gorsameth

The thing about taking butchery for extra RP is that if your in a raid there is a good chance you will have BoSanctuary which will give you more RP then you know what to do with.

Also I wouldnt skip on Lichborne. the 25% miss chance alone is amazing but it also serves as our only anti fear ability assuming your not undead. Yes you " waste" 2 talent points getting here i certainly consider it worth it.

 

Durza

I came up with this spec: Spec

Some of this info is taken from a different post.

• Anticipation (as all Avoidance talents) is unaffected by the Diminishing Returns and breaks the Avoidance Caps. ANY avoidance you can get from talents is worth putting points into.
• Epidemic is invaluable for tanking because it gives you a bit of extra time to recover your normal rotation; tanks are far more likely to break rotation than DPS is, since they have to deal with up to 15% boss parry PLUS they may have to burn runes on tanking cooldowns.
• Scent of Blood is a HORRIBLE talent. No one should ever take it. Ever. Putting 2 points in it over Bladed Armor is a crime. Bladed Armor is an astoundingly good talent; even with cruddy premade PvP gear and not in Frost Presence, it gives almost 400 AP. In actual tank gear and +armor trinkets (which are good for us), you could easily push that to 750-800 AP with 5/5 Bladed Armor. That's a huge amount of passive threat increase for 5 talent points.
• Icy Talons/Improved Icy Talons don't stack with Windfury. I'm assuming that even if you're going to run 10 mans, you're almost certainly going to have SOME kind of shaman, and WF is by far the best air totem. 6 talent points isn't worth a 5% passive haste and a maybe-4%-higher windfury totem (if your shaman isn't enhancement), not in a tank build.
• Killing Machine is worthless in a tank build*. You're going to be replacing a very large portion of your auto-attacks with Rune Strikes. Runic Power Mastery is bad for the same reason: You'll NEVER be at 100+ Runic Power as a tank unless you're specifically saving it up, so the extra 30 maximum is worthless. For the same reason again, you need Chill of the Grave, because you're going to be able to use every single shred of RP you get.
• No Acclimation by default because, last I heard, it doesn't stack with totems/auras. It'd be worth grabbing if you don't have regular resist auras/totems somehow, or if the supposed Rune Strike buff addition is worthwhile; you do have the points for it.
• Death Rune Mastery isn't really useful for non-Blood builds. As Frost or Unholy, you don't really need or want more blood runes (which is basically what it gives you).
• Spell Deflection is OK, but not worth giving up what you need to give up for it. It's too much of a specialized-yet-RNG-dependant talent.
• Not taking Glacier Rot or Black Ice in a Frost build is just puzzling as all get-out. Why would you choose 20% non-stacking autoattack damage (Icy Talons) over stacking +30% Frost damage (which affects Icy Touch, Frost Fever, Howling Blast, and Frost Strike)? Glacier Rot is a very slightly lower return on investment (doesn't affect Frost Fever and is only 5% per point instead of 6%) but it's still dramatically better than a buff you're going to have anyway without spending 5 talent points on it.
• Merciless Combat and Endless Winter are mostly filler. MC will help with threat at the end of fights... but usually threat's not as big a deal that late in a fight. Endless Winter does provide free counterspells, which can be very useful in certain fights and helps reinforce our roles as caster tanks, at least on the rare boss that can be counterspelled.

 

Crax

I think you're missing a few things.

First, while it's possible to get Frigid Dreadplate and Bone Shield in the same build, the things you give up to do so are untenable. At a minimum, you are giving up Unholy Blight, 2 points of Rage of Rivendare, and Blade Barrier. That's completely unacceptable. If you take Blade Barrier as well, you are missing all of Rage of Rivendare, have zero points in Wandering Plague, and don't have enough points to complete Ebon Plaguebringer. Given all of that, any tank build that takes both Frigid Dreadplate and Bone Shield is sub-optimal at best.

Now, back to the interesting part of the discussion.

We all know how good Bone Shield is. 40% mitigation to all damage for at least 17.5 seconds (assuming the 3.5 second cooldown on charge removal and glyphed). As avoidance goes up, Bone Shield actually gets better. Costs one U rune and a GCD to apply.

Icebound Fortitude is equally incredible. 50% mitigation to all damage for 12 seconds, not tied to the GCD, and potentially free (glyphed). Icebound Fortitude can be extended by the 4-piece Tier 7 bonus (3 seconds) and by Guile of Gorefiend (6 seconds). For an UH tank, this will result in a best case of 15 sec; for a Frost tank, best case is 21 sec.

Unbreakable Armor, when glyphed, is 25% more armor and 10% more parry (unaffected by Diminishing Returns) for 20 seconds. Costs one F rune and a GCD.

Frigid Dreadplate is 3% miss chance, unaffected by Diminishing Returns. Passive.

So lets compare the two totals over a 60 sec window (our "survivability rotation", if you will):

• Unholy: 15 sec of 50% mitigation & 17.5+ seconds of 40% mitigation
• Frost: 21 sec of 50% mitigation & 20 sec of 10% avoidance with 25% armor & 60 secs of 3% avoidance.

That starts to look a lot more comparable to me. Now, in an AoE tanking situation, or a pure caster situation, Unholy is clearly better, but in a primarily physical, single target situation (i.e. most bosses), Frost is superior until you have enough base avoidance to extend Bone Shield significantly.

 

SpiralJacob

Today I ran Drak'Tharon with a disc Priest and noticed a very nice mechanic with Bone Shield, when an attack is fully absorbed by PW:S or DA it doesn't use up a charge and I think the 40% damage reduction is still applied.

I'll try and do some more testing to find out if it is when I can find a Priest to help but it seems like this could greatly increase the up time of Bone Shield and make this a very potent healer and tank combo.

 

Tjuhl

Speccing Unholy Tank for PvE, consideration Tier-wise

I. Unholy

Tier1:
5/5 Anticipation - 5% Dodge = 5% more avoidance
3/3 Morbidity - DnD cooldown down to 15s, increases overall mobility and DnD threat
0/2 Vicious Strikes - Being Tanks, we won't crit that much, thus the talent bonus should be negligible

Tier2:
2/2 Epidemic - longer -haste (via IT disease), more overall threat from diseases
3/3 Virulence - 3% hit = less misses from attacks and specials, more free gemming slots for other tanking stats
0/2 Unholy Command - if you have to use Death Grip, either you or someone of your group f*cked up anyways
3/3 Ravenous Dead - STR = Parry = Avoidance and more threat from all abilities

Tier3:
3/3 Outbreak - more initial threat from PS, more AE threat from Pestilence and Blood Boil
0/5 Necrosis - rather a DPS talent
1/1 Corpse Explosion - nice to obtain additional threat from multiple targets after 1st target was killed

Tier4:
0/2 On a Pale Horse - rather a PvP talent
X/3 Blook-Caked Blade - nice to have for some additional threat
1/1 Shadow of Death - +2% STA = more life = good, +2% STR = more parry = more avoidance = good
0-1/1 Summon Gargoyle - nice to have for single target tanking as a rune power dump
0/5 Impurity - adds to the AP bonus multiplier, not the AP bonus itself, rather nice to have then must have
2/2 Dirge - more RP = more RP-based spells used = more threat from Death Coil, Unholy Blight, Gargoyle, Rune Strike

Tier5:
5/5 Magic Supression - 100% instead of 75% spell absorb for Anti-Magic Shell, -5% spell-dmg taken
3/3 Reaping - Blood Strike / Boil = Death Rune = more Rune Flexibility (more "counts as Unholy" Runes)
1/1 Master of Ghouls - additional controllable "oh sh*t" opportunity through death pact

Tier6:
X/5 Desecration - AE Snare = fewer runaways, targets stay longer in your DnD, targets easier to control
1/1 Anti-Magic Zone = group saver, overall spell damage taken reduction,...
2/2 Unholy Aura = get to or back to targets quicker, faster close-up to targets, more melee dps on targets

Tier7:
X/2 Night of the Dead - AotD / RD CD down to 10 *.5 / *.25 = 15 / 2.5 min, more "oh sh*t button" opportunities
3/3 Crypt Fever - more threat from own diseases, unlocks Ebon Plaguebringer
1/1 Bone Shield - self-explanatory

Tier8:
0/3 Wandering Plague - Chance based on Crit Chance = low for Tanks, DPS talent
3/3 Ebon Plaguebringer - more threat from your abilities, 3% crit, /lick from magic DPS classes
1/1 Scource Strike - cannot be dodged / parried / blocked (as it deals Shadow Damage)

Tier9:
5/5 Rage of Rivendare - +5 Expertise = your abilities are dodged less often, +10% yellow dmg = more threat

Tier10:
1/1 Unholy Blight - Runic Power AE Dump, more AE threat


II. Frost

Tier1
3/3 Improved Icy Touch - more attack speed reduce = less damage taken
0/2 Glacier Rot - only affects your IT, which is usually your 1st disease inflicted
5/5 Toughness - more mitigation


III. Blood

Tier1
X/2 Butchery - for more runic power
0/3 Subversion - you'll only use Blood Strike from those, for single target tanking = negligible
5/5 Blade Barrier - +10% Parry with quite a lot of uptime, esp. as your Blood Runes are converted into Death Runes


IV. Additional Interesting Obtainable Tanking Talents

X/5 Bladed Armor (Blood Tier2) - additional overall threat through AR-based AP bonus.
X/3 Scent of Blood (Blood Tier2) - additional RP generation.
X/2 Icy Reach (Frost Tier2) - nice for pulling / initial aggro and runaways.
X/5 Icy Talons - more white damage threat
1/1 Lichborne - addiotional "oh sh*t" button


Thus, I'd suggest 5/11/55 for Unholy Tanking.

 

gorsameth

Sorry but there are some wierd choises in your spec.

Firstly no Viscous strikes. tho you say we dont crit much while tanking, and that is true, your missing out on 6% crit and 30% crit damage which is pretty good. Especialy if you consider that instead you have points in both Corpse Explosion which has almost 0 damage and threat should seriously not be an issue after the first target is dead. Blood Caked Blade is another sub optimal talent. Your replacing a lot of your white hits with RS making this do almost nothing.

Master of Ghouls is another iffy talent. The ghoul adds nothing to your threat and as a darkpact oh shit button he wont do either since any aoe will just kill it long before you want to use it.
Personaly I am not happy with AMZ just because of the low damage. Considering the hitpoints of your average geared person 12k damage really isnt a lot but i can sort of see the use.

I would switch the point from Master of Ghouls to Desecration and put Blood Caked Blade and Corpse Explosion into Viscous strikes

 

meksa

I end up with this spec: 23/45/3

I have 23 points in blood because of "Veteran of the Third War". It is a really strong 3 Point Ability. And in my Opinion it's much more better than Tundra Stalker. The points in blood should help to proc Killing Machine or to get a free HB. Guile of Gorefiend also supports this intention.

Since it isn't figured out if DW oder 2H is the better way to tank, i think it's a good choice.

Any Comments?

 

pfooti

I'm sort of curious about blood-caked blade in an unholy tank build. First, it only procs off of auto-attacks, and not rune strikes. Second, when it DOES proc, it gives the boss an additional chance to parry. Now, neither of those seem all that significant given the expected proc rate on BCB, but given all that, I'm leaning toward keeping it out of a pure tanking build. A switch-hitting build should probably have it, but should tanks take it? The choice seems to be around outbreak/necrosis and BCB for tanks, as you don't particularly need both to fill out the avoidance talents, and all three talents are somewhat lackluster in the threat generation department. Right now I'm leaning toward outbreak, but I need to run some hard numbers first.

The same question applies to 2-handed spec, assuming you're picking up at least blade barrier. Most Unholy tank builds I put together also include bladed armor 5/5, impurity 5/5, and then have to figure out where to put the last few points - more necrosis? desecration? on a pale horse (mount speed is handy when you're out and about)?

 

gorsameth

4 things that strike me about his build.

Firstly Veteran of the Third War is nice but doesnt not compare to Tundra Stalker. yes it is 1 Expertise more and 6% str/sta but Tundra Stalker is also a 10% overall damage increase since you should always have Frost Fever up.

No Epidemic will mean that the extra Deathrunes you make will be kinda useless since you dont have the extra time for Obliterates / Howling blasts in a rotation. The extra time on your diseases really helps a lot.

Talking about Death Runes why take both Blood of the North and Death Rune Mastery?
Death Runes are used to convert less usefull skills into usefull onces. Considering your main damage will be Obliterate you want to use bloodrunes for this. Hence Blood of the North. What are you going to do with your Deathrunes from Obliterate?

Lastly Killing Machine is not that usefull. It only procs of white hits and even then only only 50%. Yet your replacing your white hits with RS a lot. the actual effect from it it really low.

 

Hisaki

One interesting choice that keeps coming to mind when looking over these builds, which I will comment on immediately while it is on my mind, is the active choice not to put the 3 pts into Morbidity for Death and Decay time reduction, especially with Frost tank builds. While Howling Blast is certainly useful, it is likely beneficial to improve the reduction on Death and Decay to the point that you can fit in two per rotation around as opposed to improving your DPS further in Blood through talents such as Subversion.

Keep in mind that I've been experimenting with an Unholy tanking build currently, with no DPS improving talents other than as filler (which I will post later for analysis), and the only case in which threat has proven an issue is with epic geared characters several levels higher. As long as you keep a steady rotation, Rune Strike like mad, and use up your RP, you should not have issues with threat on a single target fight. Having multiple Death and Decays per encounter would help to keep your threat generation much more on AoE pulls.

Anyways: I'll post my takes on the Frost and Unholy builds later in the day. I haven't experimented directly on Frost with live (I didn't even notice the Frigid Deathplate change until today!), but I will be doing that more extensively when I get off my lazy ass and hit 80 for a second time around. I have, however, tanked with a Death Knight in Naxx as both Frost and Unholy, both to acceptable levels, so I think my assessment about the threat generation is likely accurate.

 

ZeroWashu

You dismiss some talents are "DPS" yet list others as having nice damage for more threat.

Still, I would drop 3/3 Ravenous Dead, 1/1 Corpse Explosion, 5/5 Magic Suppression, 1/1 Master of Ghouls, and 1/1 Anti-magic Zone.

Ravenous dead because I don't see much parry/etc from it at %1 increments. Corpse Explosion because it is useless even versus trash. 5/5 Magic Suppression because it really takes 6 points total (with AMZ) to be even to begin to be useful and I would concentrate on dps creating to make more threat to allow my dps to really open up. Master of Ghouls because my use of a ghoul has shown it doesn't survive most boss mobs anyway and some trash has cleaned its clock.

I do like Necrosis for the added damage throughout the fight, wws readings in another thread showed its value as second to Virulence. I am a fan of Impurity when combined with the fact Unholy is "spell" happy dps anyway. I always take outbreak for AOE tanking, and it can help on bosses who like to bring adds.

I would drop Icy Reach with Black Ice. I don't need range.

Those are some of what I would change and why. I have gone through a few specs and my current spec doesn't match any of my ideals but between this thread and another here on this site my spec favorites seems to shift daily. I am really leaning towards no ghoul even during leveling as its overall contribution is negligible for the most part and nearly useless in an instance

 

KyuubiANBU

all good points, but reading the response gets me thinking. obviously from some of the talents, this spec will not do as well 1v1 against a boss. imo this spec is better at clearing everything else in an instance and if needed OT is a possibility.
with that in mind, does that make this spec any more appealing? if there's still no concievable way to tank with this spec, i feel like the dps it would put out would be too much for most tanks. if i dont pull the main target, i would deffinetly pull some extras.
also, thanks for giving me the parry numbers, if DW doesn't work i can drop out some frost talents to pick-up blade barrier and dodge. albeit not the spec i hoped for, but more practical in 2h case. spec might be better for 2h, still hoping for aoe
thoughts?

 

Feorthas

Quick update on the "is KM viable for a tanking build" question:

Built out a messy spreadsheet and, while I treat FS as a pure melée strike (identical to how obliterate works rather than as a magic-strike), I have some more accurate numbers! Based on 4 minutes of target dummy beatdown numbers yesterday, I did 30% melée/Oblit, 15% FS, 25% other damage (if I recall correctly; really tired this morning). I then built out a DK tank with level 80 skills, 17500 armor, 2000 AP, a 12.5% critrate, 3% hit/expertise, assumed 9% miss/dodge, 15% parry on a BOSS, and handed him a 125 dps, 3.5 speed weapon. I applied my lv80 spec (I'd supply it but can't copy/paste; iPhone) and built out a set of non-KM numbers and KM numbers.

Based on what I found, KM added 86% of the theoretical DK's critrate in DPS--about 13.6dps for 12.5% crit, scales within ~1% deviation on that 86% number between 5 & 20% crit--if applied to FS only AND all 6 of your melée attacks in a 20 second frost rotation were able to crit.

And, yes, that's not quite a 1.1% DPS increase for 5 talent points so KM may be a HORRIBLE talent. In fact, I think we can safely say that it IS terrible; over 2 minutes, Spreadsheet-DK gains 1628 damage from KM and gains 1303 from one deathchilled FS. This means that deathchill is in line with the 1% damage per talent point metric that blizzard likes but Killing Machine may be horribly out of whack.

 

codeviper

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=j0xMZ...gMhx0oGxVocsut

So here's my unholy build for overall tanking, I also would like to get more information on three things

Necrosis > blood caked blade because the latter is based off a 30% proc chance, correct?

By having reaping, that would limit the 10% parry from my talent in the blood tree, correct?

also, 2 points in two hand specialization > 2 points in bladed armor? (lets say I have 16000 armor, that means 177.7 more attack power) since two hand specialization is a % based value, and not a numerical value?

thanks!

 

Morogoth

It seems to me based on what EJ is going for on these different class discussions - we should really split this discussion up some more. Previously we ended up with mega threads on topics that became hard to follow and new people would have to really dig to get any solid information. We have the ability now to create as many new topics now that only people interested in Deathknights will see - lets take advantage of the new space the admins have given us.

Especially with discussing specific talent builds we should probably have at a minimum 4 different tanking threads.

- Unholy tanking discussion

- Frost tanking discussion

- Blood tanking discussion

- Comparing Unholy vs Frost tanking

after that there is the possiblity of creating

-aoe threat generation

-single target threat generation

-DK tank gear selection.

 

Crax

This is flat out misinformation. DW vs 2H has zero effect on a boss' parry percentage. The only thing DWing effects is how often you miss (9% vs 28%) and how many opportunities a boss has to parry. The latter is what makes DWing so bad for tanking.

You need the same amount of expertise to cap either way. It's likely you'll get enough to prevent Dodges (6.5%) easily. Getting the estimated 15-16% to completely remove Parrys is highly unlikely, particularly without gimping other important tanking stats.

 

• CureFC

Necrosis vs BCB: Neither Necrosis or BCB are going to be that great in a tank build because you're going to replace a lot of your white attacks with yellow Rune Strikes. This will get worse as your gear improves and your avoidance goes up. If you're looking for filler or want to take them anyways (OT/dps spec maybe) then I believe you are correct that Necrosis is superior to BCB.

BB & Reaping: Blade Barrier checks the underlying rune for activation; Reaping should not affect your Blade Barrier uptime at all.

2h spec vs Bladed Armor: Unholy does the large majority of its damage from magic, which is boosted by attack power (even more so due to Impurity). 2h weapon spec increases damage done by your weapon attacks: PS, DS, BS, SS. It does not increase all damage while using a 2h weapon. Bladed Armor adds AP which improves ALL your damage. 16000 is a very low armor estimation, also. Bladed Armor is an amazing talent and I would really try to find a way to work 5 point into any build.

Butchery and BoSanc: I wasn't really considering it specifically for the actual RP. Some folks have posted that when you gain RP from Butchery (and from a couple other talents) you produce a sizeable amount of threat. I basically was looking for a comparison in TPS between 2h weapon spec and Butchery, as it is something I simply don't know how to test myself. The RP gain from BoSanc may also fall under the category of high threat RP gain, or it might follow normal rules like most of our RP producing abilities do. Also, I do 10 mans and have no Prot Pally, so I had failed to consider having it at all.

Regarding Lichborne: I'll probably try it both ways. It's not just the wasted talent points getting to it, you have to pull those points from somewhere else too and I already feel like the general Unholy tanking template I like gets kinda tight. I'll play around with it more as I agree it is a fantastic talent. Much more for the miss than the fear immunity though - with the changes to the way fears on bosses work I don't think they are nearly as much of an issue as they once were.

 

• Bad Luck

I definitely agree with the splitting up of the discussion. I can even help move posts around if necessary.

 

Crax

While I think it may eventually come to that, I think DK tanking is new enough we still have a lot of basic, fundamental Theorycrafting to do. I think splitting the thread at this point is premature. However, it would be helpful if we could get the first post updated with some of the things we have established so far:

1. DW Tanking is not recommended, and is, at best, sub-optimal due to increased "parry gibbing".
2. Auto-attack talents (KM, BCB, Necrosis) have significantly less value to Tanks than DPS due to Rune Strike replacement. They may have some value in Off Tank situations.

What others?

 

Suno

This thread will be updated and ammended as necessary to provide only proven, tested information or, at worst, the community's collective best guess about relevant mechanics to Death Knight endgame tanking. It will not be updated during evenings or weekends. Sorry.

This thread is not going to include a whole lot of basic DK info and there is a lot of fundamental knowledge that is intentionally omitted. There are countless sources in which to find that information. This thread is designed to discuss my favorite topic: endgame raiding. There will be some basic stuff in here (which will be removed if this post gets too bloated), but please direct introductory inquiries elsewhere.

1. Overview

Death Knight Tanks are the fourth and newest tanking class to be created in World of Warcraft. Death knight tanking shares qualities with all of the other tanking styles and has some of its own flavor to bring into the tanking pool. The biggest difference is the last of a shield. To compensate for this lack of armor, Death Knights have a Frost presence that increases the armor gained from items by 80%.

Taunts and single target threat.
Death Knights have two taunts, Dark Command (8 second cooldown) and Death Grip (35 second cooldown untalented). Death Grip, despite false rumors, DOES behave as a regular taunt. Death Knights do not have an AOE taunt.

See the talents section for rotations and tips for tanking single targets.

Multi-target Threat

There are 6 main AOE tanking abilities at our disposal:

• Death and Decay
• Pestilence
• Howling Blast (31 point Frost Talent)
• Blood Boil
• Corpse Explosion (11 point Unholy Talent)
• Unholy Blight (51 point Unholy Talent) does considerable AOE damage and is nice for threat, particularly in situations when new mobs are spawned/accidentally aggroed.

See the talents section for rotations and tips for tanking multiple targets.

Dual Wield Tanks?
Can you do it? Yes. However, I would encourage you to use a 2hander to tank if you are just learning the class, or if you are on cutting-edge content for your guild. Dual-wield tanking increases the amount of attacks you make (since you are using twice the weapons, both of which likely have a faster swing speed than a 2h). These attacks can be parried, which may decrease your survivability.

For the purposes of this thread, I will consider DW tanking (at least slightly) inferior to 2h tanking in either threat or survivability. Should it's viability be improved considerable I may add a detailed DW section. If you're hell-bent on DW tanking or would like to join the discussion of it, stop by here for more information.


2. Cookie-Cutter Tanking Builds and Associated Tanking Rotations

*Build Disclaimer* This class is great in that we have a wealth of valuable talents in each tree. I am very aware that there are several viable variations of any build linked here, and that some are better that others relative to the encounter. The heading of this section describes the builds here appropriately as cookie-cutter. Feel free to modify them to suite your needs. However these builds are what I consider to be the best builds representing the respective trees. Your mileage may vary.

Important: No rotation is perfect and usable in all situations. Good DK tanking requires dynamic rotations and quick responses to changes in encounters. However, in an unrealistically static encounter where all attacks land, there are intelligent rotations. Additionally, these builds do not include RP dumps. It is assumed that you are Rune Striking whenever possible and not allowing yourself to reach maximum RP by using your tree's RP dump.

Glyph of Icebound Fortitude is not listed as a recommended Glyph for any build. Feel free to substitute it as you see fit.

Blood

This section is largely incomplete. I have limited Blood raiding experience as I still believe it to be inferior to the other trees.

Blood is still under scrutiny, as it is the newest tree to become a viable tanking option. This will be updated the most in the coming weeks, so check back frequently as information here is subject to change dramatically.

Blood Strengths

• Single-Target Threat - roughly comparable to Frost ST threat (see weaknesses)
• Effective Health - capable of the highest effective health of any deep-tree build
• Expertise - capable of the most reasonably-attained expertise via talents
• Nice Raid Buffs - Blood Aura, Abom's Might, Hysteria

Blood Weaknesses

• Dependency on debuffs for threat - Sunder/Expose armor. Less of an issue on 25-man raids than 5/10-man
• AOE Threat - Very inferior to the other trees
• Proactive damage mitigation - No Bone Shield, UA, etc.

Blood Builds (includes recommended glyphs)

Standard
Single Target Rotation - IT-PS-HS-HS-OB HS-HS-HS-HS-HS-HS RPDUMP = RS/Deathcoil
Multi Target Rotation - DnD-IT-PS-Pest then TAB-HS/Pest/BloodBoil RPDUMP = RS/Deathcoil


Diseaseless
Single Target Rotation - HS-HS-OB-OB HS-HS-HS-HS-HS-HS RPDUMP = RS/Deathcoil
Multi Target Rotation - DnD-IT-PS-Pest then TAB-HS/Pest/BloodBoil RPDUMP = RS/Deathcoil


Frost

My favorite tree. I wish prot paladins and warriors weren't so terrible at DPS so I could spec into frost more often. As it is, they're really bad, so as an intelligent raidleader, I am generally spec'd into Unholy as a utility MT/DPS.

Frost Strengths

• Arguably best in ST threat (at worst tied with blood)
• Damage reduction - Frigid Deathplate, UA, GoG, Lichborne, yum.
• AoE Threat. Capable of out-AoE'ing Unholy with a string of KM/HB procs. Less reliable, more exciting.

Frost Weaknesses

• No real raid utility. If not specd into IIT, you don't buff your raid.
  

Frost Builds (includes recommended glyphs)

Standard
Single Target Rotation - IT-PS-BS-BS-OB OB-OB-OB RPDUMP = RS/FS
Multi Target Rotation - DnD-IT-PS-Pest then TAB-OB/Pest/BloodBoil RPDUMP = RS/FS

Improved Icy Talons
Single Target Rotation - IT-PS-BS-BS-OB OB-OB-OB RPDUMP = RS/FS
Multi Target Rotation - DnD-IT-PS-Pest then TAB-OB/Pest/BloodBoil RPDUMP = RS/FS





Unholy

My most familiar tree. I wish prot paladins and warriors weren't so terrible at DPS so I could spec into frost more often. As it is, they're really bad, so as an intelligent raidleader, I am generally spec'd into Unholy as a utility MT/DPS.

Unholy Strengths

• Best reliable AoE Threat - Unholy Blight/Wandering Plague/Impurity
• Damage reduction - Bone Shield and (situationally) Anti-Magic Zone..
• Raid Buffs - Unholy Aura and Ebon Plaguebringer are fantastic.

Unholy Weaknesses

• Low ST threat - Still enough, but certainly the lowest of the 3 trees.
• EP doesn't stack - Either your threat or your Unholy DPS DK's threat will be adversely affected by the fact that both of you cannot keep the debuff on 100% of the time.
  

Unholy Builds (includes recommended glyphs)

Standard
Single Target Rotation - IT-PS-BS-BS-SS SS-SS-SS RPDUMP = RS/Deathcoil
Multi Target Rotation - DnD-IT-PS-Pest then TAB-OB/Pest/BloodBoil RPDUMP = RS/Deathcoil

3DS Build
Please note that this build lacks Improved Icy Touch, and Sarth will need to be Thunderclapped or equivalent by another raider.
Single Target Rotation - IT-PS-BS-BS-SS SS-SS-SS RPDUMP = RS/Deathcoil


-----A Work in Progress------

 

Solithaira

Excellent guide buck although I had a clarification regarding your Unholy tanking build. Given that most would go Unholy for the purpose of (better) AoE tanking I'm surprised you did not pick up wandering plague. Is this talent just not worth it, or is this something that will change based on a given level of crit?

 

Suno

If you mean better in terms of threat, you're right that unholy can be better, though I've not seen hard evidence regarding HB vs UB and other talents. Is seems that Unholy would have a significant advantage. In terms of mitigation, Bone shield wont last last long (~10s) and Frost may be better (I've had very little AOE tanking trouble as frost).

Wandering plague is based purely off of your melee crit % which is around 5-7% once the T7 gear level is reached. Obviously while DPSing or leveling this talent is amazing, but the proc rate is terribly low for tanks who don't (shouldn't) gear for crit.

 

ZeroWashu

Bucknasty,

why the two points wasted in Unholy Command? I see this a lot and never understood the idea of spending two points for an ability that at most can be used once a fight if at all. I am still not sold on Ravenous Dead, does that 3% in strength actually contribute measurable mitigation? 3% of 1000 is still only 30. Seems like a lot of talent points for such a small return

 

Suno

I agree that all of the talents you mention are lackluster. I personally prefer to max desecration and put my extra 4 points into bladed armor (threat) or magic suppression (mitigation) like this - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft .

However more taunts and strength is inarguably a good thing and I haven't crunched the numbers well enough to refute popular opinion on these boards.

 

Rejju

Honestly this would be a personal opinion. Butchery is nice because in a long boss fight, every ~110 seconds you get a free 40 runic power, which is a frost strike or a death coil for just that much extra threat. So i think Butchery is definitely worth it.

I don't disagree that Morbidity is good for extra threat, it's just a matter of choice. I personally feel that Morbidity is better for Unholy Death Knights, as they do not get Howling Blast. As a frost tank, I find myself using DnD only at the start of AoE pulls and never again, it just isn't worth the Rune commitment.