I wouldn't recommend drawing any conclusions from this since level 80 balance is totally out of whack anyway and Blizzard's focus is on tuning level 85 at the moment. For example, with the most recent changes, Paladins can be Block capped and can heal themselves really well (not Death Knights level, but it's pretty significant) with Word of Glory/Protector of the Innocent spam.
The problem with 4.01 was that Blizz basically took a rough snapshot of Beta and then just used that to patch live realms with. Live is just too many builds behind to draw any meaningful conclusions for tank balance.

And FWIW, except for not boosting the min heal Improved Death Strike works on Beta. The new changes with ~8 sec Rune CDs and 30 RP Rune Strike are also fantastic so look forward to that.
That said, Dual Wield is still superior for survival, though because of how terribly Scent of Blood scales with a slow 2h.

EDIT

I made a quick video to demonstrate something similar: YouTube - DK Starting rotation
That was back when Blood Tap was still at 60 seconds, Runes were regenerating at 10 secs and Rune Strike was not usable in Blood Presence without avoiding a swing. If Blood Tap would have worked, I would have used it to weave in Bone Shield and Frost Fever (Outbreak is usable every 2nd Frost Fever application so it works out neatly).

I was directing that more at the conversation between Saxxon and Grukthar from the previous page.

Edit: @Saxxon, since triumph and frost emblems were all converted to Justice Points I ended up being able to purchase an extra piece of t10. After that I simply ran 2-3 heroics every day or two and was able to pick up my last piece of tier in no time. Even as an alt its not difficult to achieve your 4pc which will increase your survivability greatly and is something I consider necessary for fights like LK. I plan on doing this to finnish out my dps set as well.

With parasites, which we are not conclusive on their absolute value nor which situations they will be valuable at L80, I do believe there is another useful method to consider it: the alternative use of the points.

There is no trade-off between Parasites and any survival-talent. It's only a trade-off to threat talents.
Therefore, until threat is a real problem, parasites are the logical default choice.

I'm not sure if my math is right, a little sleep deprived, but Veteran of the Third War is increasing stamina by 14.4% instead of the reported 9%. This is taken with no buffs.

Frost spec no presence no wep : 3022 stamina
Blood spec no presence no wep : 3458 stamina

So: (3458-3022)/3022 = 14.4%

Frost spec no presence weapon/no rune : 3325 stamina
Blood spec blood presence weapon/rune of stoneskin gargoyle : 4191 stamina

So: (4191-3325)/3325 = 26.04%

1 point of stam after talents/runeforge/presence becomes 1.26 points of stam which seems to match up with 1.144(VoTW) x 1.08(BP) x 1.02(RSG).

Blood spec gets another +5% Stamina from Plate Specialization. That plus the 9% from Veteran of the Third War is 1.05*1.09=14.45%.

Ah you're totally right, completely forgot about stamina from plate specialization.

On the topic of Blood Parasites.

Can anyone confirm if they are still eating healer's smart heals? If they are, then it's entirely counter-productive. It's always been the main reason why you don't take them, and I haven't seen anything to say that they have fixed it.

Has anyone tested it? =/

Transitioning into 4.0 I've had some trouble with initial misdirect effects wearing off and dumping aggro onto the highest DPS. With or without misdirect effects, threat is certainly tighter than it used to be (especially early in a fight before Vengeance stacks up) but so far I've preferred not to receive misdirects so I can better gauge my true threat. I'm sure mods will help with this in the future (or perhaps some already can).

This topic got me thinking about the interaction between glyphed Dancing Rune Weapon (a +50% threat modifier while DRW is active) and misdirects. It's entirely possible that if DRW is active while a misdirect effect wears off, the threat subtracted would be modified by +50%. In fact, from a programming standpoint I think this is a very likely to be the case. If it is, a misdirect given before DRW is used that falls off while DRW is in effect could result in a net loss of threat. If the threat loss isn't modified by DRW but the threat gain is (or if one can time DRW to wear off toward the end of the misdirect before it "returns" the threat), then proper timing of misdirects with DRW could result in a threat gain. In any case, it would be really useful to know how the abilities interact. There are a number of possibilities:

DRW affects the threat gained from misdirects while active but not the threat lost.
DRW affects the threat lost from misdirects if it is active, but not the threat gained.
DRW affects the threat gained while it is active, but all the threat lost (including threat generated by the misdirect before DRW became active)
DRW doesn't affect either the threat gained or lost by misdirect effects.
and so on in various permutations.

It's easy to see that depending on the timing of when each effect is used, how they overlap with each other in duration and how the DRW modifier affects things, there could be a net gain or a net loss in threat due to the misdirect.

If someone knows a good way of testing this (or if it's already been determined) I'd be really interested in the results. For now I'm saving DRW for after misdirects, or just not using misdirects at all (for fear that turning on DRW toward the end of a misdirect would be a net threat loss).

I believe that is working as intended since they changed both MD and ToT to be non-permanent threat transfers. If by "dumping aggro" you mean that your threat drops by 10k when MD wears off, #2 on threat was only 1k behind you and the boss turns on him, then I'd say that's expected behavior.

Yes of course, I know the new mechanics. I'm not saying it's a bug, I'm saying it's been causing me trouble so I prefer not to use misdirect effects. In any case, it's just a segue into the meat of my post, which is "how do misdirect effects interact with the DRW glyph threat modifier?"

I was tanking H-ICC25 last night and noticed a few things that became problematic:

1) Because of the IT nurf we really have lost that snap aggro ability that other classes enjoy. I thought that the entire purpose of the IT buff was to help alleviate the snap aggro problem. DRW works well but takes a few seconds to get enough RP to use it. When you have dps pounding on the pull that doesn't help much. Anyone else seeing this and if so what are you doing from keeping the Bear from grabbing initial aggro?

2) Does it make sense to stack dodge/parry like rune of sword shattering to increase rune strike procs until they fix rune strike? I tried this and it seemed to work well as it seemed that they were being stingy with the RS procs. I was at my max RP for lengthy periods of time without a RS proc. Eventually I would just throw a DC because my runes were on cool down. Adding this rune to my axe worked but I lost the armor/stam benefits of the stone gargoyle.

3) Should we be hit capped for spells as well? would this help increase threat generated by spell damage and if so would this help with AE tanking because of D&D, BB, and IT?

4) Does armor have the same value now that "Chill" has been removed?

5) There were times when I was both rune locked and RP starved. Does more haste recharge your runes faster and if so how much is needed to really tell a difference? Of course I could be using my resources wrong but I have never had that problem before.

Thanks for your feedback -