I was looking at same thing as fester really. Except I like 5/5 Bladed and only 2 points into Scent of blood. Also with my glyphs I changed a few things.

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

I might switch my Icy touch glyph for either rune strike or icebound fortitude. But I need to find the exact numbers people have crunched on those 2.

But as of now, with 2/3 Scent and Glyph of Icy touch, runepower is limitless. and I gain all kinds of massive sinle target threat. With howling blast and pestilence/bb, youve got more AE threat than you'll need as frost IMO. So everything I do really is focused on ST threat.\


Edit: To the post a few before mine. Where did you get your info or anyone got a link to the math on 2/2 weapon specialization > subversion. I use obliterate more than howling blast in most cases besides trash pulls AE threat.

But if that is the case, I might switch to 3/3 Scent of blood and 2/2 2hweapon specialization instead of subversion and use something like this spec

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

My guild's never dropped (or even attempted for that matter) Sarth+3, but I was the MT on Sarth for our first downing of 2 drake Sarth. I didn't go any specific spec, just my standard Blood tanking spec.

My question to you all is with Dual Speccing coming out, I'm not sure which of these 3 tanking specs I've created will complement each other the best. Keep in mind that my guild has a plethora of DKs and usually takes 4 to 6 per 25 man and I'm the only Blood there so IIT will be on the target at all times as well as Ebon Plaguebringer:

Blood

This will for sure be my main, single target threat spec. I picked up Spell Deflection as I see it proc on more spells than I think people realize so it's simply a preference of mine. Also I chose Glyph of Death Strike and Dark Death as I plan to replace Obliterate in my rotation; and Dark Death coupled with Sudden Doom and Morbidity should be some healthy single target threat. I did not pick up SoB as I find as a blood tank, I rarely use my RP on anything but rune strikes and with there always being a blood or death rune available, don't have the extra time in my rotation to spam DC every few seconds.

Frost

My goal with this spec is to try and become more magic resistant yet still maintain a lot of AoE tanking capability. With (from what I understand, not actually experienced) Frost's better single target threat generation, this should hopefully still allow me to tank bosses. More specifically though, I really wanted to get my magic mitigation high.

Unholy

This spec I plan to be my primary AoE tanking spec, but I remember it was quite useful for magic damage mitigation as well. I don't have much to say about this as I find it to be not much more useful otherwise, yet find myself unable to simply disregard it. I did not pick up Desecration as I expect Ulduar will require more movement than we've seen thus far.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

So what would win out in a fight for TPS superiority? 2 points into 2h Weapon Mastery or 2 points into Morbidity? With the shadow damage increase in Frost now and the already high TPS on DnD, is it worth using even on single targets?

I am not really sold on your unholy "AE" build. Given my preferred tanking spec is frost I didn't entirely see what AE abilities you were going to use in that unholy tree. One thing you may want to consider is dropping On a Pale Horse and picking up Wandering Plague. Without a solid "spammable" AE attack, unholy seems to need wandering plague to provide the extra damage to nearby mobs to keep them on you.

I can see if you need the points in imp icy touch you could move stuff. I did dancing rune weapon cause its a 1 point investment for lots of dps on a burn fight. I want to try this with 2/2 runic power mastery too see how much that helps with the dmg from my Death Strikes, do you feel the 15% dmg increase from Morbidity would make up for the threat and dmg from 2/2 runic mastery? Because I could easily dump DRW and that for it.

Here's kind of my list of suggestions...

1. I would personally ditch Blood Presence or Spell Deflection and get Scent of Blood if you're going Dark Death and Morbidity - depending on your avoidance you're going to need a lot of rune strikes (no more BoSanc niceness) and if you want to do that over Glyph of Rune Strike, might as well get the runic power to use it better.

2. I'd ditch Deathchill, Acclimation, and Epidemic and get Merciless Combat and Bladed Armor - having some of the best DPS the game allows in my guild, it pays to have the ability to keep up with TPS when the "execute stage" kicks in so having Merciless Combat is nice. Acclimation I've tried in many cases and haven't loved it...I'd rather get the flat bonus from Bladed Armor. Don't really need Epidemic with Glyph of Disease. Again, it's more of a TPS over survivability thing for me since in my situation they always seem to be on the verge. Not sure how nice glyph of unbreakable armor is honestly.

3. No need for the gargoyle or pale horse at all. And if you really want AoE spec, then you need Wandering Plague. And considering the need to keep UB and rune strikes up, I'd take scent again.

It gives you a larger pool, thus lowering the possibility of you from dropping below the required amount of RP (26, I think) to fully benefit the from the glyph.

That just gives you more "I screwed up" room :P A single horn of winter can fix that also and doesn't cost 2 talent points.

Edit - Ok, not a single horn is gonna give you 50 runic but if you go below 50 it'll likely get ya closer to 50 again. Point being it's an indirect dps increase, not a direct one.

Keep you above 50 runic (for max benefit of Glyph of Death Strike) while still allowing you 80 runic for rune strikes and death coils for maximum dps/threat. The question is whether or not that extra runic is more of a dmg increase than morbidity, which has the added bonus of lowering your DnD cool down so I'm leaning that direction now.

Also a single horn can mess up your rotation since some people replied while I was.

It was proven months ago in one of the DPS threads that, point for point, 2H Spec beats Subversion in all cases. The napkin math for tanking TPS is pretty simple: +2% to RS, Autoattacks, Oblit, HS/BS, SS, PS, BCB, DS & FS vs. +3% to HS/BS & Oblit. For almost every spec, that's pretty easy math.

The simple fact that 2H Spec buffs Rune Strike (which can be upwards of 40% of our threat) is enough in most circumstances to prove that Subversion is the lesser talent.

Horn of winter does help quite of bit on the subject of death stirke because with the glyph it is 2% damage increase per 2 runic power thus it only takes 26 runic power to get the full benifit from the glyph

Edit: This was in response to a previous post. I clicked quote it did not work.

I see a lot of people talking about taking scent of blood, quoting rune strike as the reason. Doesn't rune strike take the place of normal melee swings? If so, I can't see a good reason to get scent of blood at all, as I'm sure I'll be rune striking most of the time that the SoB proc would even be up. This seems especially true if you took runic power mastery or CotG in frost, and more so if you take the icy touch glyph.

Unless rune strike counts as a melee attack that can use scent charges? In which case it becomes a powerful talent.

Moorokos makes a good point. I haven't had a chance to play yet, but does anyone know if Rune Strike still triggers the 5 runic power if used in place of a regular melee attack? If not, this talent will be almost uselss combined with the internal 10 second cooldown.

I was wondering if everyone can take a look at this frost build I've come up with here

I am also considering taking points out of scent of blood (definitely if Rune Strike doesn't proc the runic power) or a point out of Runic Power Mastery so that I can spec into Morbidity. I had Morbidity prepatch on my unholy spec and love opening with DnD. Without it, I imagine I could only open every other trash pull with it. Thanks for any input you all can provide.


Edit: So now that we know scent of blood is so necessary, what do you think I should do with my spec? Is morbidity something you think I can do fine without? I've never tried tanking without it, so I worry about holding AoE aggro if it's on cooldown. Could I take the points out of bladed armor? By my calculations, it works out to about 150 AP or so, which doesn't seem like a ton to me. Thanks again for help.

It does. It is.

I really don't see *any* build being viable without it. The threat difference between having BoSanc and not having it before 3.1 was enormous. This is our *only* way to even come close to getting back to that level of threat. Like it or not, for single target threat we are incredibly dependent on Rune Strike to stay viable - at least at the high end of tanking.

Edit: As my older posts here will show, I made the same wrong assumption about Rune Strike and Necrosis / BCB back in the early LK days. Rune Strike actually works with both of those as well. Same with KM.

Can someone who knows numbers for end game tanking better than I do take a look at my build? My main focus is AE tanking, my mitigation stats are decent enough to pull off a build like this (I think). I am currently sitting at 30% dodge, and 25% parry, with a 33,965 HP pool. Please let me know if you have any suggestions for changes I can make for better mitigation, as damage avoidance and AE threat generation are my main focus.

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

First, my spec is 11/10/50, build primarily for AE threat and high single target dps/tps. I'm not the main tank, generally I'm OT on fights that require it, else I'm throwing on DPS gear, so I didn't see the point in going deep frost. I felt that AMZ offered good utility to the raid, so I decided to try an unholy tank build. Given those points, any suggestions on points to move around?

Now, the few questions and points I wanted to bring to the community for their input.
1) With the changes to frost, and from what we know of the fights in Uld, is 5/x/7 still the best choice for MT.
2) Given the changes to blade barrier and blessing of sanc, is converting as many white hits to RS hits as possible still a good idea, or are we having more RP starvation issues?
3) Scent of Blood is currently at 3/3 points 15% chance to gain 5RP per swing for 3 swings with a 10 sec ICD, anyone have some hard numbers as to just how much RP/S this is in practical MT situations. Is it the 1.5 RP/S it is on paper, or does it come out to be more/less?
4) Blood tanking; is it even considerable now that WotN has so many conditions?
5) With changes to armor pen, do the pre-3.1 stat weights hold true?

I know most people feel that RS is the only way to pull off single target TPS comperable to other classes, but as is with my current spec I've been able to more or less hold a comfortable gap between me and the dps on threat gen, at least in Naxx (being the only place I've MT'd since the patch).

If your focus is AE, then you want 3 full points in Wandering Plague for starters. Necrosis, Two Hand Specialization, and Blood Caked Blade are all single target threat increases. Epidemic and Virulence are far more likely to help AE threat as well as Bladed Armor and Black Ice. I'm guessing you're moving from a Frost spec because your glyphs make no sense for Unholy AE tanking.

Prior to 3.1, I used a 23/45/3 spec that allowed me to take VotTW from the blood tree at the cost of skipping Tundra Stalker and giving up 2 points in Anticipation. I really liked having the extra stamina and strength from VotTW, but with the Howling Blast move, I've had to rethink my spec. I'm currently using the Unholy spec that Suno posted, but I'm considering:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...6&version=9767

This 23/5/43 Unholy spec allows me to take VotTW at the cost of not being able to take IIT from Frost or Ebon Plaguebringer from Unholy. The build should be able to generate significant AoE DPS/threat from Unholy Blight and DnD (glyphed). I took 2 points in spell deflection for extra magic damage mitigation (I had to give up 1 point in Magic Supression and AMZ to put points in blood), but I'm not sure if I should put two points in Scent of Blood instead for more runic power; I keep RS macro'd so the extra runic power would get used with no additional effort.

I think VotTW is better than Rage of Rivendare given the extra stamina. The DPS/threat loss from IIT is small with my rotation (only 1 IT in the first half) but I don't like losing the 6% haste debuff.

I would use a 4 SS rotation with this build for single targets and open with DnD->IT->PS->PT->BT->BB for AoE.

I'd like to know what other people's thoughts are on the viability of this build. I'm planning to use either a minor variant of this build or the Unholy build that Suno posted for 10-man Ulduar.

A group of friends and I have been running ten mans with our alts, using my DK as a tank. We are a melee dps heavy group with no Shaman, unfortunately, so I was hoping to bring the haste buff. We have an unholy DK so those buffs are covered and I prefer to tank Frost anyway. Looking at the Frost specs people are posting, no one seems to be taking IIT and I see that Suno removed it from the OP. Is IIT still a viable tanking spec?

This is the build I currently have: Imp Icy Talons Build. IIT requires giving up 6 points, so I chose to lose Merciless Combat, Deathchill, and 1 point in CotG. I also lose being able to toss points into the Blood tree. I picked putting points in SoB and 2Handed Spec over BArmor because it seems everyone is in agreement that SoB is close to mandatory. I also read early in this thread that 2H Spec is better TPS per point than BArmor.

Will this build work or have I gimped my threat too much? I avoided losing any survival talents, but it is pointless if I live but can't keep threat. Is it worth it taking IIT for a raid buff or is it simply to great a cost? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

If you have no other means of haste at all it's a pretty good buff for your threat too, haste is more valuable for tanks (And frost especially) due to rune strike mechanics and killing machine. Without a shaman you definitely wanna fit it in.

Rune Strikes yes, for more frequent high threat attacks sure.

Killing Machine yes, the talent was changed to a proc per minute rate. Edited this point to reflect that PPM is calculated on base weapon speed, not hasted attack speed as per here and here.

Based on what I've read the last couple posts, maybe I'm missing out by not having IIT. I rarely run with a Shaman, so how valuable is this melee haste to me? I tried to make a build that has it but still kept the things I wanted, but I feel I have to sacrifice a lot to get these extra 6 points. Here is the build I came up with.

How does that compare to the previous build I had here?

Also, how about morbidity? I am still having a hard time figuring out if it would be necessary or not? Does anyone have any input on mistakes I might've made in my builds or improvements I can make? Am I wasting points with Runic Power Mastery? I was thinking that with all the rune and frost strikes I'd be doing, that I would want as much as possible, but maybe this is off base. Also, would I be better off for threat by adding IIT even though I am sacrificing Bladed Armor and 2H specialization or are there better talents I can sacrifice for this. Obviously, the raid utilitiy is to be considered as well as we usually don't have a Shaman. Thanks.


Edit: I may have found a build here with a good mix of the things I'm looking for. Here I got rid of Runic Power master and Epidemic to add IIT and 2 points into Morbidity. I am thinking a DnD every 20 seconds should cover every trash pull. Now, at the same time, this spec sacrifices both 2H Spec and Bladed Armor so that leaves me a little worried about threat, particularly on a single target. I may try this for a bit and see how my threat is looking.