Suno

I finally dinged 80 and back into raiding.

I'm starting to experience some of the same issues with threat that I was in Beta as a frost tank. We're just not that great at AOE tanking. For example, we were killing Sarth with a drake up, and I was tanking the lava spawns since I'm still crittable. All too often a few of them would pop up and DnD would be down (and expired) and I had just burned pestilence a few seconds earlier. Frost strike requiring melee range and taunts always on CD made this a complicated task. Of course, Frost being < Unholy for AOE is no surprise, but here's an example that can help define the line. UB, Morbidity and stronger deathcoils would trivialize this role. Granted my DPS guildmates far outgear me and warriors are straight up nasty right now.

I prefer to tank frost for UA and the longer IF for undergeared tanking, but I may be switching over sooner for AOE tanking raid zones, like most raiding guilds are used to doing.

 

Zadus

This is what makes DK tanking my choice for tanking. It isn't mindlessly easy like a warrior just spamming thunderclap every 6 seconds. DK tanking takes skill because you kinda have to keep in mind what is going to happen and be ready for it and constantly adjust.

This issue you just stated goes back to why no one is even talking about Blood tanking. Because right out of the gate people say, "oh i cant aoe tank." I personally find this very false as i find aoe tanking for any spec is completely possible to do. Is it easier for unholy tanks? yes, but it shouldn't be hard especially as frost. You just need a bit more time with the class. I personally choose to tank as unholy because bone shield works amazing when you have good avoidance as well as working amazingly in conjunction with avoidance trinkets.

 

byouki

This is where my years as a warrior are giving me massive headaches at the moment.

Event in Pinnacle on the gauntlet part, suddenly 3 add and i look down and everything is on CD because I've spammed everything rather than being content comfortably out-threating the dps and keeping runes in reserve. Perhaps the real art to DK aoe tanking will be knowing how little needs doing rather than showing off with how much I can do.

That said I'm currently frost and I've had the odd loose add (more often than not going to warlocks) but 80% of the time I'd say I was happy with it for what I've been doing, unholy gives me more confidence aoe tanking, but then I really felt a bit exposed when it came to single target threat. For some reason I just couldn't pump it anywhere near I feel I can with frost.

 

level12wizard

I've tanked every heroic as Frost. I really don't see how Unholy is better, both in mitigation and threat, unless you have crazy avoidance and RNG on your side. It would seem to me that a single target threat spec with 24% extra crit on Oblit is -very- nice compared to anything Unholy has. Although, it brings nice buffs (Unholy Aura, Ebon Plaguebringer), and if you keep Bone Shield up for a very long time, you're golden. I just don't see it happening on most fights, considering how many "other" things there are to consider in a boss fight. On the flipside, I have found myself blowing IBF, only to have the boss do something where he's not hitting you.

Glyphed UA and +6 second IBF is pretty awesome, and the AoE threat is beyond fine - I don't need Unholy Blight. The only time I would find it useful is for picking up adds, and even then I can plan ahead with DnD, HB, Blood Tap, taunts, or blowing ERW. That said, the UP gauntlet is one of the more difficult heroic things to tank properly, you just have to get used to it.

Bringing a pack of mobs into DnD, followed by diseases and Pest, makes the mobs stick on me through just about anything. Morbidity is unskippable if you're doing five mans or something that requires a lot of AoE tanking, the threat produced by DnD is simply awesome.

On typical trash mobs I don't see what's so great out Blood Boil, unless you have a full AoE group. It seems much more beneficial to Blood Strike (or Death Rune oblit) the main target to hold threat against single target DPS. With Blood of the North, you also don't get Death Runes from BB.

The problem with Blood is it's lack of a bonus AoE tool, lack of an extra real avoidance tool (as opposed to increased healing), heavier reliance on melee (more parry, although not that much), and higher GCD usage. That said, I'm sure someone will find VP, Imp Rune Tap, and Mark of Blood, and reduced AMS cooldown useful somewhere down the line.


Speaking very generally, I feel like Death Knights definitely have the best control over mobs. There is the obvious Death Grip, the fact that DnD can be placed anywhere in a 30 yd radius, Strangulate, as well as the ability to build good threat from range with IT, DnD, HB, etc (especially helpful when rooted or with tons of casters).

 

Zadus

Its not so much unholy blight giving you that extra edge, its that and the fact all your dots are ticking harder.

Either way, all specs can aoe tank just fine. Its all a matter on how good you are on a dk.

I personally love getting the tells after doing anything that say, "Man i thought dk tanks were bad, they are really good!!"

 

Suno

I think frost's AOE tanking ability is fine, and I have no problems smashing any heroic. I defined the example above solely to illustrate a situation when unholy has better AOE tools than Frost. It's certainly not "needed". However, UB with 100% uptime is great for standing on a spawn point and picking up adds during the (brief) periods where DnD is unavailable. Beats the heck out of waiting for HB runes to pop when spawns are popping up in every area BUT where your DnD is owning the grass.

For doing the same encounter and role as frost again, I'd have to grab morbidity instead of the subversion I love.

 

Nakia

I have been tanking on my 80 death knight thru heroics and alot of normal five mans. I have found unholy just has a better feel for me. Perticuarly with caster mobs. I spec into Anti-Magic Shield and get the extra 5% dmg redux from magic and that has saved me several times. Having basically two Anti-Magic shields really has helped my longevity in fights where caster AoE is heavy.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

This is the build I have been using. And So far no problems

 

calisti

I found myself struggling with frost AoE tanking on fights with constant adds or when someone accidentally pulls another pack. For example, the Brann Bronzebeard event in heroic Halls of Stone was an absolute nightmare with the long cooldown on Death and Decay (no Morbidity) and the requirement to have diseases on targets to use pestilence. Howling Blast works well as long as your targets don't get spread out too much. If they do, that 10 yard radius just isn't going to cut it for picking up loose mobs. In the end I decided to go back to unholy due to the shorter cooldown on Death and Decay plus the constant AoE damage of Unholy Blight.

 

Arakai

Are you tanking as DW or using them for dps???

 

imwithblink

I agree with the many people who say Unholy is overall the best AoE Tank setup, but I also believe that Frost is just as capable. So far, I've been experimenting with the Frost tree, and in instances so far, I rarely lose aggro on off-targets. I usually begin with targetting Skull- Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence, Blood Boil, Deathchill (if it's up), and Howling Blast. Using HB whenever it is up keeps the aggro on off targets, and I use all strikes on Skull, including Obliterate when I have the double-death rune. I can see how Unholy Blight and Corpse Explosion add to the AoE threat generation, but I don't believe it is worth the abilities you lose in the Frost tree.

Also, for consideration... I don't know if this has been said yet or not. But if you are a tank who prefers the stronger single-target strikes, like Obliterate, over the weaker Plague Strike, then using those abilites just to replenish the plagues can be a drag. A possible rotation to keep up your plagues on all mobs for AoE and your strong single-target abilities is to initially IT, PS, Pest, then go into your normal abilities. But after a few seconds, you can switch to the off target and pestilence to replenish the plagues, then go back to main target, and pestilence when the rune is back up. By hopping from target to target, you never have to directly replenish the plagues. I haven't really put this to use much, so for now, it's just theory.

Lastly, this is the spec i work with so far... It is working amazing, but I'd like if anybody could critique it any. So far, ppl have said the 3 pts in Frigid Deathplate aren't worth it because its only 3% miss to melee, which is slightly more than the NElf racial, and don't think Blizzard would make those pts extremely necessay. Instead, I would put them into Acclimation, because with 3 stacks, that is almost 50% of the spell resisted at that lvl. Thanks.

 

solid77

i've had no problems with that fight with frost spec. pestilence has a pretty far range (like cleave) it can basically travel from one training dummy in IF to the one next to it (+ a little more, i'm not sure how spread out the horde ones are). i'm speced into epidemic so i pretty much always have diseases up, so when adds pop, and i dont have a blood/death rune up, i just blood tap and hit pestilence and it will grab everything, plus you have 2 taunts, and u can also blow your 5minute cd and lay DnD. it shouldn't be a nightmare by any means. pestilence has more effective range than howling blast since it chains from one mob to the next, so you can have a mob 20 yards away as long as mobs are in between you and the furthest mob (i've done it plenty of times it's also really cool to watch :P ). pestilence alone gives you around 600 TPS per mob just on DoT's.

frost spec's AoE tanking is more than effecient, i've been multi mob tanking 25man naxx and holding 4+ mobs on me no problem and our AoE dps is trigger happy and starts dps'n pretty much right away. it's pretty rare that someone pulls off me because of AoE attacks.

 

Zerath

AMZ - looked at wrong numbers, thus the wrong math. Sorry about that.

Not back-to-back proc as in ghoul'd and then ghoul'd when the first SoD proc wears off. I mean - die at 1m, then die again 60 seconds later.

 

tekmachine

Has anyone fully incorporated DnD with morbidity into their tanking rotation? Usually I'll DnD, IT, Pest, Blood Tap, HB which gives me a pretty nice lead ahead of the AoE spamming DPS, but afterwards I'm left mostly spamming Pest/BB/HB.

Where do you put DnD in your rotation or do you just use it at the beginning of a pull?

 

faight

So with everyone saying that Blood can't AoE tank I took a few looks at the abilities it gets and decided it can definately AoE tank.

With Blood Boil.

As Unholy I've had BB crit for upwards of 700~900 (of course I have three diseases, but I don't have Outbreak).

So I came up with this:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

For AoE tanking the basic idea would be to open with:

DND -> PS -> IT -> Pest -> RPD
BB -> DS -> DS -> BB(Pest?) -> RPD
BB -> BB -> BB -> BB -> BB -> BB -> RPD

The second Pestilence would be to make sure your diseases stay up through the MASSIVE BB spam you'll be getting with 4 Death Runes and 2 Blood Runes.

Alternatively if your group is patient you could do:

IT -> PS -> Pest -> BB -> DS -> RPD
DS -> BB -> BB -> BB -> BB -> RPD
BB -> BB -> Pest -> DS -> BB -> RPD

Or something like that.

For single target tanking you'd probably switch to a normal Blood DPS rotation, spamming HS.

Considering you'd have 30% extra damage to BB (Outbreak) and 45% extra crit damage to it (Might of Mograine), as well as 5% crit from Dark Conviction, 10% extra damage from Blood Gorged (when over 75%) and 9% from Bloody Vengeance, I think it would make a very suitable AoE tank. It comes with a few reduction talents, the normal 5/5/5, but also with Spell Deflection and Will of the Necropolis which gives reduced cooldown on AMS, combined with 30% more armor when you drop below 35%.

Then there are the "Oh Shit" buttons:
Imp Rune Tap
Mark of Blood
Vampiric Blood

And lastly the buffs it brings:
Abomination's Might
Hysteria (probably not to use on yourself).

Very obviously this is just theorycrafting right now. The build lacks things we see in Frost and Unholy, but brings some uniqueness to the table. Since I just hit 80 the other day I'll respec in to this and try it out as I start running more dungeons/heroics, just to see if it's actually viable or not.

Edit:

Unless there is maintenance when I get off of work I'll play around with rotations on the training dummies in Acheron and see what the actual rotation would end up being; I'm still uncertain when you'd need to throw Pestilence in all those BB's after trying to consider both disease uptime on all mobs in conjunction with rune cooldowns/GCD/etc.

 

Nethris

My concerns with blood tanking have always been more about it not having very good survival talents, not aggro really, though this is coming from a tanking warrior perspective. Based on what I've seen of DnD, morbidity alone is going to give you ok AoE aggro generation.

The survival talents just don't seem all that great for tanking though - spell deflection, even with 30% parry, is only 9% average reduction on direct damage spells - nice, but a very niche talent, especially when the really painful direct damage spells in the past were a single cast on a cooldown usually, making % chances not able to be relied upon. While more armor below 35% health is nice, most single target fights that put you that low can put you significantly lower than that with the hit taking you below 35%, to the point where the next hit may well kill you anyway if you don't receive heals, and my understanding is that as soon as you're healed above 35% (before the next hit lands hopefully) that armor goes away. Reduced AMS CD is interesting, but raises the question of how often you can usefully use it in the 12 seconds that it wouldn't normally be available - personally, I'd find it a bit more interesting if it was a 15 second reduction allowing the glyph to be used without pushing the cooldown over a minute - though that is somewhat based on boss abilities often being on relatively round CD times.

The blood "Oh Shit" buttons also aren't wonderful in my opinion. Imp Rune Tap is nice, but the effect is less powerful than a last stand, and can't be used to provide extra buffer. Much shorter cooldown of course, but that is mostly useful if you use it to help heal yourself on a regular basis, which makes it less useful as an "Oh Shit" button - I see the most potential for it being used in conjunction with IBF to let you take that extra hit without significant heals landing and then making it pretty simple to heal you back up with the damage reduction of IBF. In heroics, the glyph could be a nice bonus even if you get healed to full immediately in that the healer having to switch back to you because of a damage spike is less likely to result in a death, but I've seen no indication that survivability needs to be min/maxed in heroics currently.

Mark of Blood is interesting, but suffers from being less useful the harder the individual hits you're receiving are, and somewhat from the fact that the tank doesn't need to be the one with that talent for it to be useful for the tank. Vampiric Embrace probably the hardest selling point for me though, as it's pretty similar to reducing damage by 1/3, but also reducing your current and maximum hp by 1/3 for the duration - not only is that weaker than bone-shield, and probably UA, but both viewed that way and just from reading the description it really shines at making it easier to heal you back up to full - and from a TBC tanking perspective, if I get enough healing to get me back up to full (or 2/3 of the way back up to full) is not usually when I die - it's when I flat out don't have enough heals incoming in the next second to get me back up to having enough health that that next swing can't kill me for whatever reason.

A lot of this is certainly subjective and based on how I like to use trinkets and other CDs for tanking, but the blood survival talents just don't seem to stack up well against UA and extra duration on IBF or bone shield and better AMS+AMZ, and while threat is certainly important, the first requirement for being able to tank something is not dying. I'll be interested to hear your comments on how the incoming damage feels in that blood spec after you've tried it, it certainly looks like you've got pretty solid ideas on AoE aggro, and blood should hold single target aggro at least as well as unholy.


On a complete tangent on the subject of DW tanking, the increased hit cap is at most a threat concern, and doesn't affect specials or rune strike. Parry haste will be a concern, though having enough expertise to reduce the overall haste down to, say, what a 2h tank with either no expertise, or just enough to eliminate dodge, would experience may be enough rather than really needing to fully eliminate parry. That said, the gains look pretty minimal to me, and have to be balanced against what you could get from gemming for things other than expertise instead of DWing.

 

Tojara

Every tanking flavor has the ability to AoE tank to an acceptable manor, it's just Unholy is the best at doing it.

As far as how to use DnD I would always open with it. From there I typically go IT > PS > Pestilence > Blood Tap > Blood Boil > Unholy Blight. After that I pretty much tab target some scourge strikes and use blood boils as they come up (or tab to a different target and use one of my blood runes on another pestilence if I think the pack is going to last any amount of time). Trying to open up your AoE with anything but DnD can be disaster from my experience for multiple reasons (healing going on, trigger happy DPS, and of course misses/dodges/parries), DnD is both safe and provides a huge area (if placed properly) at which mobs must spend 2-3 seconds running over.

I highly doubt (unless single target threat becomes an issue) that I will be switching to any other tanking spec at this point in time, simply because of how amazing bone armor is. The fact that charges aren't consumed on things like Sapphirons frost aura or Malygos's tornado ability makes it simply invaluable, not to mention the fact that unbreakable armor does nothing to mitigate magic damage (obviously), which if you've tanked Malygos 25 man you will soon realize how big of a deal his breath is. While there are surely more example to list I love the downtime that you get on encounters like Sapphiron and Malygos during their air phases. Simply pop bone armor as soon as they take flight, use some avoidance trinkets when they land, IBF when your bone armor charges expire, and then usually you can pop bone armor again if you need it or reapply it during the next air phase.

My only real gripe tanking as a DK is the same experience that has already been mentioned, which is how helpless I feel when I can't DnD (CD or rune availability) and pestilence is on CD. I really wish that pestilence was changed in some way.

 

level12wizard

Blood tanking will work, I just don't think it would be up to par with Frost/Unholy. It lacks some pretty glaring things like Imp Icy Touch, Lichborne, and an extra ability that actually reduces incoming damage.

Even with 5/5 Dark Conviction you're looking at 15% crit tops in really good gear. Blood Gorged is going to be weird, seeing as you're not always topped off, but always in the process of being topped off.

A rotation where you rely on going through three GCDs to have -some- threat just isn't going to work. When I first tanked as frost I never used DnD because I didn't think it was that great, but I would always have problems with healer threat or the DPS overnuking or hitting the wrong target. With as fast paced and CC lacking as trash tends to be these days (at least in my experience), an AoE tanking rotation that doesn't start with DnD is just going to give you problems.

As far as your specific build goes I would highly recommend squeezing in Subversion. It is great for single target TPS, even as frost, and will help you build up Bloody Vengeance stacks. I think spell deflection is a pretty lame talent. You'll be below 30% parry with Blade Barrier up for awhile, and even when it does proc it's only 30%. If you're in that high of a magical situation (say, the pulls before the second boss in Old Kingdom), all you need is AMS and IBF, along with interrupts. It's reliable and gives better damage reduction.


Personally I won't be touching Blood until I feel less endangered by RNG (even with ~65% combined avoidance with Blade Barrier up, awful strings happen on large pulls) and sometimes bad pug healers. Blowing IBF/UA/Lichborne/Dodge+Armor trinket all together has saved my life oh too many times - times where increased healing and a Rune Tap would not have saved me. As Nethris has said, if you're getting heals, you probably aren't dying. As far as I can remember Rune Tap is also on the GCD, further harming its goodness as an oh shit button, although that may be wrong.


I totally agree with Bone Armor being useful to pop when the boss goes off to not hit you. I really hate it when I blow 18 second IBF, only to have the boss run off and do whatever the hell he wants.

 

◊ Eej

You can get Imp Icy Touch and Lichborne in a Blood build.

I don't understand this part. You can build threat with DnD just fine as Blood.

I'm sitting at 19% base parry with my crappy tanking gear, don't know how you won't be able to hit 30% within the next week.

Blood tanking is weaker right now, that's true, but let's be reasonable here.

 

faight

It's good to have some input from those with experience, I truly appreciate it. I've been leveling/dpsing/tanking as Unholy so far, and I figured I'd try a change of pace to see how it works out. I'll be testing this build out for a week or two unless it turns out to be completely abysmal off the bat.

For spell deflection, I understand where you're coming from. If it actually deflected/reflected back a certain percentage of the spell I could see it being useful, but I'd probably drop that for Subversion (as someone else pointed out it's uses).

Vampiric Blood would probably not be as useful on raidbosses as Bone Shield/UA, but it has it's uses in my opinion. VB -> RT would be a minimum of 30% of your HP healed, maximum of 60% if RT crits. Of course that's two blood runes and two GCDs, but VB would also affect other healing; from your healer, DS, pots, etc.

This would most likely make a pretty excellent Heroic tank due to constant self-healing with RT and lots of abilities that would be useful for smaller amounts of damage intake from more sources (Will of the Necropolis seems better for AoEing where you can survive much longer than getting gibbed by a 20k hit from a boss).

Like I said though, I'm going to test it out a bit and see if it's actually worth at. At the very least no one can fault me for not trying.

 

level12wizard

Is Rune Tap even capable of critting? I've never seen it crit, although I haven't spent much time as Blood. When you're looking at what rotation or priority of abilities you're using you also need to consider that it costs a Blood Rune, and can't always be used with Blood Tap because of the shorter cooldown (assuming you use it every ~30 sec). As you pointed out, Vampiric Blood + RT = 2 blood runes, and ONE gcd. Vampiric Blood is off the GCD. At the same time, your AoE abilities eat Blood Runes like mad. You're going to have a hard time when Death Runes are not up. You really need to be careful with your Death Rune, Blood Tap, and Empower Rune Weapon usage to make VB + RT a decent oh shit ability that you can use as often as possible.

@Eej: Yes, DnD works fine with Blood. I was referring to the "if your group is patient" rotation that involves applying diseases and and spreading them as the first thing you do. It just doesn't work.

"Awhile" is subjective, to be more specific what I meant was with Heroic gear, you'll be around 30%, roughly. Maybe a bit more, but the point remains.

Getting Imp Icy Touch and Lichborne in any build is definitely a good idea, but you have some crucial decisions to make with Blood. Removing Outbreak will hinder your AoE threat, though I think DnD and 30% less damage on those abilities will work just fine. Not getting Epidemic ruins your Death Runes that you would otherwise spam Blood Strike with.

Blood Gorged is again weird, as you don't always have the damage buff, the expertise is nice, but at the same time you have VotTW. It's deep in the tree, so you could easily sacrifice it, but is it worth it?

Spell Deflection is annoyingly RNG based. It has the potential to be amazing on big magic abilities like Malygos' breath, but only has a x% chance of working, and you can go the whole fight without it working.

 

Gorgangio

After having a read through this i have gone from this build 9/11/51 to this one 9/11/51

My reasoning behind my 2nd build will be:

Unholy

Tier 1:

Vicious Strikes: More of a filler than anything else, but 6% crit is nice and will help with wandering plague. Also 30% more damage from SS crits could be an extra 500-700 more damage when decently geared. To see why i chose this over other talents as a filler you can see my reasons below.

Morbidity: Halfs the Cooldown of DnD, will be keeping this up 2x as much, so your DPS will be having to be doing something amazing to get threat off you with this up 66% of the time.

Anticipation: Self Explanatory, goes back to the 5/5/5.

Tier 2:

Epidemic: 6 Seconds longer means i can get the Death and Decay down before having to re-apply both of these diseases. Also another 6 seconds is nice anyway ^^

Virulence: Again this really was another point filler but being able to take out 3% worth of hit from gems is always a nice thing.

Unholy Command: I put no points in this as if your are having to use Death Grip more than once in a pull, having to pull a caster or maybe the odd run-away. Then the group will probably be doing something wrong. Also we have our OT's to pick up something that has run away from our reach.

Ravenous Dead: Again, more of a filler but 3% more strength equates to more parry % and extra AP, providing more threat from more damage.

Tier 3:

Outbreak: Should be using pestillence & plague strike once every 15-18 seconds so would be a big waste of 3 points for 30% extra damage to spells that only seem to do around 300 damage anyway.

Necrosis: Again seems to be another wasted amount of points as most of the time you will be rune striking instead of auto-attacks. So if any build is using this, should be nothing more than a filler.

Corpse Explosion: This is a marmite talent IMO. 1 point for this could be very useful if remembered that i had this spell but i always seem to forget >.<. Some times an annoyance for keeping DnD up as well having to use an Unholy rune but this could be overcome by Reaping which gives Death Runes.

Tier 4:

On a Pale Horse: 20% mounted speed is very nice, but not when tanking. Also 20% reduction to stuns/fears etc.. at most is a 1 second less. Which in all honesty can't make a break a boss. Only on rare occasions, but this build has Lichborne for this.

Blood-Caked Blade: Point filler, again for the same reason i didn't put any points in Necrosis. Hardly do any auto-attacks.

Shadow of Death: 2% Strength & Stamina is always nice, strength for the increased parry and AP and stamina as more health is always nice =)

Tier 5:

Summon Gargoyle: Having to keep up runic power while using Unholy Blight and Rune Striking alot would cost quite a bit of threat just for this little guy, so unfortunately i dont see him being of any help.

Impurity: 25% more benefit from AP for most of our damage sources is a nice little boost to everything. (Please note its not 25% more damage!)

Dirge: Again just another point filler and i feel this outweighs anything else i can use.

Tier 6:

Magic Suppresion: For what it offer 5 points or any in it seem to not outweight anything else on offer at this point. Also getting 5/5 for the magic shield is potentialy a wasted GCD.

Reaping: Again just another point filler i feel outweighs anything else around it. Also will help with keeping DnD up as this is potentially 2 of the 3 runes we need.

Master of Ghouls: Again to me just a filler but this guy could come in handy even though he will be downed quite quickly. Can be used as an interrupt if needed as well.

Tier 7:

Desecration: 5% more damage to everyone within the area, which should be all the mobs your tanking, is a nice threat boost.

Anti-Magic Zone: 6 points that really can be better spent elsewhere. All i want to say on this.

Unholy Aura: Nice for bosses that snare when you need to get out of something but apart from that not really worth 2 points.

Tier 8:

Night of the Dead: I really can't see a benefit for this talent be it DPS or Tanking, if anyone could tell me one i would love to know

Crypt Fever: 30% more damage from diseases is a nice threat booster

Bone Shield: enough has ben said about this.

Tier 9:

Wandering Plage: Point filler

Ebon Plaguebringer: 13% more damage from most damage sources as well as another 3% crit equates to an extra 9% crit for SS and 3% for all spells.

Scourge Strike: Well, yea

Tier 10:

Rage of Rivendare: 10% more damage which should always be up as well as an extra 5 expertise is always nice

Tier 11:

Unholy Blight: A lovely AoE threat boost!

If need be i will explain the blood and frost tree choices but after doing all this i really can't be assed as of yet

 

Kurenai

Necrosis works with Rune Strike anyway, so it's not really wasted for threat since your Rune Strike hits are a lot higher and thus Necrosis hits harder as well. On a side note, as far as i know BCB can be parried so there's another reason why not to get this talent if you want to tank.

 

level12wizard

I think it's been pretty much confirmed that effects like Necrosis will proc on Runestrike as if they were an auto attack, and for much more damage too I might add. Your logic is flawed.

I also don't understand why so many people ignore Unholy Aura. Almost every DK I run into is Unholy (another reason I like frost tanking while pug'ing it up), and almost none of them have it. It helps considerably with any fight that has any kind of movement at all. It helps you move between trash packs faster. It helps you run back faster when you wipe. It is an awesome, un-skippable talent, and takes only two points.

Wandering Plague is a waste will the low crit rate tanks have.

You're probably better off dropping Desecration in favor of things like Necrosis. Too many fights require a lot of movement, and Plague Strike is not cast often enough. The slow can also make bunching up trash more annoying than useful. You talk about desecration as if it buffs everyone's damage - there's no way that could be true, it would be ridiculously overpowered.

Virulence is certainly useful for the hit, but how many tanks are gemming for hit? I would imagine you would rather gem for expertise if you were looking to gain more hit/threat. For that matter, how many tanks are hit capped at all?

BCB can indeed be parried, but it isn't that big of a deal.

 

DarioZ

After 80ing with a grinding Unholy spec (that I've also used as OT in Oculus Hero pretty well) I decided to try this Frost spec mainly due to Unbreakable Armor and Frost Aura which I find in my first 2-3 tanking experiences quite useful.

I left Acclimatation and Icy Talons because, being horde, it's hard to not have a shaman in party/raid and I switched acclimatation with Frost Aura because it not requires constant incoming spell dmg to stay always up and efficient and no use (imho) in having both talents. Furthermore the Aura applyes to all raid members and not only party.

Many people are whining about Frost tanks being above them in dps, but as far as I'm concerned a good DK tank has to do high dps in order to tank well. The only point for Blood slight inferiority in tanking matters is due the incomplete outweight of personal heals with damage reduction that the other 2 talent trees have respectively as Bone Armor and Unbreakable Armor. Blood spec requires more itemization in my opinion than the other 2...

 

Zerath

BCB can be parried and Parry-Hasting is confirmed. This is a fantastic way to get your healers to hate you.

Unholy Aura is amazing. We had a DK app to our guild yesterday and I told him what was wrong with his specs, he then linked [Unholy Aura] to me and went "LOL! If people knew the fight there would be no moving. It's a waste of points." It's so sad people are looking over this. 90% of our fights revolve around moving. This increases raid dps.

Wandering Plague - I see more and more tanks picking this up and I'm not sure why. Tanks run roughly 10%crit at most in our gear right now. So, 1-in-10 ticks per disease will "explode". If we were using 30%+ there would be logic behind it but points are better spent elsewhere.

Virulence effects IT/HB/DC. Not worth taking. (I have it, will be speccing out of it tonight.)

Desceration - Been juggling the usage of that. Kiting adds it would be nice but that doesn't happen that often. Only mobs in the circle when it initially applies gain the aggro, too, so that's another downfall. Plague Strike is only used (at least in my rotations) to keep up it's disease so Desc would be down 50%+ of the time. For 5 points? No thanks.

Upon seeing much more 10/25 man content the past few days, I'm rethinking my Unholy build to some thing closer to thse:

Tanking Drakes for 1-3 Drake Sath (not geared yet, I know): http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000

I lose Bladed Armor but I gain quite a bit of magic suppression and AMS would be glyphed. Thoughts on this one? Unholy Command for random welps + lava spawns that are bound to run some where else for some random reason.

Now tanking: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000

Dropped Magic Suppressions, grabbed Ravenous Dead, filler point in to Unholy Command, grabbed Bladed Armor.