As we know so far, IT brings little DPS and high threat. So high threat that we probably won't need. I've tested new IT in a few raids and so far I know that I can take mob which tanked by our main tank off to me without taunting and only spamming IT. But drops my dps for about 1-1.5k. For a balance between, I didn't changed my spec for it, just did some adjustments on my rotation, now I use this one:
Opener:
IT - IT - BT - DS - HS - PS
Through the fight:
IT - PS - DS - HS - HS
DS - IT - IT - HS - HS
Little dps loss but enough threat for everyone. Bonus

I used to have DRW but now I don't, I've put that point to MoB, helps little but still more useful on Festergut, Blood Queen, etc.

I needed a few extra points for Chillblains for our Arthas HM strat and still provide IIT, thus I experimented with a frost build that completely drops the Obliterate related talents (Annihilation & Rime). I've had great success with that. When in need of threat just spam IT (&PS,BS), otherwise use Death Strike (and Howling Blast if you absolutely don't need the healing). This frees up to 9 talent points, depending on what you are trying to achieve. In particular, it is possible to pick all the supporting talents for IT (save Rime), Morbity, GoDnD and have absolutely amazing threat in just about any situation.
Since only IT&RS are relevant for threat with such a spec, I use 2xTank Weapons and swap the main hand for a DPS weapon with FC if I really need more threat. All in all I feel this is pretty solid all-round-tanking spec if you need to provide IIT to your group and don't have dualspec for two more specialized tanking specs available.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

On the discussion about TPSvsDPS: It is really all about the encounter. On Sindragosa HM you really want survivability and don't care about DPS at all. On Putricide you care more about DPS. I feel the biggest DPS increase a DK tank can bring (provided all raid buffs are available) is Hysteria (average ~2000dps on a good Fury Warrior, worth a lot more when Burst is required). So in such situations the DK is adviced to spec into a Bloodish tanking spec making Oblit-Frost specs a mood point in serious content :>

This statement is a little confusing/misleading. Are you suggesting that Avoidance > EH after a certain point or are you suggesting that Avoidance > Stamina after a certain point?
I know that Devium favours a mixture of Avoidance and EH however in your opinion should we be valuing Avoidance higher?
Personally I agree that Stamina is overrated however this suggestion that avoidance should take higher priority is something I haven't heard before.

It's part of the basic theory behind effective health. Effective health isn't some godly sacred cow, it's simply a measure of what you can survive. Once you have enough EH to survive anything that the encounter is going to throw at you, you aren't gaining anything by adding more, and so you're better off doing something like reducing overall damage taken, or even increasing DPS.

In my opinion, the concept of stacking EH until you get 'enough' then stacking mitigation isn't particularly useful in the current state of the game because of how the numbers work out. The current state of healing is throwing around tons of overheal and not worrying much at all about efficiency, and that keeps mitigation from being all that useful.

I tend to think of EH having diminishing returns (based largely on the encounter), not as having a magic 'enough' breakpoint as it is more often stated. It's supposed to be a measure of what the worst case damage you can take in between relevant heals. As such, the point where you might say you have "enough" is going to be dependent on what your healers are doing, among other things. You might say "enough" is just not dying in one hit, but if the next hit comes 0.2 sec later, you're running a huge risk of not getting the heal at the right time. You might say "enough" is not dying in between Holy Light casts, but then you can die during a beacon refresh GCD. You might say "enough" is not dying even if your paladin takes a GCD elsewhere, but then you can die if the paladin gets killed/taken out of the fight through mechanics/disconnected/whatever. EH is the worst case scenario, and there's always a worse case. It doesn't become entirely valueless unless you're fighting Hogger.

But it absolutely becomes less valuable than avoidance at some point - having enough EH to live if your cat jumps on your 'sit' key while all your healers are disconnected isn't an issue that's likely to come up often.

Long story short: in actual practice, a 'balance' ends up working very well, but for those in the very forefront of progression, there is some potential to do even better by finding the exact right 'balance' for each situation.

I didnt mean that to hold true for every single fight, I just used it as an example to prove the point I was trying to make.

As everyone knows all stats are important for a tank (EH, Mit, Avoidance, Threat, DPS), but you are going to have design your own weight value on those stats for each and every encounter. Parse your fights, go over them after the raid. If you see that you are taking the vast majority of dmg from boss melee's, you will probably want to find out how much HP is reasonable and then work towards mitigating/avoiding that dmg.

Its similar to what Kurokaze pointed out. Endgame situations mean your healers are proven and trustworthy. You dont need to be focused on some situation where you need to live 7+ sec's w/o heals (unless for some reason thats a mechanic in the fight). You are going to be hurting yourself the vast majority of the fight because thats not going to happen and you could be mitigating a ton of dmg and helping your healers and their mana pools.

Example: Sindragosa 25 heroic (pre 5% buff)

I only had ilvl264 gear at the time and it was an extremely high dmg intake for the tank so I was staking full EH (Not to mention the fact she parry hastes ><). After our first night of pulls I was going through parses and seeing that 85%-ish of the dmg that I took was from her melee attacks some of which were around 40k. Upon seeing this, I made a few changes (Satrina's[EH use 3m cd] to Glyph[avoidance use 2m cd] on trinket and 18stm to 240armor on gloves) and took a noticeable amount less dmg from her physically while still having enough hp to survive the frost breaths.

I am a huge fan of armor. Armor is something that doesnt have DR and you cant get enough of in current gear. Crafted pants, Badge belt, Badge Cloak, Unidentifiable Organ, armor enchs on gloves, cloak, those are all things I would suggest to itemize with. However, again, this changes w/ the fight, especially the trinkets. Swapping out an armor trinket w/ an EH one will quickly yield over 3k hp in a raid buffed situation, The good think about Unidentifiable Organ is that it somewhat provide both (Its amazing).

Whole thing I am trying to get across here is:

Find what works for you on each and every fight. The main categories for gearing itemization (EH-Avoidance-Mitigation-Threat/DPS) change in value every fight. Find out what you think should be your priority and make sure you have solid logic backing it up then let your healers/raidleader know the changes you have made. Once they see a difference in the fact you arent calling for a GS / Pain supp or dead on the floor causing a raid wipe, you have just gained some validity in proving you arent some static boss soaking player. You are someone that can make his own decisions in a dynamic fashion to help the raid attain success.



***Edit:

On a side note. Blood is the only tank spec that is fesible atm due to the WotN changes. That shit is the most OP tanking talent we have atm and next to zero reason not to pick it up. WotN really shines on LK heroic w/ his massive p1 melee's and Soul Reaper hits.

The only situation where I see that not being the case is Putricide heroic p3 tanking. I personally like frost for that situation just because of being able to chain UA (putting me over 50k AV) into an 18sec IBF. You take next to zero dmg for your 30-ish seconds of fame during that fight. HOWEVER, this only applies if you arent the tank for the entirety of the fight, rather just the guy who is soaking Unbound plauge/Oozes/2nd or 3rd in line during p3. If you are the one tanking in p1, you need to be Blood.

Morbidity is more or less worthless in ICC for a MT, why do people keep putting it in their builds? Single target it's the lowest TPS per point there is, and there are no fights where mobs spawn faster than 30 seconds. A 30 second CD is more than enough for DW, Gunship, Valithiria. If you're speccing for trash, you're doing it wrong.

Stop wasting those 3 talent points. Can easily pick up Rune Tap (a 13k self-heal on a 30 sec CD is amazing for progression).

Haha, wrong phrase I guess, I use the wow gaming mouse and have the keybinds on there, so technically I do "click" it, though obviously not clicking the macro itself.

I do agree tanking is to dynamic to rely on Castsequence macro's most of the time, that's why that's only the opening sequence, which I find doesn't change much, if at all.

As to the Glyph of Disease, I easily hold threat against Raiders who outgear me substantially. Therefore I don't need an IT in each rotation and opted for an extra DS.

My other 2 glyphs are DS and VB.

Point being my glyphs, and my entire spec are entirely towards survival, and I can still hold threat over serious endgame raiders that outgear me, and even get tricks. Honestly Morbidity is more a convenience to me, as I like to have my RP topped off entering a fight, and don't always have a Druid, much less one that will keep revitalize up for a minute or 2 straight for me.

Edit: Ok wow, I missed that blue, that's what I get for taking a break I guess. Thanks, swapped for DS.

Also in support of Davia's response regarding the zero benefits a tank receives from the GoIBF:

February 5, 2010

Source: MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Tanking and Survivability Changes

You're already beyond the 40% by having the proper defense as a tank. I highly suggest you replace GoIBF with either Glyph of Rune Strike or Death Strike (you did say you were utilizing GoD to add an additional DS...though GoRS will be helpful too).

Im currently DW-frost tanking ICC10 normal (have some problems with raid-attendance in the guild) and we have everything up to LK on farm but havent done much progresswiping on The king.

I favor mitigation over EHP and is around 40k armor with 50-53k hp fully buffed, and according to recount most of the damage i recieve from Lich King is his melee physical damage. Is blood still superior that i should consider a respec or should i stay frost and enjoy my mitigation?

Blood wins for progression. Period. WOTN is too good to pass up, as are 15% and 20% heals, vs 2% mitigation, and 3% miss (miss isn't EH), and 6 seconds on IBF.

As to the glyph of IBF, I just tested it with a Resto Druid and moonfire, with 560 defense, it was precisely the same damage reduction with, and without the glyph. (45.91%)

The point was I can hold aggro fine with all survival glyphs/spec, and while I do think we should do as much dps as we can, living comes first. I would suggest more wipes happen because the tank dies, then because the tank didn't do 15% more dps.

Raid buffed with a geared tanks health pool, Rune Tap is the most OP heal in the game. It heals for as much as a druid or shamans Nature's swiftness, which is on a 3 min cd, the only better INSTANT heal is Lay on hands, which obviously has a 10 minute cd. An instant cast 15-20k heal on a 30 second cd is incredibly OP. If your holy pally uses a global to refresh beacon, or is moving, you can replace the Holy light with it.

Edit:
(The RT glyph is fricken useless. wtf just 10% of the effect? I admit I thought it was 10% hp as several DK's I've known apparently thought as well.)

Rune Tap isn't overpowered, while a 20k heal can be useful a good Pally healer will be spamming you with 14k Holy Lights, 20k+ crits every ~1.2 seconds. That said, due to required movement you aren't always getting healed so Rune Tap can be useful there (I have had full Rune Tap for a while).

Sadly, 10% hp to the party is not that great as a tank since you don't always have a Rune available and tanks should not be watching their parties health. Healers are healing that damage, most of the time you would just make their heals overheal.


That is interesting that glyph of IBF may give a little extra damage reduction, but at 2 minutes that doesn't seem worth it.