A few frost questions - [Death Knight]

[Saggins]

I use a 2h Frost tanking build that goes into Improved Icy Talons for offtanking in my 10man and 25man raids as they both lack a dps Frost DK or Enhancement Shaman and are very heavy on melee. Believe me I understand the drawbacks to my spec but I would still like to make it as optimal as possible.

From testing variations with 1, 2 and 3 points in Scent of Blood I have deduced that 1 point is leaving me RP starved and 3 points is too much to the extent that I almost constantly have 3 stacks leaving some wasted; so 2/3 is just right. I would like to retain 51 points in Frost to keep Howling Blast and if possible, 8 points in Unholy for Morbidity.

This is my current Spec and Gear Setup.

1. My first question is what should I do with the 7 blood talents past blade barrier? They are all threat increasing talents but I am not sure in what exact order to prioritize them. 5/5 Bladed Armor would contribute to both aoe and single target threat generation as around 500 additional attack power and allow me to get the 2/3 points I want for Scent of Blood but at the cost of Two-Handed Weapon Specialization.

2. My second question is about glyphs. At the moment I use Obliterate, Frost Strike and Rune Strike. While I am sure FS and OB are great I'm not certain about RS. Though it does contribute a lot to my threat generation I would like your opinions as to whether Howling Blast or even Icy Touch would be better suited for my spec.

3. My final question pertains to Frost Strike as it no longer overrides avoidance making it inferior death coil in that regard. At what point should I sacrifice avoidance for expertise? As neither the 2set nor 4set for Tier 9 seem particularly appealing for Frost, I have been weighing all Colosseum content gear on stats alone and found most of them to be trades between avoidance, hit and expertise. Currently I'm just under 60% avoidance with Horn of Winter and taking Frigid Dreadplate into account.

Thank you, and if you have any other suggestions I'm all ears.

[Channing]

Well look at it two ways:
You aim for expertise cap over avoidance, and go more FS than RS.
Or you go more avoidance and RS more than you FS.
Will it make a huge difference?
Probably not. It's a matter of opinion. You're HB is a spell, so expertise doesn't apply. BB is a spell too. So it's more of a matter of Single Target vs. Group. Single target, where you're going to have less RS than FS, Expertise is more important. When you're just spamming your HB/BB/OB when CD is up on HB, Avoidance will save you and generate more RS you can have macrod to use while you spam.

[Saggins]

Sweet, thanks for the response.

[Shaggai]

Have you considered using Glyph of Howling blast. it will put Frost fever on all the targets, reducing the attack speed of all of the mobs you hit by 20%, That is a lot of mitigation. You could replace the FS glyph. Just a thought.