain trump the 15% hp gain. It makes your healer(s) life noticiably more effecient.

-Pest / BB glyphs are both pretty straight forward. AE fights and trash only.
-AMS glyph is near worthless since you have a 5sec window already to get it up when you need it (Not to mention it will be gone after taking the breath/SR tick/*insert magic dmg here* anyway).
-Rune Tap- I could see this being a situational choice for heavy AE fights where any healing on your group is helpful. If it buffed the amount healed by RT, it would move into play over Bone Shield.

Minor:

-Horn of Winter- Always good to ensure this is active for the longest duration if your shaman dies or is too far away to receive the buff (ie Halion).

-Death's Embrace- Amazing glyph for the Lichborne spec.

-Blood Tap- Any dmg avoided is good.

-Resilient Grip - Self explanitory.


I will add some changes to this as they need to be. If anyone has any questions or comments feel free to PM or post about them. Most of this post is based on personal theorycrafting from PTR/Beta so please inform me if anything seems out of place.

Thanks.


***Edit: Updated as of 4.0.3a

I left two points because you can choose where to put them. BCB is awful. Blood Worms are good, but we haven't been able to determine how good they are. They heal intelligently, they won't explode until max stacks if you stay at full health. It'll definitely be mandatory in Cataclysm, where healing numbers are a lot more important, but in WotlK raids I don't think that's the case, hence the skimping by with just 1 point in it.

If your guild is planning on raiding 25-man come Patch 4.0.1, there is a good chance you will have either an Enh Shaman, Hunter, or 1 of the two Paladins required for Blessing of Might (10% AP now; other does Blessing of Kings [Druids can do a Kings equivalent as well]). This will free up two points for you to move around as you see fit.

Edit: Might as well add that it was just announced by Ghostcrawler that Rune Strike will be usable at all times if in Blood Presence (will not require a proc via avoidance; if not in Blood Presence, will rely on dodge/parry). Suffice it to say this will be an overall threat boost as it will lead to more actual, rather than potential, Rune Strikes, in turn causing more RE procs on average. You may well find yourself needing 2/3 SoB.

Thanks for doing this! It's nice to see cataclysm information about dks instead of pallies pallies pallies...

I have a couple questions about what's been posted.
1. Did BCB get better? At the moment it isn't recommended for tanking because ideally you want your autoattacks proccing RS, and my understanding was RS will not proc BCB
2. Did Bloodworms get better? I have not tried them myself but I heard that currently they are not worth the points.
3. Do HoW and BT still generate RP? Is DC still blood's RP dump?

It seems to me that the vamp blood glyph could be very useful. Yeah, the health increase is nice. But it doesn't make healers' job that much easier: They have a little more time to heal you, but they actually have to heal you more to keep you at full. The increased healing done to you will actually cause them to have to heal you less, which seems more advantageous. The only time it seems like it wouldn't be advantageous is early on, trying new bosses, which are hitting you a little too hard. In that case, the buffer is better.
Controversial to be sure, and only experimentation will tell.

1. I honestly don't know as I have yet to see *any* math on this talent. With the new RS change, it would be a talent for a threat increase. How much? I don't know but I'll try and find out.

2. Bloodworms did get better, they are also "smarter" as they won't explode unless full stacks if you are at full health. This is going to be a much wanted talent since healing is going Old Skool intensive.

3. HoW still generates RP but I don't forsee DC being our dump anymore. RP generation is slower in Cata and with the [extremely] recent change to RS, we can use it whenever we want in Blood Presence. That will be our RP dump now. If some how you're pushing the RP cap, you'd want to DC to make sure you don't max it.

I'm also curious about how to reforge my gear, come 4.0.1.

Currently on beta, with 0 mastery my DS shield is 50% of the healing done. If I reforge ALL my gear to get the most mastery I can, the shield ends up being just over 100% of the healing done.

Likewise, if I reforge ALL my gear to haste I shave about 1 second off rune cooldowns.

Is mastery really worth it? Would haste be better? Or do we value avoidance more (in other words, should we not reforge)?

Right, just throwing some numbers out there from the PTR (rather than beta), 1 point of dodge rating reduces the amount of damage you take by 0.02585%.

Similarly, parry appears to reduce the amount of damage you take by 0.0271% per point.

Each point of Mastery rating provides an extra 0.1362% of the healing done by Death Strike as a shield.

I guess we could use a damage taken per second multiplied by 0.0271%, and equivalently take a healing done by death strike per second times 0.1362% and get an idea of whether dodge/parry or mastery is better as a survivability stat (from a reforging point of view given the 1:1 ratio)? Unfortunately I don't have enough numbers to do those calculations myself - anyone care to continue the line of thought?

From my own personal testing on the PTR and the Beta, I find that Epidemic isnt THAT necessary over other talents until later on, and even then just for convenience. My reasoning is I have found many times that I would be stuck with low RP, not enough for an RS, but have 1 rune frost or unholy rune up or coming up. A lot of people have told me not to bother using them and wait for another rune to come up. What I have been doing is using Icy Touch and Plague Strike in these situations because it usually gives me enough RP to RS, i then RS, and in most cases reset another rune. Overall I saw an increase in my threat output even with low vengeance. Maybe simulators will tell a different story, but using IT and PS more often increased my threat for now.

But since I am using IT and PS more often, having Epidemic isn't as necessary and allows me to get more talents in the blood tree. I still put 1 point into Epidemic, but I would have no problems using that 1 point and putting it into Blood Worms or BCB

This is what I am currently thinking of running once 4.0 hits: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Now I'm just giving you my experience, and I haven't had time to play with the new RS really so this whole post could be pointless, but thought I'd share incase it gave anyone ideas.

and, First post here! Don't hurt me!

Now that Death Strike's healing no longer scales with the number of diseases, there doesn't seem to be any reason (from a survivability standpoint) to keep diseases up. Not keeping diseases up allows for an additional Death Strike every half-minute or so.

From a threat standpoint, you're trading the (20% damage bonus to Heart Strike + disease damage + 1 Icy Touch + 1 Plague Strike) for the damage of 1 Death Strike. Almost certainly going to be a threat loss, but how much of one depends on how the numbers end up looking. Besides, Outbreak every minute or at fight points that require good threat can still give you the disease bonuses some of the time.

-20% attack speed from Frost Fever is, I think, what we should call "non-trivial".


We will want to keep diseases up. If we find we do not, they'll change things so we do.

I was playing on the test realm and the free blood boils off of plague strikes seems very clunky at the moment. It seems like it'd be a boon in AoE tanking, with free blood boils proccing, but it just opens our runes up to weird combinations.

So it would feel like our single target opening rotation is Diseaes <- Death Strike <- Heart Strike x2 <- Rune Strike RP Dump. And then just alternate between Heart Strikes and Death Strikes.

For 3 or more AoE I'm assuming it would be D&D <- Diseases <- Pestilence <- Blood Boil and then we have a spare frost rune for an icy touch or a chains I guess on a potential runner?

Of the new tools, I was having issues trying to work in Festering Strike to extend my diseases (conflicted with Death Strike) and then I couldn't see a way to leverage the Plague Strike -> Free Blood Boil procs.

I think some points in Virulence might be mandatory (even if you don't take the 3 points) or at least, quite useful !

The main reason is that there are no hit debuff provided by other classes anymore. That means that if you are hit caped, you have 8(%) x 120.1 = 960.8 hit score. As the ratio for spells is 102.4 you get 960.8 / 102.4 = 9.38% spell hit. However, the cap is still (as far as i know) 17%, leaving you with 7.62% miss chance on spells.
Eventhough our aggro is now mainly related to melee attacks (as IT is no longer our "shield slam"), I guess it might be painful to have nearly 8% miss chance on spells (especially when it comes to outbreak, IT -refresh FF before it drops, blood boil -same reason, and mind freeze).
Edit : Sorry, I did the maths with the 85 ratings, but the percents (and therefore the issue) stay the same.

Did you actually tested that ? :-O (Otherwise I'll do it asap on the beta !)
Because it obviously seem broken (I doubt devs want us not to care about CD on our taunts) and if it works, we can expect a fix before it's released. A detail that bothers me is the "if DG fails because the target is immune" ; I assume that it refers to both mechanic (taunt & grip). If one of those works, no CD reset, which means that in PvP it will reset if the player can't be griped and in PvE, if the boss can't be taunted.
It's just an assumption, though, I'll try to check that asap if nobody answers before.

Why are posters overlooking the value of the AMS major glyph?

Given it's tiny uptime, I really don't see a signficiant value in the DRW glyph. You still need 60 rp to activate the skill, you can't use it to burst threat at the start of a fight. Given the most recent threat modifiers and the unrestricted rune strike, I simply don't see single target threat being a significant issue after my experiences on the latest build of the ptr.

The AMS glyph however extends the duration of one of our most powerful timers. Yes, it is still removed once the damage taken exceeds 50% of the user's hp, but even on live I can use it on H LK25 in conjunction with a flawless fang on the apply to reduce both the apply and the tick of soul reaper significantly. It is also useful as a bonus two seconds of causing a significant number of debuffs to not apply at all.

It may be useful to have a bit of math in the OP at least to show what talents are worse and why.
The following was avg out using the simulator downloaded frombloodsim.codeplex.com
This was using BloodSim - 10 04 2010
The following settings were used:
40% avoidance
65k health
6k attack power
954 weapon min
1592 weapon max
3.7 weapon speed
10% haste (accounting for raid buffs)
3 simulations run
1000 minutes run
All other settings were default and results were avg of the 3 runs.

Butchery:
Valued at 1 Rune Strike every 100 seconds per point. It has no other effect on a single target boss fight.
DPS without Butchery: 5417
DPS with 1pt Butchery: 5525
DPS difference: 108

Working it out by hand assuming there are free GCDs to spend every single runic power on a Rune Strike:
Rune Strike hit for 8322 at the end of the sim. This should be fairly representative of a mid fight Rune Strike even with vengeance decay. Crit rate is 15% (Glyph + Raid Buff) giving an avg dps of 9570. Divide that by 100 for a gain of 96 dps. It would be fair to say that the talent is a 1.7% DPS increase. With the inflated threat on Rune Strike that becomes a 2.6% TPS increase per point.

Blood Caked Blade:
Valued at 5% auto attack damage per point.
DPS from auto attacks: 840
DPS per point of BCB: 42

Should Blood Caked Blade be able to proc Scent of Blood (something that I can not test but will keep trying), in the [unrealistic] best case scenario it will be a 10% chance every 3.3 seconds to proc 10 runic power. Simplifying the math that comes out to 1 runic power every 3.3 seconds. This means that in addition to the base DPS it would also be the value of 1 and a half points of butchery or somewhere in the range of 150 additional DPS. If BCB does not interact with SoB it is a .7% TPS increase, however if it does it is a theoretical maximum 4.5% TPS increase.

Crimson Scourge:
The talent is valued at 50% heart strike every 30 seconds and 20% of a blood boil's damage every 30 seconds per talent point. There is no bonus runic power generated. Blood boil hits for roughly 1250 so thats 250 damage every 30 seconds or 8.3 dps. I'm going to round up to 10 for now to account for early refreshes and crits. Heart Strike hits for 4500 or so and crits roughly 5% of the time making it 4725 on avg. 50% of that is 2363 and thats once every 30 seconds for a DPS bonus of 79. This brings the talent to roughly 90 DPS per point or a 1.6% DPS increase

Abominations Might:
Simple at 1% strength. taking a strength of 2150 + 5% stats to get 2257. An additional 1% is 23 strength or 46 attack power per point. With the 10% ap raid buff it is worth roughly 50 dps per point. This places it at about 1% TPS increase.

Kahorie's DK simulator does not want to play nice with my computer but over the weekend I will have access to one that can run it. As well I do not have a beta key and the ptr will not let me log on for some reason but when it does I will test to see if Blood Caked Blade swings can proc a charge on Scent of Blood as well as if there is an ICD on Blood Caked Blade. Also does the free Blood Boil from the talent Crimson Scourge generate any runic power? If someone already has this information that saves quite a bit of time.

Well, always repeating this can ONLY lead to Nerfs. What do you think is going to happen? I suppose, they are going to make our DS again rely on Diseases. Thats just going to be a nerf because you can't always apply two diseases when you need that extra heal. Singletarget, it's no problem, of course.

I hope they aren't trying to always force us applying diseases. I hope, they could simply buff disease dmg and nerf all other damage (like HS, RS and so on) and not change the mechanic.

I was looking into a spec like this

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

It looks to me like Blizz wants to move DK tanks to dual wielding tanking 1Hs so we can stack more avoidance stats. If our survivability is going to be as low as it is in the Beta this might be needed. with the 2H tallent being moved low in the frost tree and the 1H tallent at the first teir of frost this seems to point to Blizz hinting that this is what they intended. Also if you create a premade DK on Cata beta or in PTR you start out wearing tank gear and dual wielding tanking 1Hs so again I think they are hinting at this.

This isn't the first place I've heard that it seems like blizz wants Dk's to DW tank as blood in cata. It will most likely come down to a balance between the need for more threat or avoidance. What blizz "seems to want DK's to do" is purely speculation unless it is derived from a blue post. My curiosity is peaked as to whether or not threat generation for Dk tanks will be sufficient DWing 1handers. From what limited feedback I've received from ptr testers, RS hits like a wet noodle. Furthermore, our rotation has turned into a priority in which we will be focusing more on properly preparing and responding to incoming dmg moreso than maintaining a rotation for threat. I can't help but feel like establishing adequate threat through gearing and spec, while focusing on our priority tanking abilities for survivability will be the best approach. Of course I have no hard numbers to support that yet.

/edit for clarity

When I say gearing for threat I mean weapon only. Obviously, favoring str over stam or avoidance wouldn't be wise.

I guess I'm curious if this "common wisdom" about avoidance being so much better in cataclysm actually turns out to the be the case. The item databases seem pretty weak right now, but here are some numbers for 333 itemlevel blue weapons:

Wild Hammer - Items - Sigrie
Seliza's Spear - Items - Sigrie
Mace of Transformed Bone - Items - Sigrie

1h mace: 172 stamina, 115 dodge, 87 strength, 58 hit
2h mace: 401 stamina, 178 mastery, 268 strength, 178 haste
2h polearm: 401 stamina, 203 mastery, 268 agility, 136 critical strike rating
2x (1h mace): 344 stamina, 230 dodge, 174 strength, 116 hit

I see there is some advantage in dw, but there is some in 2 handed weapons also. It may depend on itemization. If 2 handed weapons have mastery and hit on them where tanking weapons have dodge and hit, it may not be as simple as tanking stats vs non-tanking stats -- because mastery is a tanking stat of sorts.

I'd like to see more examples of tanking weapons, and I'm curious how common they are.

In terms of damage or threat, I think not having Threat of Thassarian (the thing that allows frost spec's abilities to hit with both weapons) will prove to limit dw's usefulness.

I think you are correct it will come down to how much benefit to do you get from the mastery on the 2H vs the avoidance stats from 2x 1H and is there going to be a reduced amount of threat from 2x 1H ... I have been playing with both for some time now and I don't currently have threat issues in either setup on live, but I will try to do some more testing in the ptr this week.

I suppose diminishing returns will prevent you from abusing the mechanic in the way you are describing.



Bloodworms:
I've had a bloodworm heal me for 9k on the PTR. this seemed to be a rare occurance as most of them healed for around 5k and some as low as 3k. I'd like to know how this intelligent healing works exactly because current health seems to make a big diffirence in when the worm bursts and how much its heals for. Also, is the heal a static amount based on the amount of stacks the worm and the players level? Has max hp have to do something with it? Questions, questions...

Epidemic:
I could see no reason to spend points in this talent. If you spend 3 your disease timer will be 33 seconds, which is 3 seconds longer then the scarlet fever debuff (30 seconds). I found my life to be much easier to know i refreshed my diseases at the 21 second mark, get my free BB and never ever have to worry about scarlet fever falling off. Probably just a quality of life thing though.

Virulence:
this may very well be a good candidate as one of the previous posters suggested. What other things could you do with the points anyway? Again, personally, i get really annoyed if i IT and it misses and sometimes even misses again when lacking large amounts of hit. Somebody else is very likely to bring the 10% AP buff. I guess the 2% strength is better for threat then virulence but why make things annoying for ourselfs? It's not like we are struggeling with threat anyway. probably not mandatory but a quality of life thing aswell.

And yes, I do like making things easy for myself if i get the chance too