Blood/Unholy Tank spec, Opinions needed.

[Acies]

Hello everyone, I've been a Tankspot lurker for quite a while and finally decided to register and begin posting.

I'm a death knight tank.. as the title would suggest, and the other night I came up with a (sorta wonky) blood/unholy spec

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I haven't had many opinions on it thus far, but to me it seems like it'd have some good raid utilities (abom's might, unholy aura) as well as great single and multi target threat. I know it doesn't follow the standard 5/5/5 starting point for DK tank specs, but toughness seems < aboms might and mark of blood to me.
I plan to try this build out either tonight or in the next day or so.

Any feedback, comments, suggestions, whatever are appreciated.. if it's just plain bad let me know XD
*feel free to armory Acies, he's on dalvengyr US if you need an idea of my gear and if i could pull this spec off*

[Satorri]

There are a few points I'd pick on:

1.) Toughness. Don't leave home without it, it's multiplicative with Frost Presence and worth a LOT of armor (~3.5k for me).

2.) Imp IT is very very valuable for survival, unless you're expecting to have a warrior with Imp Tclap keeping the debuff up. DK's can do it better though, and the boost to IT damage is very nice for your threat.

3.) Mark of Blood and Vet of the 3rd War are great talents for tanking, and they can make your tanking gear look even sexier, but you always have to beware of getting into Blood just for those buffs as they tend to provide less in the balance than you lose from other trees, though it's a survival buff and you're losing threat from the other tree, that's usually why people do it.

4.) The interesting thing is that your spec is otherwise about 90% threat in the threat/survival balance, so if anything I'd expect you have heavy single target threat, somewhat weak aoe threat, and would be rather low survival on the scale, though you may notice it less with your gear depending on what you're tanking.

5.) Necrosis and BcB make for a very vicious compounding dmg, but it also increases your vulnerability with dmg taken from parries (Blood-caked strikes are parriable). Again, it may not be a big deal, and you won't see it in 5-mans ever really, but raid bosses will hurt you more.


I think the big weakness of the spec is simply that it doesn't support a concise focus or easy rotation. How do you play it?

[Acies]

I gave this spec a go and I must say I'm a bit disappointed, the threat's great, but it's lacking some really key talents. Blood / unholy seems much more fit to dps than tanking.
Thanks for reading my post those that did, thank you satorri for responding, i wanted to see what tankspot would make of a rather unconventional tanking build.
I'll be returning to a more traditional unholy build.

With that said I'd have to disagree on taking imp icy touch, with a glyphed scourge strike that just seems like a big waste of 3 points as I won't be casting IT often at all.
Maybe I'm wrong, I'm still new to this DK tanking business and I think presenting new / creative (odd) tanking builds keeps it interesting

[Urrick]

Imp Icy Touch helps with both threat and survival. I always have it because I have no idea if I'll run with a warrior to TC or feral druid for IW.

I'm a fan of trying other interesting specs so I can understand the draw to trying something different. I did a 30/34/7 spec for a while that I really liked.

[Inaara]

I tend to lean towards 5/8/5 being the required start to any DK tanking tree as opposed to 5/5/5 as you cannot rely on having a prot warrior to TC. It becomes even more important in a situation like OS3D where you are the only tank on the mob. The slow effect is absolutely required.

[Feanorr]

It becomes even more important in a situation like OS3D where you are the only tank on the mob. The slow effect is absolutely required.

Even if I always prefer to get improved Icy Touch in my specs, I dont agree there; sartharion is dangerous because of the adds and his breath not because of his swings.

[Satorri]

Imp IT, whether or not you use IT often (though I like it for the boost to your initial threat, since that's where we are weakest), is an 8% de-hasting on your Frost Fever.

That is a major survival buff not to be under-estimated. Whether you're optimizing boss dmg reduction, or de-hasting ALL the pulls in your trash pull. As unholy I won't tank without it, in fact I tank with a prot warrior and he counts on me to apply the full de-hasting since I can do it more easily, and with more reliable uptime (and I am the one responsible for aoe threat anyway, allowing him to focus more heavily on main target threat).