1) If you mean currently, no, the general concensus is anything but unholy sucks, unless you're in very early tanking gear where frost is as good/better than unholy. If you mean next patch, people are working on builds, but I guess it'll need to wait. Most versions don't go DRW or Blood Gorged, stopping at the tier before(and taking everything on that tier) then getting frost and unholy goodies.

2) Rune Tap is certainly a good tanking talent, I like it when I use an unholy/blood hybrid for sartharion tanking, it's excelent to heal yourself during a wall when your healer will take a few seconds to position and the bad guy is still breathing in your face. Mark of Blood not so much, it seems rather weak because it's not reactive but proactive, meaning you need to know when you will need it before you use it, and also MAYBE(I'm not sure I haven't tested in a long time) it only procs off hits or parries, not misses or dodges.

3) There's currently no fight where it's useful at least. The only fight that it will proc often and stay up is sapphiron, and frost resists is mostly unnecessary for the fight, even undergeared.

4) Both, see previous posts

5) Matter of taste, and spec. For unholy it's pretty good, for blood not so much. Also depends on your gear and how much hit you have, and if you run 10man or 25man(in 25 you'll often have misery or FF, in 10 not that much). I usually don't bother unless I have useless points, which rarely happens in the first 2 tiers of unholy, even when I skip morbidity.

6) 49.

Incorrect. Fire up the PTR and test it yourself. Stoneskin is a full 3% avoidance. Only ratings and agility diminish.

Actually, given this, I have no difficulties swapping from Swordshattering to Gargoyle on a longer-term basis. It's 1% avoidance vs 2% stamina from my weapon, but the ability to regem away from pure +def is priceless to me. I'm quite literally sitting on gear upgrades in my bank that I can't equip--even with enchants, prismatics, etc--without going below 540 defense. I'll stay at or above my current defense level, while gaining stamina, avoidance, expertise, hit, and armor. I suspect this will work out to be a net avoidance/stamina gain in general, not just for me, once gem/enchant changes are taken into account.

It's a bit more than 1% difference if you calculate it with real values. Mainly because the parry of DKs is already rather high.

Lets take a well geared DK tank before weapon rune with 22% dodge, 28% parry (with blade barrier), 7% miss. With those an attack has a chance of 0.78 * 0.72 * 0.93 -> 52.2% of hitting you.

With +1% to all these values thats 0.77 * 0.71 * 0.92 -> 50.3%. This means you are taking on average 3.7% less damage.

With 4% to parry its 0.78 * 0.68 * 0.93-> 49.3%. You take 5.6% less damage than without rune enchant.


In other words, with gargoyle you take about 1,97% more damage on average.


However, you also get 2% more stam with gargoyle. And that stam is also useful against magic damage or attacks against your back where parry does not do anything.

On the other hand, on fights like patchwerk 2% more avoidance is IMO > 2% more stam. And there is also the question of diminishing returns of the 1% dodge, parry, miss from the defence - if I use a 0.9% instead 1% reduction for gargoyle it jumps from 1.97% more damage to 2.35% more damage. 2.74% with 0.8% instead 1%.