I did some extensive testing to find out this was NOT true for Crit.

While agil affects physical crit (at 44 to 1%), int affects spell crit chance (at 166 to 1%), thus producing VERY different values for crit.
However, crit rating effects both in the same way

Read what he wrote. All RATINGS are universal now (except ArP and SpP). He didn't say anything about agility. Since DKs have virtually zero agility, it's not much of an issue anyway.

please delete this post

Wait, a standard 2H unholy build doesn't get much benefit from BCB anymore? I thought that was one of the key talents, even without dual wielding?

edit: After looking through some more, I can't figure out any meaning you could have had that is right.

It looks like the 'this' you are talking about is not something the person you quoted actually said.

Yeah, I think he's on crack.

edit: O.O When did BCB go physical? If it stays that way, then yeah, it'll suck.

3 points in BCB generates roughly 1.3% of my total DPS. Those same 3 points in Impurity, for example, improve my DPS by about 3.3%.

BCB is a pretty crap talent at the moment. It only deals 60% weapon damage as physical (so mitigated by armor) at a maximum. It can be blocked, dodged, and parried, and it can miss. It only has a 15% proc rate. It's unaffected by all but two of Unholy's damage multipliers (Rage and Desecration). And, to cap it all off, it comes at a point in the tree that's already very DPS-talent rich.

I have through about 90% of this thread over the last few weeks. Has there been any real data or testing on whether or not DK can and will be main tanks for competitive progression guilds.

I'm also very curious to know if death knights can reach the type of health, mitigation, and avoidance numbers as other tanks because I need to know if I should play death knight or feral druid in the expansion.

I also wanna know if they are gonna be Viable DPS for a hardcore raiding guild.I am not in the beta so what does Death Knight Viability look like?Are they bring any worth while buffs to the raid that stacks with other things?

I can just came from a 25 man naxx run. Did plague and spider wing before server restart. DK are gonna be just as competitive dps as any other class. I was first on Maex, Loatheb, and heigan. Was raiding as a blood/frost spec. Unholy was usually first on fights with more adds. I was a tad bit more geared than most of the other raiders, but not to much.

Death Knights are fairly viable in a raid. A Blood spec'd DK will provide 10% AP buff to those within 20 yds and Blood Aura which heals raid members within 45 yds by 2% of the damage they deal. Frost increases the attack speed of all melee by 20% and can provide a buff to magic resistance. Unholy gives a buff very similar to Affliction locks (13% more magic damage).

Pretty much any caster-heavy guild is going to be demanding an Unholy DK. Ebon Plague frees up a debuff slot from a Warlock to put additional DPS on a mob, with no penalty to the DK's own damage (just the opposite, in fact.) Ebon Plague is really, crazily good for raiding right now and I expect to see a ton of Unholy DK's in raids.

I think it's important to keep in mind that Moonkins have the same debuff.

3 points in bladed armor is 97.5 strength with the premade DK gear and no other talents, which translates to 214 attack power and ~0.5% parry in blood or unholy presence and 357 AP ~0.95% parry in frost presence with 5/5 toughness. Note that attack power scales pretty fantastically for DW - in fact, it's the reason that every melee class that can DW essentially must DW to deal max damage - and haste by itself doesn't scale any better for DW than 2H.

have a question for you beta testers. How good is crit for a deathknight? I know some of their damage comes from disease that are kinda like dot, and some from strikes that can crit. so if i'm going for a unholy build would it be better to spend the rest of the points into blood for the crit and wep spec or into frost for the attack speed incease and spell dmg buff? Also it would be nice if any of you can give me your opinions on blood tap+ imp blood tap vs lich born in term of pvp.

Crit is about as good for an Unholy DK as it is for any other physical DPS class. With Wandering Plague plus the new Runic Focus, all of our damage sources can crit for at least 200%. Don't sacrifice Black Ice for Dark Conviction as an Unholy DK, though.

I can't help you with your PvP question, as I could own a functional I.W.I.N. button and still lose in PvP.

When it comes to DK's in arenas. I feel that DK's will have a rough time doing well in 2v2's overall, but might do well if it is a double dps team vs a double dps team as they have a lot of tools to blunt their overall damage.

I see DK's being very competative in 3's and 5's however. DK/rogue/healer would have incredable utility and damage. You might even have new teams that completely revolve around deathgrip and pulling targets around corners.

From a pvp view, I see DK's as being more dps support instead of a main dps class. While DK's are succeptable to kiting when they are alone, add a class such as a warrior or rogue that can add another snare and an MS debuff, then the DK just became insanely powerful. In that situation, plague strike/blood plague added with MS will destroy teams that rely on that kind of healing. Add in the high survivability of death knights and warriors/rogues, I can see DK's doing very well in the long run.

One strat a rogue/dk/healer could do is sap > death grip LOS > chains > plague strike > rogue opener > burst down. Maybe even have the healer throw down some burst if it's able to, such as a shockadin or a druid stays in stealth and opens up with something. All those poisons and diseases with virulance will add even more pressure to a healer.

As a healer I prefer other Tanks over DKs. DKs have some burst mitigation via Anti-Magic shield and Icebound Fortitude, however the other tanks have more passive mitigation. DKs still are great tanks.

Health and Avoidance are fine, and to fix mitigation you could spec Deep Frost, but then you do no damage. Another Frost pass could fix that issue.

How do you feel about healing Unholy DK Tanks? I would think that with ~20 seconds of Bone Shield (it's using Lightning Shield's 3.85 second ICD per orb right? And Glyph makes it 5 orbs) the passive mitigation would be alright.

True there's a difference between taking 10% less damage all the time and 40% less damage roughly a third of the time, but I think on my Priest I would actaully vastly prefer the DK style since it can possibly create long periods of spirit regen time when the tank simply isn't taking meaningful damage.

One thing I am worried about is not rolling dk from the start, and regretting it later on. There HP and armor is gonna scale a lot better than warriors. They get 15% from toughness to the warrior 10%. They also get an overall 10% health increase(frost presence). So far the warrior and dk tier 7 tank sets have identical stamina. SO 45% armor increase in frost on top of 115% armor is gonna scale very well. On live my warriors shield makes up less than 40% of his total armor rating.

Block value is a pretty potent mitigation tool in Wrath. Honestly, that's the stat I worry about as a DK. But between block and defensive stance, I think warrior mitigation scaling will be equal or better than DK's.

edit: bah, that sounded too whiny. Basically my point was that warriors will continue to scale very well and that mitigation comparisons are not the place where DK's are going to have any advantage.

The 15% from Death Knight Toughness has something to do with it not stacking twice with Frost Presence or something, it ends up not actually being a better talent for tanking. Death Knights get 10% more health from Frost Presence and Warriors get 10% damage reduction from Defensive Stance. It has been mathematically shown that a 45% increase in armor without a shield results in about the same amount of armor as just having a shield, so maybe your shield on live is a lower tier than the rest of your gear? Regardless, on beta Death Knights are overall having less armor than equivalently geared tanks right now, Ghostcrawler has made a few posts about it. I wouldn't be too concerned about a Warrior losing the main tank spot to a Death Knight for no other reason than class mechanics - if anything Warriors make slightly better main tanks right now, but the gap looks like it's not insurmountable right now. If the Death Knight mechanics don't appeal to you, definitely stick with your Warrior.