[Kazeyonoma]

No one is "Crapping on opinions". Don't get defensive. This website is founded on the pursuit of factual knowledge and spreading the correct information out to the tanking world. Opinions are important because they incite new thought processes and everyone has them. Giving one isn't a bad thing. Giving one, and stating it as fact is bad because it spreads possible misinformation, the very opposite of what we try to do here. So please, watch the attitude just because Satorri was making an addendum to your reply. If you want quick 1 sentence answers go to the wow forums where they are abundant and you'll get steered the wrong way. If you want indepth information, stick around, you'll learn something, I guarantee it.

[Tonytony]

so everything i type has to have a long list of spreadsheet data attached to it?

he wanted tips. i said frost works very well. i gave him a rotation for AoE, told him that howling blast glyph is required for it.

if there's anything non-factual about that i'd love for you to point it out

[Tonytony]

also:

i'm sorry for being confrontational. it did look like he was attacking me for giving my opinion, which i saw no cause for since the OP didn't ask "i need the best AoE spec with data and testing to back it up". he was asking for advice, which i gave, which seemed to be helpful.

and one would think being helpful is the main goal here

[Kazeyonoma]

yes, you were being helpful, but so was satorri, he wasn't attacking you, he was giving backup to your statements. You don't need to blow people away with math everytime they ask for advice, but helping the OP understand why will get him farther than just say "press this and that and profits". Your advice was sound, I can't argue with it because I don't play a DK, but it seems to have worked, no one is taking away your "advice" from him. But relax on the attitude, we're not here to attack you or anyone else, Satorri is a detailed oriented guy, and he's doing the whole "teach a man to fish..." thing, which is promoted here. Doesn't mean "giving a man a fish..." isn't appreciated as well.

[Pwnanapuddin]

I will say it again here. One of the most valuable gear upgrades a DK can make is to a better weapon. In all tiers of gear. Moving up to a better weapon is one of the best time proven ways for a DK to help their threat.

The reg ToC Edge of Ruin is a good choice if you do not have better. Ulduar 10 and 25 offer a plethora of good choices of a tanking weapon.

Also as a DK make sure you are checking your stat levels. Early on you need to make sure you are at least soft hit capped, you need expertise around 26 regardless of spec. This will all help your chances to get hits on a large group of mobs.

[Theotherone]

The nerf to Unholy Blight has been a huge disservice to DK's tanking as Unholy. It's made Unholy kind of a tweener - it's not quite as good as Blood for single target and it's not quite as good a Frost for AoE.

You really need to make DnD your friend and use it on every pull, then put a disease on, spread it and BB. It will take some time, but you'll get the hang of it.

As for Tonytony; he's a resto pally that's put some time into Naxx 10, a few bosses in Uld and some OS - not really a tank resume.

[Bovinity]

He looks like a shaman, actually. But really, that's the second time today I've seen you armory someone in an attempt to discount them, what's with that?

[Theotherone]

Source: Bovinity He looks like a shaman, actually. But really, that's the second time today I've seen you armory someone in an attempt to discount them, what's with that?

Meant Shaman.

What's with that? It's nothing bad, it's just that if someone is going to give advice they should at least have some experience about that with which they presume to speak. I'm more inclined to take the advice of someone like, say Satorri, who has toons that have seen and tanked the content, then someone who just spouts off. In other words, e.g. "don't tell me how to tank The Twins, if you haven't actually done the fight".

It's a credibility thing.

[Insahnity]

I've always agreed with Satorri, he's never steered anybody wrong as far as I have seen, and is exemplar on how to give advice the proper way.

Every DK spec is viable for tanking if you take the appropriate talents (look up Satorri's posts, he has covered it well repeatedly). Saying one is better than the other is not accurate, it isn't as cut and dry as comparing a raiding Frost Mages with a raiding FB/FFB+TotW or Arcane mage.

Unholy DKs have the AoE advantage in the long run, frost DKs have it easier to gain snap aggro, and Blood DKs are not too shabby with BloodBoil improvements.

Having said that, here are the rotations for each spec:
Unholy
DnD->IT->PS->Pestilence (triggers blade barrier) ->Rune Power Usage (Corpse explosion is preferable, if specced). Nobody should out-threat you after corpse-explosion, but being fast enough is a bit of an issue.

Frost
A few options here. With any Frost rotation, always HB whenever Rime procs over all else, extra goodness if Killing machine is available.

My standard one
(Death Chill if you have it)->HB->BB->BB (triggers blade barrier)->Rune Power usage

If you need to catch wandering mobs, like whelps in Ony
DnD->(Death Chill if you have it)->HB->BB (triggers blade barrier)->Rune Power Usage

You can try a 2 disease AoE rotation, but it does leave an odd Frost Rune up on the first round. You could use it for Unbreakable Armor for extra mitigation and strenth, so it would look like :
(Death Chill if you have it)->HB->UA->PS->Pestilence->BB->Rune Power Usage.
The resulting Death Rune from Pestilence could be then used in a HB in next round as follows, but it becomes a less than tight sequence.

Blood
IT->PS->Pestilence->BB->Deathstrike or Obliterate to get Death Rune Mastery going, allowing more heartstrike in the next set

If you need to catch wondering mobs like whelps in Ony, follow the unholy rotation.

[derangedhermit]

Source: Pwnanapuddin The reg ToC Edge of Ruin is a good choice if you do not have better. Ulduar 10 and 25 offer a plethora of good choices of a tanking weapon.

Edge is from ToC heroic, not regular.

But do people really consider it a good tanking weapon? For example, compared to the Titansteel Destroyer?

[Ulosthegame]

Source: derangedhermit Edge is from ToC heroic, not regular. But do people really consider it a good tanking weapon? For example, compared to the Titansteel Destroyer?

I'd personally take Marrowstrike over Edge of Ruin, Marrow has more stamina when gemmed, and the agility adds not only dodge, but armor.
but, if you can, try to pick up Reckoning, or Fordragon Blade. I'm currently using Justicebringer, because 185 stam is pretty hot, but I'd gladly switch to a relentless axe or pike for the extra 45 stamina, because I don't need the threat stats right now.

I feel EoR just doesn't pack enough stamina to be worth it.

[swelt]

Weapon certainly is a big deal. When the OP made this post, he was using a lvl 78 green 2 hander 'of the champion' because it gave him the defence he needed to be uncrittable. That was a lot of the root of the problems in this thread, although the rest of the (unenchanted) gear doesn't help.

I certainly think that having access to arena weapons makes a DKs life much easier. I do two things on my dk alt - arena and tanking (...well three things, gathering). The latter would be a lot more hassle if I didn't have access to a high stam, high damage weapon without having to compete with others for drops.

[Satorri]

On weapons, I've been sadly hording points for the 2h sword to finally drop off Ony again. It dropped the first week and went to a Retadin (who faction switched two days later >.<). It hasn't dropped in the month or so since (how long has Ony been out?). I'm looking forward to taking that step up.

As for Unholy and Unholy Blight, I don't think it was a disservice, just a (needed, actually) shift to ease their aoe threat and boost their single target tools a bit. Unholy used to be laugh out loud easy AoE-threat. In Naxx I could drop DnD, spread diseases, then hit UB and just stand there and nothing would come off me, and I would pull threat on everything off our protadin. It was a little too powerful, though I surely wasn't complaining, nor were my dps for aoe pulls.

The new Unholy Blight opens up some doors few people have explored, and no one has been talking about here that I can find. I set up a spec designed to really abuse Unholy Blight, and I tested it through ToC25 to great effect.

Normally I'm Blood and back in Ulduar I did some blind testing with my healers to gauge how the two spec felt from their end. The big thing they noticed was that it 'felt' like I was taking more damage, but they didn't know why, until I explained that I had swapped to Frost. Comparing that reaction to parses, I actually tool significantly less damage as Frost (only ~3k avg incoming dps, whereas Blood was around 3.6k in the same gear) but the self-healing the way I use it made it appear as if I was taking much less damage (time-scale corrected, it averaged about 1200 hps).

So, I did a similar test with Unholy. One of my healers noticed my slightly lower health total, but I brushed it off as missing a buff. Otherwise, no one noticed the difference (even though I'd forgotten how much a chore it was to keep Bone Shield up, worse now because of the 1 min duration). So on the survival side it was a nice affirmation.

For threat, I really went to extremes, maybe not the best net effect I could get, but it actually worked out surprisingly well. I glyphed Bone Shield, of course, but I then glyphed Death Coil and Unholy Blight. I made a special gear set that traded a bit of health and amped up my avoidance by a lot (at the time, went from about 48k health to 44k health, and picked up from ~64% avoidance to 69% avoidance, roughly, and shifted some of that avoidance from miss to dodge/parry). With this build I actually had a lot more RS, which I'd expected from testing, but I used SoB and Dirge to try and over-produce RP. The threat method I used on group pulls was easy enough to actually just spread diseases and DnD would do most of the work, which I'd patch up with BB (after BS'ing the Desolation buff up), and target switching to patch up individual threat as needed. For single targets however, I had a simple method of applying diseases and ScS/BS'ing as usual, but I made sure to DC frequently enough to never let Unholy Blight fall off (it has a particular way of stacking). On several fights in ToC25 I discovered there were delightful pools of spell damage that I could soak up with AMS and spam DC. The end result was I had fights where I got Unholy Blight ticking for upwards of 2k (ticks 1 per sec). It was great fun. It doesn't diminish the fact that I prefer Blood for the style, and Unholy, honestly, is a harder spec to play by a good margin, for complexity sake. My spec only made that a step more difficult, but it is a powerhouse little design.

[Ollin]

I'm going to hop in here for something...

On rotations...don't tell people to start with DnD when you make a rotation list. I can't count the number of people I've seen try to tank as a DK and fail to figure out how to use DnD's range. They tend to use it like consecrate when they lead off with it and pretend they're a paladin.

This is an incredibly inefficient way to start a pull.

I've always told people to tank as DKs to go IT->PS->DnD->Pest. This gives them time to think about what they're doing, and helps form a good habit: not thinking of themselves as an "evil paladin", but rather as a Deathknight. The end-result is that they won't pre-drop DnD and waste 2-3 ticks either because the mobs are running into the AoE the DK dropped on themselves, or because they drop DnD on the mobs while standing 20-yards away and miss ticks running the mobs back into the AoE.

Dropping DnD first onto the mob pack as they run into the pack will come naturally as they get more comfortable with the class and begin to appreciate it for what it is: a unique class, rather than a paladin variant.

Either that or please remember to explain how a rotation is supposed to work rather than just listing it. They can be quite different from spec to spec.

"DnD->IT->PS->pest->bb->PS->stuff...->loot" only tells so much of the story and is sorely lacking in detail that will be extremely useful to someone who doesn't understand how DKs work.

[Ulosthegame]

Source: Ollin I'm going to hop in here for something... On rotations...don't tell people to start with DnD when you make a rotation list. I can't count the number of people I've seen try to tank as a DK and fail to figure out how to use DnD's range. They tend to use it like consecrate when they lead off with it and pretend they're a paladin. This is an incredibly inefficient way to start a pull. I've always told people to tank as DKs to go IT->PS->DnD->Pest. This gives them time to think about what they're doing, and helps form a good habit: not thinking of themselves as an "evil paladin", but rather as a Deathknight. The end-result is that they won't pre-drop DnD and waste 2-3 ticks either because the mobs are running into the AoE the DK dropped on themselves, or because they drop DnD on the mobs while standing 20-yards away and miss ticks running the mobs back into the AoE. Dropping DnD first onto the mob pack as they run into the pack will come naturally as they get more comfortable with the class and begin to appreciate it for what it is: a unique class, rather than a paladin variant. Either that or please remember to explain how a rotation is supposed to work rather than just listing it. They can be quite different from spec to spec. "DnD->IT->PS->pest->bb->PS->stuff...->loot" only tells so much of the story and is sorely lacking in detail that will be extremely useful to someone who doesn't understand how DKs work.

I can see what you're saying, but 2-3 ticks of DnD aren't really worth it with hair trigger dps. such as, I'm going to DG or silence the caster, drop DnD on myself, IT the Skull/main target and start my normal rotation on them. that way, it's ticking as they run in and there's not any margin for say...a warlock to pull something as it's running over.

Edit- by dropping DnD on myself, I mean dropping it so I'm right at the edge, with the main body more towards the mobs.

[JokerFMJ]

Source: Ulosthegame I can see what you're saying, but 2-3 ticks of DnD aren't really worth it with hair trigger dps. such as, I'm going to DG or silence the caster, drop DnD on myself, IT the Skull/main target and start my normal rotation on them. that way, it's ticking as they run in and there's not any margin for say...a warlock to pull something as it's running over. Edit- by dropping DnD on myself, I mean dropping it so I'm right at the edge, with the main body more towards the mobs.

I agree with that. If people are having aggro problems it's not going to be on their main target, it's going to be on other targets that DPS are targetting or AoEing. By the time you get IT > PS and can cast DnD I believe that's going to be 2-3 seconds, and that is enough to make it a messy pull with jump-the-gun DPS.