I made a post on the WotLK Wiki forums and got some excellent feedback. With some help I've come up with this as an idea and would like feedback here as well.

From this thread WotLK Wiki • View topic - Rune Swapping

What? You play a Death Knight now? Wtf is that supposed to mean? Unless you mean on a sandbox server, or you have a F&F invite...

and because I was under the impression that Death Knights use Rune Weapons, not Rune Specs. I'm sure if Blizzard can store Socket and Enchant information for hundreds of weapons they have the database capacity to put in six lines for rune's on weapons.

Edit: I'm sure there would also be a mechanism to re-rune your weapon for some type of opportunity cost.

No one's done any math beyond napkin math because a) everything's still very much in flux as this is an early beta b) we're missing important information on many skills c) there's no need to because for all intents and purposes there are no DKs yet. Sorry to say, but you're currently far more prepared to answer your questions than we are. It's doubtful you'll see any serious attempts at it until open beta when skills start settling down.
Also, one way or another you're breaking blizzard's rules, and doing so publically.

The issue with associating runes to weapons isn't storage space, it's database allocation logistics. For weapon-type items only, for DKs only, you need six additional fields in the item database? That would mean that you either have craptons of wasted overhead space on at least the weapons for everyone else (nb: the bigger deal is access time, not storage space), or your database treats DKs in a completely different manner than everyone else, which is itself inefficient. Not to say that their item database couldn't handle the additional strain, I'm just saying it's non-trivial, and the biggest deal would probably be updating the item database on 3.0 patch day to include all the extra empty space.

This topic remains as pointless as it was before, but I cannot help but comment on the "rune shard" proposal:

This idea is dumb. I say this as someone who has played a Warlock since day one in Warcraft. Soul shards are dumb. Really dumb. Ignoring all the issues Blizzard had with the original implementation of them the fact is that you have to fill up half your bags with these things. They serve no purpose at all other than to annoy and fill up bag space.

I can collect heaps of these in a short time, it is just annoying because it means I can't carry much stuff around. I can and do collect enough that I can spam every soul shard ability on its CD when I need to (helped by the fact that Blizzard has not been dumb enough to make any of these abilities really key-if SB had a soul shard cost... well you can see how dumb the concept if just from that fact it doesn't). I am not limited by shards in any way except by time to play the game and farm them and space to hold them in my bags. Neither is an unavoidable constraint if I get a big enough reward from them (which, PvP aside, I don't). They do nothing to alter my spell use in any way.

Such a rune shard system for a DK would be similary pointless. It just means that a DK will have ~10 (seems a reasonable guess) less bag spots to use. The only real limiting factor would be the timer, the shard idea is just salt on top. Putting things into the game that do nothing but piss people off is bad design.

The idea is really just:

With an annoyance component. An Idea that has been mentioned here already. 5 mins, by the way, would basicly mean you can re-rune at will, which makes me wonder why you would even bother putting such a thing in in the first place?

The re-runeing system can be:

1) Trivial: Can re-rune whenever out of combat for no cost.
2) Annoying: Can re-rune whenever out of combat for some (gold/shard/reagent) cost.
3) Limiting: Can re-rune in town/every x mins.
4) Limiting and annoying: Can re-rune in town/every x mins for some (gold/shard/reagent) cost.

As far as raiding goes 2 is completely pointless. If you can gain some advantage form changing runes then people will do it. Unless you make the cost huge so as it serves as a limiting factor, in which case you might as well just do 3.

I dont see what purpose, other than the usual "gold sink" stuff, would be served by systems 2 and 4.

As far as the technical implementation goes, if you can have sockets in weapons (and you can make a new socket in weapons in the expansion), I really don't see how having rune data associated with weapons will be a problem. I'd be very surprised if the decision between per weapon or per character runes was done for technical rather than game play reasons.

As far as annoyance and bag space, that's a dynamic for every class. Warlocks have soul shards, any class with a buff has to carry reagents, shaman carry totems and ankhs, hunters carrying a bag full of ammo, etc. I think it's pretty clear that Blizzard considers minor annoyances to be good for the game, for whatever reason.

Death Pact costs 2B - Sac your Ghoul to heal you for 2600.

I'd be interested in some way to swap runes out of combat perhaps, if only because I'd be interested in getting the Frost 11-pointer for the weapon imbue, but having no interest in using any frost abilities.

Use blood tap to change a blood rune to a death rune, which counts as an all purpose rune. I am assuming you aren't going with a 6 unholy runes setup right?

Latest news on the rumur mill is that obliterate now does 100% melee damage + 330 + 122 per disease (consuming the diseases). But the important thing is that it is now 1 frost rune and 1 blood rune in cost. This makes me feel even more certain that changing runes won't be a simple matter of just changing our weapon.

In addition, death and decay now costs 1 frost, 1 unholy and 1 blood rune.

They are in effect making it such that for all practical purposes, most deathknight will have at least one of each rune in their setup. You can customise the remaining 3 as you wish, but you would want at least 1 of each to start with in most cases.

It also seems that frozen rune weapon is a 10% frost damage debuff.

Obliterate is an intheresting one. Given the talents it makes sense for it to be blood and frost, however it uses diseases for more damage, which implies unholy runes or a group putting the debuffs up.

Not at all, the rune setups can be saved with the Deathknight, allocating a new setup for each weapon id when they first rune them and deleting them when the weapon is sold/destoryed/de. So when the Deathknight switches weapons it uses the item id or GUID of the new weapon, looks it up in a rune layout table saved to the DK and switches to the appropriate setup then. No additional storage per weapon is necessary, only per Deathknight.

I can see a tank DK leeching from the rest of the raid as far as disease applications go unless they are primarily unholy or minor deep in unholy--although using more than three unholy runes in a tank build seems very unlikely to me as those abilities seem to be focused almost wholly on mitigation and not threat--and burning a Feral Druid & another DK's diseases during threat sensitive periods; however, Obliterate definitely seems to be more focused on providing a way to regularly use Frost/Blood runes in a deep unholy, or Frost/Unholy spec.

Who knows, maybe the additional damage will make Frost/Unholy more tempting than Frost/Blood *shrug*.

Or, just a thought, maybe DW builds will focus on stacking diseases and burning large stacks of them down with Obliterate, possibly outweighing the lower weapon damage with extra diseases--something like this maybe: 0/20/51.

Plusses:
-15% Haste from Icy Touch (1F)
-3% Hit (Passive)
-10% Shadow/Frost Damage (Passive)
-4% Death Rune (passive--had 2 'free' points so I put them here)
-3% Spellhit
-Addl 6 sec Disease duration
-3% Crit & Crit Damage on Plague/Death strikes & degen
-5% Str
-15% Plague Strike
-5% Addl shadow damage added to melee (Scaled by frost's addl 10%?)
-20% Addl AP->Spell scaling
-At least 4 diseases from one DK (Obliterate: 150% Weapon + 1200)

Minuses:
-Basically no solid tanking talents, very minimal CC compared to frost
-Requires time to stack diseases
-Dual Wield Hit penalty
-One handed weapon damage for strikes
-Passed on AoE Talents (Wandering Plague) for more single-target damage

Not sure on:
-Does a Ghoul provide another disease? (if so, you get 5 diseases until your Ghoul dies)
-Would summoning a new ghoul during a fight be an efficient use of runes? (if you have a spare corpse to begin with)

I've been looking at similar builds. It has great dps potential but misses out on all the goodies and versatility. The aoe capability of unholy seems reasonable if you take Corpse Explosion and Wandering Plage and Anti-Magic Zone may be incredible for many encounters. Also not taking Frozen Rune Weapon for one point when you had "Extras" seems a bit strange. That is a great dps talent for 1 point.

*Edited for depth.

Annihilation, Frost talent 3/3, Tier 6

Increases the critical strike chance of all your melee special abilities by 3%, in addition there is a 90% chance that your Obliterate will do its damage without consuming a disease.

Passed on Frozen Rune Weapon so that I wouldn't have to worry about Windfury/FRW interactions (that, and you may not have a noticeable number of frost users to make the debuff worthwhile). I also passed on Corpse Explosion because it seems to have such an atrocious Damage/RP ratio (~15 Damage / 10 RP when _improved_, not counting the disease). Admittedly, Unholy Blight isn't all that great either but, at the very least, you can use it without a corpse handy ~and~ it does more damage--which is what I was going for anyway. The whole point of the build, at least at first glance, appears to be "swing really, really fast so that you always have two diseases (Ebon Plague & Blood-Caked Blades' 'Plague') on the target to obliterate with"; heck, your AP and +Damage will probably matter more than your weapons since a fair amount of your output will be coming from diseases so this could be a really solid, albeit horribly selfish, entry-level build. It will almost certainly become limited by threat issues though as it has no threat reduction :-/.

Can't reach it without losing access to Unholy Blight and the additional disease that it provides :-/. Additionally, it would serve a better role if a 2h were equipped as you cannot depend on your weapon to swing nearly as quickly to reapply the two diseases that your weapon can proc.

To me, annihilation seems like a tanking or off-dps talent as it will allow a Frost DK to leech from Disease casters without consuming their diseases prematurely.

Still uncertain if you'd need a very fast weapon to assure diesease hit, or a very slow 2h weapon. All depends on the implementation - if it's a set % - like windfury - then the faster the better. If it's a PPM mechanic - then the slower the weapon, the greater chance for it to proc. Also PPM procs are unaffected by haste - a relatively bad decision.

I'm pretty sure that the DK starting zone and quests will get you close enough to 58 that you can go from them to Outlands without having to do much in the way of questing or grinding. The two starting zones we've seen (before and after, so to speak) are reasonably large.

Speaking of leveling:

I know it is a bit trivial at this point (knowing as little as we do), but has anyone speculated as to what would be the best spec to level with right out at 55? It is my intention to level as quickly as possible, so I would assume the best DPS spec would of course be necessary. Is there any indication of what that spec would be? I've read a good portion of this thread, and from what I could gather it is still unclear as to what tree is mostly focused on DPS.

I think it would be awesome if we could hammer out the generally accepted spec at 55, I'm still getting familiar with the talent trees, so I might have some ideas soon.

Leveling specs are not always DPS specs. They're often much more concerned with efficiency and the reduction of incoming damage. I think there's enough damage-reduction talents across the trees that frost's tanking talents may not edge out. I would anticipate either Unholy spec for the mount- and run-speed increase on Unholy presence, or a Blood life-return spec for downtime reduction. While grinding, Unholy is also much more able to take advantage of corpses for both Ghouls and explosions.

Personally I am not considering any spec without Corpse Explosion, because Corpse Explosion is the best spell in the game in any game that has a spell named Corpse Explosion. I could see myself going for a dumbassed 33/0/27 spec for blood worms and iCE, but this is unlikely in favor of 50 Unholy first, then to Forceful Deflection some frost speed reductions.

Hmmm, after playing around a bit more on the talent calculator, I'm not sure I understand why they homogenized the trees each into a tank/dps hybrid with a different twist but left tank talents singular.

What I mean is, if you look at feral druids, almost every talent affects both dps and tanking somehow. DK builds will by necessity simply be either pure dps or tank/dps hybrid for tanking. Putting tank talents in every tree is fine, but dps builds will simply spec around them and not take them, disallowing 'innate hybrid ability'.

It doesn't need to be overbearing like the feral tree, but it would be nice to see more tanking things come with dps talents instead of having to waste talent points if you want to tank outside of raids.

Thoughts?

I think that's a very pertinent point Azurai and is the kind of thing Blizzard would overlook (because they often assume players will choose "reasonable" and "balanced" specs/consumables/whatever and continue in this benign assumption until people min-max over and over and over again and Blizz finally cottons on). We may end up with three flavours of DK tank but be back to the situation of a paucity of players who are specced to tank an instance (or specced such that they can tank an instance relatively painlessly).

IIRC, and I have not played a druid so I might be wrong, Druids had issues with feral because you couldn't really tank without certain talents and you didn't go tank spec because it just wasn't that great a spec. Druids were not great MTs and pretty shoddy DPS as a bear so people would always spec for cat if they went feral because you could at least do one thing kind of well then. The fixed it up because Druids were not working that well just by themselves; a cat couldn't tank well and a bear couldn't dps, and neither were groundbreaking with what they speced to do either. Now they can do both better and in addition have the much desired flexibility to do both, making up for the limitations of their ability as a pure class in either.

Look at Warriors and Paladins though, a much closer comparison. You have dps and taking trees, even more clearly defined than the DK talents.

DKs are loking for a middle-ground of sorts, and combined with the way DKs will gain threat (and Warriors tanks in looks like) will mean that the talent spec will not as clearly define what you can and cannot do as in the past. DKs can be a pure dps class and a pure tanking class, supposedly, so it makes no sense to make us as flexibile in one spec as the Feral. That would put us ahead of them, Warriors, and Paladins.