Well yeah but the significance of the bonus damage wth diseases up is so large, that using bloodboil without any is like using howling blast in 3.0.8 without frost fever up.

I'm thinking about a 10/51/10 frost build, with a 4Ob (over two cooldowns) rotation. Would 5/5 bladed armor be better than 3/3 Subversion and 2/5 bladed armor for threat?

What are your suggestion on a build like this 17-44-10 to keep 2H spec?

It's understandable, and i don't claim it's the "it" build and should be the main, however it does go towards the point of proving DW IS viable in MOST situations, at least for now. That being said do i plan on going with DW in 3.1, probably not given my tests on the PTR so far. Yes in a perfect world i'd run around 2H spec using betrayer of humanity, but I make due with what i have, which at the moment is 2 half way decent 1H weps and the ability to think outside what I'm told is the "tank spec to go"

And i gem for for the simple fact that it was what i had on hand, and the DR for both of them is about even currently, so either one grants me similar avoidance overall and the scarcity of a JC with the Stalwart cut.

TL;DR:
DW isn't the best spec to be for every single fight, but it's also not the worst, I'm simply pointing out that there IS a tank spec based around DW that can, in the absence of "perfect gear" hold it's own against most other DK tank's TPS.

I see a lot of posts explaining that frost has the highest threat of the 3 trees and that people are pushing 7-9k threat. Is this with constant misdirects against patchwork? I'm a 10/50/11 build and I seem to hover between 4-5k in most situations. My rotation is:

Start: DnD + IT + Pest + BT + HB
Middle: HB, OB, IT, BS (depending upon what combination of runes, cooldowns, and procs are available)

EDIT: I forgot this is the DK Tanking Discussion, go look at the last few pages of the Endgame Discussion for the posts by Zerath on deep Frost threat.

For 3.1, I think i'll keep a blood spec (probably something link that : 54/7/10), but i'm not sure of my glyphs choices...
Glyph of Vamp Blood and Rune Strike are must have for me, but i'm hesistating between Dark Death (+15% DC) and Death Strike (+25% max)...
With Scent of Blood + Sudden Doom, I think i'll use a lot of DC, so i think Dark Death is better, but i'm not sure...

What do you think about it ?

Edit : After some tests on Kahorie's simulator, i find :
Sigil of Awareness + Glyph of Death Strike : 5172 mps
Sigil of Awareness + Glyph of Dark Death : 5014 mps
Sigil of Haunted Dreams + Glyph of Death Strike : 5051 mps
Sigil of Haunted Dreams + Glyph of Dark Death : 5060 mps
Sigil of Vengefull Heart + Glyph of Dark Death : 5027 mps

As a conclusion, Glyph of DS seems to be the best... Do I have to keep 50 RP in order to maximise my DS dps ?

It's a pretty solid build, but I would take points our of subversion for Rune Tap, seeing as you don't use Oblit and 9% heart strike crit doesn't warrant 3 points imo.

Also as for the third glyph, I'm looking at AMS glyph for 2 extra seconds after getting the 4p T8 bonus... thats 40% longer duration for the 10% extra mitigation. But then I've always been a survival tank over a TPS junkie.

I did some testing on the boss target dummy trying to check my dps for a general idea of how my threat would be and didn't see any significant loss of switching from full unholy to the following spec for more survivability.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...4&version=9767

Primary attack would be Death Strike instead of Scourge Strike. I'm basically trying to get more survivability since there isn't any in Unholy past Bone Shield and Abomination's Might to help my raid. Please ignore the points in pet talents and stuff. I'm just trying to check survivability of Veteran of the Third War, Improved Rune Tap, Spell Deflection, and Mark of Blood versus the threat generation of maxing Crypt Fever, Ebon Plaguebringer, and Rage of Rivendare.

This will be my first time having to main tank on completely new content, and I've tried the 24/11/36 sarth +3 spec and found my aoe threat suffering on fights with adds like Gothik (didn't feel like respecing at the time). But that spec does not have Unholy Blight currently and Death Strike has gotten buffed.

From the testing that I have done it does not appear that my threat will suffer much if at all.

I'm thinking that the extra survivability of Veteran of the Third War, Improved Rune Tap, Spell Deflection, and Mark of Blood will be much more beneficial when trying to progress through Ulduar, than 20% to diseases, 10% damage, and aoe 13% magic damage (as opposed to elements) provide.

It just doesn't seem worth going all the way down the Unholy tree now that Unholy Blight isn't the 51 pointer.

The Tankspot threat table doesn't seem to have any info on just how much threat Ebon Plaguebringer, and Rage of Rivendare add, and I couldn't find any info on this when searching these forums.

Currently full Unholy I don't ever have threat problems and actually ask for vigilence when off tanking so I can give threat to the MT and don't pull too much trash off him, so I think the survivability will be more important progressing through Ulduar.

Am I missing a reason to go all the way down Unholy?

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...5&version=9767

This will most likely be the tanking build I start out with. As much as I want to pick up VOTTW for the 6% stamina, I can't seem to justify it in a non-fully blood build. The synergy between Scent of Blood to the buffed FS will be the main TPS generating along with Oblits/HB's. the deciding factor will be exactly how much TPS FS generates.

On a side note, I've seen a few DK's choosing for Garg on their weapons instead of parry. The usual reason given is that e-hp > avoidance, and that the 25 defense allows for more stamina gemming as well as another 2% Stam. I find this a bit hard to compare still to 4% non dim returns parry though.

The long and the short of it is that they're just different. There was a good bit of what I described as "tail-chasing" on the topic between roughly pages 95 and 105 of this thread if you want to see some numbers that clearly describe the relative value of SG. At the risk of over-generalizing it's similar to choosing between Blood and Frost in 3.1. SG offers better gib protection, SS offers better avoidance. Depending on the encounter, your heal setup, and what you ate for breakfast one might perform better than another on a given night.

If we ever hit something so tightly tuned as Sunwell again it might be worth Death Gating and swapping between them as the encounter dictates, but so far tanking runeforge seems like one of the few genuinely balanced choices we're presented with in the game. Neither is clearly better than the other.