DK tank that would appreciate some advice

Hello. Recently i have taken up off spec DK Blood tanking since i have gotten many pieces of gear from our main tanks not needing them. I tank heroics fine but have never tanked a raid. the only reason i havent done a raid is because i feel like my stam pool is low, but at the same time i am unsure if my hit and expertise are where they should be. Basically im asking on some advice on gemming/enchanting and what gear i should be looking for next. i am comfortable with spending frost emblems on gear being that i am a main DPS in my guild.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...%C3%A9%C3%A0th
i just recently got my cloak so i havent had time to enchant it yet.
thank you

First and formost, try to stear clear of gemming expertise. As you start picking up more and more Frost gear this will take care of itself. I try to stack +30 Stams like a fiend. If you want to seriously gem up, dump the enchanting for JC and pick up the +51 stams ( you can pack up to 3). I also tank in blood and absolutely love it. Feel free to look at my spec sheet on wowarmory or wow-heroes if it helps you out. The biggest problem i seem to have is pugging pally rangers and their insistance that they can tank better.

A few pointers: [And i've geared my dk from scrach to ICC 10 MT not that long ago, so I kinda remember :P]

Don't worry for hit/exp at all. It'll take care of itself, spacially when you hit the ICC gear, it's just full of hit. Both are pure threat talents, and you should have no threat problems at all. [Well, exp also goes for surviving, helping to decreese boss's parry, aka swing reset, but in ICC it's felt even less then in other places as most of them don't reset their swings.]
If you're main DPS in the guild and money isn't a problem, you should check and get yourself crafted legs/boots. Shouldn't be much of a problem for a dk, just keep an eye on your defance rating, since those crafted items don't have any [compromising it with higher avoidance stats then the drop ones].
To make a short story even shorter - gem Stam. Always, in all sockets. I disagree about JC btw, even tho I am a JC... Ench gives you 60 stamina from ring enchants, just use that. JC is 6 stamina more from the bonus, but that's like telling you to change your race to tauren [5% more hp racial] - theoreticly true, but I don't think it's worth the effort. If to take things to the extream, best combo would be LW/JC.

Use stamina trinkets. 1st thing to buy with frosts would prolly be the skeleton key. Another good trinket for tanking is the ToC 25 [hc? if your guild still does that, which I doubt many still do...], or to simplify things - the black heart [Toc 5 normal, last boss]. Yea, I find it better then those 170 stam trinkets, being 1) Easy to farm and 2) Giving shitloads of armor, but if you do happen to have those bubbling cups of beer - they're acceptable too.

Also, alot of the DK stuff has improved armor. Altho it's minor, try to get those upgrades 1st, as usually upgrades give the same amount of upgrade for each peice, while the armor bonus is spacial only to those pieces.

Ok to, hopefully not confuse but, to give another viewpoint on this...

I an Unholy DK tank that is MT ICC 10 man content - I've missed a single socket bonus (on the T10 gloves) but always try to get them when they are +9 sta or higher. I've gemmed, and I know this will invite much debate, as a priority for stamina as you'd expect but also for both hit and expertise which means that at present I'm over the expertise soft - cap and on the melee hit cap.

Now many people will argue that an Unholy DK is the most squishy of the 3 possible DK tank choices and would therefore opt for a full +sta gemming strategy but as I said I'm MT ICC content and still alive...

As for your concerns over just how big your health pool needs to be; I started OT in ICC 10mans and was walking through the doors at around 32k -> 33k unbuffed. At present I'm at 40k unbuffed so with standard 10 man buff I normally sit around 50 -> 52k.

I'll also mention that I did not opt for JC but instead went down the Mining and Blacksmithing path which is a fairly easy way to get a +1200hp boost.

For quick health pool gains I agree that the EoF Skeleton Key trinket and the Black Heart from ToC normal are solid options. The Skeleton Key has a nice emergency on-use function as well so although I've seen some criticism over it as a choice for 60 EoFs I had no problems dropping the tokens for it.

I do concur that you will collect both hit and expertise stats from ICC as you progess through the content; if you want a quick boost to your expertise you could consider the off-tier i245 head item - after that get into ICC, drop Deathbringer Saurfang and pray for the Axe.

Thanks for the help. Luckily I have both bubbling trinks and the black heart (I would be on the wow version of hoarders if it existed). Imma go gem for straight stam and get rid of my boots with ones I got in one of the icc 5 man heroics. The only reason I was keeping the 200 boots was for the expertise.

Also I was thinking of minning all the materials needed to lvl jc and then drop minning. I know this will probably take some time.

Pretty much what everyone has said. if you're worried about expertise try frost tanking (tundra stalker talent maxed= 5 expertise) and race change to orc (granted the undead racial is awesome in heroics i.e. UP near the end with all that damn fearing). and an added bonus to frost is the AOE threat in heroics. Still looking for expertise? try gemming the 10exp +15 stam purple gem in a good socket bonus. For me I'm more concerned with Hit (for threat generation)considering most of a frost dk's attacks are considered spells which cant be dodged or parried and to help reduce taunt misses. I bring my own +hit food.
As for trinkets i went with the black heart and the skeleton key, professions i went with BS and JC. 2 extra sockets and the JC stam gems.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...cn=Theuglieone
both frost specs are greeat icc specs. the 13/52/6 is my genereal spec, and 12/54/5 is my interrupter spec which is great for LDW and her damn frost bolts.

One more thing I just noticed in my thread. I meant to say I'm NOT comfortable with using frost emblems to buy tank gear because I am still using them towards my dps set still. The key trink is one hell of a piece but I'm not sure its worth skipping out on a dps piece. I would also want to know of some rings I should be chasing. thanx again

well the tank rings that drop from ICC when your tanks dont need them for starters. Well since you're not comfortable spend frosties on tank gear (i have yet to buy any frosty dps gear) that changes everything. basically all you can do is just take what drops from ICC that your tanks dont need. You could also get some ppl together to run toc10 or 25 when you're not in ICC. i would upgrade your hands to the T9 hands and upgrade your helm and shoulders to the 245 triumph vendor ones. there's also belt and boot upgrades for you in ToC10.