For blood build, there's no need for 3/3 Morbidity as 2/3 lines up nicely with rune cooldowns and with diseases with 2/2 Epidemic.
As blood you really can't not take WotN - no matter what it still is effective health.
Regarding Rune Tap, even if you need it, you don't need to glyph it.
This is my take on blood tanking build, 52/8/11. For 3rd glyph perhaps DS or IT. And then maybe change to 2/3 Scent of Blood and 1/3 Subversion.

Hi, does anyone have (or can point me at) a tanking weight scale for the 3 talent trees? I have a basic one for Frost Tanking from WoWHead, but i'd be interested to see what someone who is far better at number crunching than I am has come up with.

I simulated each of the three trees to work out threat weightings for each stat, if that's what you mean. Updated just last night (and again now I've done the bonus attack power correctly).

However, for survival and mitigation I do not have a ranking. Rawr does have a fairly advanced one which you can tune and generates equipment lists.

As I recall, a single roll attack table is used. As such, Frigid Dreadplate would only take away chances to be hit and not affect your dodge or parry percentages, meaning the same exact number of Rune Strike procs and no lost threat.

I'm basing this on: Attack table - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

I'm curious what has changed for this to be true. When the great SS nerf of 3.2 arrived, my threat went into the toilet as Unholy. The only thing that's changed recently is more examination of DnD rotations that used even on single target tanking. 3.2.2 itself hasn't done anything to change the threat generation of UH except for the Subversion change, but by most accounts, that's not a huge change for tanking and still rarely taken.

The question was more, if it was a priority to keep hit cap or not. I know there are plenty of comprimisations I can make in other areas

After removing 1 point from Morbidity, should I 2/3 Scent of Blood, 2/3 Subversion and 2/3 Sudden Death? Or is there another way that you think is more optimal?

I had a major mistake in my use of the sim. I've gone back edited old comments which had incorrect data, to prevent future readers from some confusion, I had a hugely overinflated attack power. This meant wandering plague got boosted (due to attack power being high).

I've redone the sims in an even more comprehensive fashion now, and with correct AP.

They're showing two-handed spec is better than scent of blood. Intuitively that seems wrong but I'll let you consider the data, and see if it's a limitation of the sim or its parameters or perhaps if its true.

I tested some specs at 45/50/55% avoidance in the sim, plus with and without raid buffs.

The highest threat result was this spec, which has 2/2 two-handed and zero SoB. That said, when raid buffed, it was only 2.7% ahead on threat.

Also I found the highest threat talents you might consider moving around are:
1. two-handed spec (+1.3% TPS per talent point)
2. wandering plague (1.1% per)
3. BCB (1.0% per)

You can download a full tabulated list of results at each avoidance level and other specs I tried xlsx or google.

Seems like they really are trying to make 2x1h specs viable. I'm guessing RotSS would be about 12 defence and 1% stamina on each weapon?

Perhaps we could explore the potential for a threat based tanking build aiming for the parry cap (yes, a few dk tanks - myself included are very close to it, while remaining hit capped, while gemming for sta, but taking a slight hit on avoidance) while DW'ing and see if ToT Rune Strikes could/would come out as a dominant tanking spec. The downfall of no slow 2h tanking weapons is relatively significant, but we can use 2 slow 1h dps weapons with the new 1h ssg and that would not only add some more 'umph' to it, but it would still largely be on par with 2h weapons we use for tanking (excusing stamina).

Would the dodge and raw armor from agility on 1h out perform the parry and effective health 2h weapons provide?

Personally, my problem with the DW tanking certainly isn't the stats, especially not with this news. It's the extra points you somehow need to get from somewhere (6 if you want both talents). Usually from Bladed armour/scent of blood/Killing Machine/Black ice, so you'd need to do enough threat to outweigh the loss of those points first. And those are some tough decisions.

No Imp Frost Presence or UBA? Seems like unless you had a huge threat gain all it would be would be survivability losses. You'd probably still need to cut SoB or something and snag em both.

Nevermind, i mis-read this page the first time i read it a few months back.

As unholy builds are being testing, is a 2/2 epidemic, 1/2 epidemic, or a 0/0 epidemic proving to be the stronger single target build? Reading over some posts it would seem like a 0/0; however, gravity is not testing DND rotations, due to play style and it's limitation on some bosses.

Has anyone done in game testing, math, or sim's to get a clear idea? My sim is not giving a way clear answer tbh :/.

Unless the definition of "single roll" has drastically changed since the last time I used it in a sentence, and/or I have been misunderstanding the combat table for 20 levels and 3 characters now, all increasing your miss percentage will do is push everything on the table down by the relevant amount. "Hit/miss" is not a separate calculation from "dodge/parry". You will still dodge/parry exactly as many attacks as you did before, unless you somehow--ignoring the impossibility of this--manage to accrue enough miss to push dodge/parry off the table.

According to the spell data, it is equivalent to RotSS (25 def, 2% stam). I don't know yet if you can apply it to both 1h weapons, though.

I'd imagine you absolutely can't. 50 undiminished defense skill + 4% stam is JUST a bit much for a pair of enchants.

I'd agree. It looks like a LOT of items/spells/etc on the PTR are currently set to placeholders, so I'd look for that to be changed fairly rapidly.

For completeness I have now done a DnD sim. I've not researched much into its optimal settings, so please let me know if something should be different.

Using the settings I had, it does less single-target threat than the alternatives I tested earlier.

Note that the legendary Kahorie developers have mentioned that builds without epidemic are a little problematic to sim, so we may need to re-sim once they've tuned the code. That said, we know "no reaping" is good, but exactly the benefit of epidemic is inconclusive. Personally, I am favouring including it just so AOE is easier instead of the marginal gain from ravenous dead.

That said, DnD glyphed with 2/2 epidemic, single-target, same settings as earlier.

• no epidemic, ravenous dead: 1717 dps / 4299 tps
• with epidemic: 1726 / 4280

My rotation and character xml files can be downloaded here.

Comparison to Blood
I put a fairly average MT blood spec in, used the same settings and results are:

• spec 1767 dps / 4161 tps (hysteria not used on self)
• spec for threat 1794 / 4176 unbuffed, or 1892 / 4406 with +10% AP from raid (not a spec I'd actually use, it's stupid, but did it for testing purposes)

Result is about the same threat as the unholy builds.
But, blood scales well with raid buffs... testing that now with armor major, 10% stat, % attack power, stat add, melee crit.

• typical spec: 2232 / 5269
• threat: 2259 / 5272

Again, interestingly, this is about the same TPS as the unholy builds when they were buffed.

Edit: had linked wrong specs.

After a quick test, the spell itself only applies 13 defense and what I assume to be 1% stamina. Tooltip still reads the same as SSG though.

Entirely reasonable. I suspect that while they're not "supporting" DW tanking as the vision for the class, 2x slow DW with those enchants (DPS weapons) will be respectable and what they're aiming this enchant at. I don't think a net 2 def skill swing from DW to 2H makes DW the new mandatory tanking method.

Two tank-oriented 1hers plus this runeforge in frost spec is going to quite high avoidance. Alternatively it means the slow DPS 1hers will be viable, which should result in a very high threat tank spec.

DW two fast tanking weapons: Lower threat, higher avoidance, loss of utility or threat talents (to use NervesOCS and ThreatOTT).

DW two slow DPS weapons: Higher threat, base avoidance, loss of utility or threat talents.

2H DPS weapon: Base threat, base avoidance, base utility or threat talents.