Agility is threat (crit), avoidance (dodge), and a small portion of mitigation (armor) all in the same stat. From 20 Agility, you get 0.32% crit, 0.27% dodge (pre-DR), and 40 armor. From 20 dodge rating you get 0.508% dodge. Depending on the circumstances, Agility may well be a better option for gemming, especially if your avoidance is high enough that you're hitting the DR pretty hard on both dodge and parry. Also, you shouldn't dismiss agility on weapons. "Hunter" weapons may actually end up being our best tanking weapons if Blizzard refuses to itemize tanking maces for DKs and Druids.

Imp MOTW is taken for more than just the resist, as the above poster mentioned. The stat gains are also pretty nice.

Zerath-

I read your big post on page 16, and agreed with just about everything in it. This is currently the tanking build I'm favoring: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

However, regarding the above quote, I'll be the OT for my 10-man guild and will therefore be DPSing a lot more than tanking. I'm wondering how much I can afford to "cheat" on the tanking build in favor of better DPS talents. The talents I'd most like to pick up are Wandering Plague, 2h Weapon Spec, and Dark Conviction.

Any thoughts on how to best go about making this compromise?

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

This is the build that I will likely be switching to soon, as I find it to be more of a 'versatile' tanking build "in regards to DPS when you aren't needed to tank".

Personally I find that there are 5 filler points in my current build that could be allocated elsewhere depending on what exactly you plan on focusing on more "AoE, single target threat, utility, damage". Those points being NoTD and outbreak. While I find outbreak a very useful talent I don't exactly find it necessary at this point in time as our AoE threat (especially with Unholy) is so very very good. These points might be better spent virulence.

Normally I have zero points in NoTD.. but just to fill the tree out I decided to throw some points in there. Those two points could be better spent in Gargoyle (amazing if you find yourself dpsing) or quite possibly dumped into impurity.

I honestly don't think that it's really up to discussion in regards to picking morbidity and wandering plague. Morbidity is simply amazing for those times when your group is a little careless and you find yourself with pestilence on CD. Likewise the talent is simply amazing for minimizing downtime and speeding up raid clears as it of course allows your AoE to open up almost immediately on whatever trash pack you happen to be pulling (which at this point in time seems to very every single trash pack). DnD just has too many uses and a shortened CD is too good to pass up. Wandering plague still offers a decent boost to your threat/damage on single target and shouldn't be classified solely as an AoE talent.

I'll agree fully on some of the earlier points regarding magic suppression and AMZ. AMZ is just far too gimmicky at this point in time and I really can't see it being very necessary in any of the current raiding zones... besides the fact that it looks pretty cool. It does scale pretty well, so given that there are a healthy amount of encounters in the future that welcome the ability, perhaps we might revisit it. I find base anti magic shell to be just fine and feel no need for magic suppression. While it's nice that it's a flat 5% reduction to magic, I just don't feel that 5 talent point investment is worth it, especially where the talent is situated in the tree.

Desecration is something that I will be speccing out of the next time I respec. Far too much movement and the 12 second duration really kills it for me. Lets not forget that the graphic will overlap some of the void zones that people shouldn't be standing in, and some people need all the help they can get when it comes to small circular objects they should be moving away from.

DK's make excellent tanks and due to the relative slow leveling of our tanks in our guild I have more or less sat in the MT position for the past few weeks while we wait for our old tanks to gear up. There isn't a boss currently in the game where I feel that another tank capable class would be vastly superior to me. While this may change in the future we are right now perfectly capable to fill any role in both 25/10 man raids, whether it be MT or OT.

As a side note I haven't seen much mention of this [Lesser Flask of Toughness]

While I haven't had the time to research the ideal set of gear before T8 is released (due to the frenzy of raids and heroics currently) I just assumed that I would be reaching defense cap at some point. In the mean time however I have been using those flasks almost exclusively. They last one hour, persist through death, are extremely cheap, and best of all allow you some flexibility in deciding what gear to wear as reaching 5% reduction in crit seems far easier then that last 0.6%. The new tank flask is only 650 health and I believe the benefits of only worrying about achieving 5% reduction in critical strikes will probably work out to more then what the health flask gives. Gemming gear with stamina or allowing the use of 'better' quality gear with more avoidance/threat seems like a good deal to me.

About the defcap.

It is quite hard to reach as a DK tank, at least compared to others.
I'm in heroic epics/emblemgear/heroic blues and I just reached 540 def yesterday, and I have also gemmed every slot (blacksmith) to +16 def gems and enchanted everything possible with +def. You need to sacrifice alot for it but it is of course worth it.

Think you need to rebrowse the heroic tank gear. crit immunity is fairly easy to get without having t7 from badges.

Is it even worth seeing how [Essence of Gossamer] stacks up as well? Considering my avoidance has been continually rising, the benefit of this proc would seemingly be hugely diminished, but then again my head could be screwed on wrong and its benefit in specific situations (aoe in particular) would seem to be worthwhile. Reported as 2% proc chance and 45s cooldown... any thoughts?

I've been considering the same type of thing lately. Alot of our tanking capablilty seems to hinge on having multiple short cooldown abilities to aid in high damage situations.

A macro to use Blood Tap, Bone Shield, and a dodge trinket (either the one mentioned above or the JC one) doesn't seem like a bad idea. I can honestly say I've never once pressed the Blood Tap button to date so I don't know if it triggers the GCD.

This assumes that:

-The death rune generated by Blood Tap is available for immediate use
-Blood Tap does not trigger the GCD
-You have a +dodge trinket as a parry one wouldn't extend the life of Bone Shield beyond your regular avoidance.

If all three things are true, it could prove a viable "oh sh**" button. Any thoughts on this?

How often will you be tanking? Not just OTing but MTing instances, these heriocs are tricky at points.

After putting that in the equation, we need to start looking at the breakdown of talent points. In Naxx there is a lot of "clumped" mobs while you're clearing so Wandering Plague would be possible *only* if you're able to get your crit up. While other places - it's not that greatest due to the separation of mobs thus unable to proc to other mobs. (It's really a WIN/LOSE talent. There's no middle-ground which is sad.)

This is the talent build I went with: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

4pt Bladed Armor makes me sad but it's needed.
1pt 2H weapon spec increases dmg by 2% - nice.
5pt Conviction in order to boost up out already crazy dps.

You lose Lichborne which is that healer "Hey, we love you" button - so, it's completely up to you. Once dual-spec is implemented I'll have a Tank/DPS build but right now, I'm willing to sacrifice some DPS in order to make me a little more viable for tanking.

As far as uncrittable pre-naxx, here is a post from the Death Knight forums about becoming uncrittable with fairly easy to get gear.

That's how Blood Tap works yeah, instantly refreshes a bloodrune to death and no GCD. I use pretty often with the glyph for good measure, it's an awesome ability, both for DPS and tanking.

This is some thing we should look at updating in to the OP.

Haste is one of our worst stats (between that and Armor pen) - they are most likely uninformed or have nothing else to use (...I don't know?). You are correct to assume Blood Strike and Ob Sigil > Haste.

Are you serious? It's because they are noobs . The compendium in this forum is the only source of information. It already got translated in the german DK forum.

Well, I'm not fully educated on the tanking side of things, so maybe I was not aware of a Haste mechanic, could be a multitude of things (BCB doing additional threat perhaps, which would increase the value of haste).

That said, I'm a bit surprised people are claiming they won't be maintanking stuff. I'll most likely be tanking Sartharion with 3 Drakes up and have been tanking 10 man runs since the beginning of WOTLK now. DK tanks are not handicapped in any way to do so, don't fall into that trap. My damage taken report from tanking Sartharion versus a warrior doing the same thing is astounding. I was at about 1/3th of his damage taken. That's huge.

I tanked Patchwerk.10 with more or less crappy gear and a Frost DPS spec. It worked.
Our problem is, that we have to catch up with items and you have to have a tank until we can take over.

No offense meant, but it's actually quite easy to reach defcap as a DK. You may want to consider reading the Uncritable before Naxx: A DK Tank Gear Guide thread over at the official WoW forums, which, if you follow, winds up netting you 543 defense skill (or 705 defense rating).

Have we considered 23/11/37 as an appropriate maximum mitigation spec?

Bear with me while I think outside the box. This is not a threat spec but an attempt to go all out in the mitigation department.

Some Points:

Why 1/3 Crypt Fever?
The thought is to get a 3rd disease for a glyphed Death Strike. DS is the primary FU strike in the build. This choice over 3/3 VoTw really will beef up the DS hit.

Why DRM?
Because Rune Tap and Mark of Blood require Blood runes of which we cannot gaurentee to be available during that 'ruh roh' moment. Boneshield is usually macro'd to my Blood Tap so I coudn't gaurentee it to be available.
Milage may vary on this choice. You can always swap out the points to something stronger but the thought of F-U coming in as D's for flexibility is appealing.

The overall thoughts is getting Boneshield as the best tanking CD, Lichborne as a shieldwall, Mark of Blood for filler mitigation and Rune Tap for moments healers get incapacitated. Also 5/5 Magic Suppression.

This spec also synergizes better with an Unholy DPS DK in your raid when you want to be an Unholy Tank. Full benefitting from 3/3 Ebon Plague won't happen in that situation for you, so spec'ing down to this seems a fair alternative.

Basically this is a paranoid spec. Its focused on "on-demand" healing of DS and all the poppable CD's a spec can possibly get.

Glyphs would be: Boneshield, Deathstrike, AMS.

The real bitch here is what your TPS might look like. If a Boomkin or Unholy Dk fills in a dps slot then it would be gold. Also depending on threat you could sit on full RP for bigger DS hits and spam out DC's when threat is a bit tighter.

Edit: I couldn't bring myself to pull a point out of Unholy Aura for AMZ. However that is an option.

It's both easy and hard to hit uncrittable (it's not a def cap, for crying out loud) as a DK. It's easy in that all you need to do is get the high-def crafted items and heroic drops, and use them in pretty much every slot.

This means skipping out on fantastic def-less jewelry and cloaks, and considering every Naxx drop carefully. It won't be a problem as everyone farms out Naxx and moves on to whatever tier 8 brings us, but it's a constant pain until then.

What helps greatly with def cap is being a smith, having those 2 additional sockets is pretty much +32def rating at all times. Also I guess the def trinket from naxx, or from normal HoL(why normal, so painful to have to run that, especially until last boss) are good when you need to switch gear in and out. Oh and enchants, even old ones. Sons of Hodir honored shoulder is +10, Scryer(or Aldor forgot which) honored is +10, revered argent crusade(which is easy if you do the quests in icecrown) is +20, there's a cheap BC enchant for bracers that's +12, a rather cheap BC cloak enchant that's +12 too or something around that, it all stacks up nicely.

Takes a bit of work, but you can get most of the set without having to step into an instance really, even though you're hp is gonna hurt at first due to tempered saronite/daunting crappy gear.

As nice as lichborne I am thinking I'm paying a bit much to get and will probably go with a build similar to that one.A real shame that wandering plague ends up being so all or nothing for tanks. Curious as to why you have 4 pts in bladed armor and one in 2h weapon spec. It seems to me like you'd either want to max out one or the other or both by dropping two points out of conviction.

Just out of curiosity what's the average single target TPS most of you are seeing? Maybe I'm just a little jaded from playing a feral so long.

After much debating and studying, and a few comments from people I've been grouping with, I've been trying out the following build. (Note this is for 5-mans/heroics, not raiding. With the possibility of dual-specs in the future, tanks can play around with min/maxing for both)

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The build is centered around survival sacraficing DPS talents wherever needed. It is a modified version of Tojara's spec already posted, but instead of sacrificing Wandering Plague (which is nice for 5-mans for the AoE aspect) or EP, I took out Scourge strike and an extra point in Bladed Armor, more on that later though.

First off I know Desecration isn't that great, but I didn't really have anything else to put it in (seeing as BCB can cause you to take extra dmg to to Parry-Haste, Gargoyle takes the RP you should be using for UB or RS, Unholy Aura increases Raid DPS but not so much 5-mans as you should have all the mobs on you already and bosses aren't as mobile for the most part, OaPH/UC/Virulence aren't really needed and Corpse Explosion is generally a useless talent, and NoTD doesn't seem as worth it in the 5-mans I've did as I rarely lose my Ghoul) and it does amp up your dmg when it procs and can cause some additional threat. It may be reasonable to put the talent point into Magic Suppression, but the returns seem too minimal to worry about.

Now to BA/SS. Losing a couple points in BA doesn't hurt the spec much considering Unholy has a pretty easy time with threat generation anyway. Losing SS is what may seem controversial but in my experience it doesn't really affect my rotation/DPS all that much.

This spec is centered around survival over DPS and mainly AoE tanking, and this is why I sacrificed SS for Death Strike. It sacrifices some DPS but helps the DK mitigate the additional dmg taken from the lack of BS lasting long. It might even be reasonable to use the DS Glyph although I doubt it considering how much UB/RS will be used.

Also just a side note, I've noticed a lot of people who are against Master of Ghouls. Don't forget about the skill Death Pact which is a nice "Oh Crap" button for 20% of our health returned whenever we need it, and it comes with some nice DPS as well.

Whomever I was quoting and responding to with that build wanted all those of those talents. But, you can't max all 3 of them, two at the most. To top that off - they were aiming for highest crit possible, thus, 5/5 Conviction.

I'd rather see 5/5 BA + 5/5 Conviction but that's purely my opinion and take on this matter.

Lichborne - Yes, it several points we make worthless to get it but I've <3'd it so far. It's very possible once I'm in T7 my tank spec will be Unholy/Blood. We'll see though.