Let's take a minute and analyze talent by talent a spec I think has some potantial in the next push to be a great tanking spec.

BLOOD

Blade Barrier (5/5): After your initial 6 runes go on cooldown and proc this, every rune thereafter is considered your last rune as long as you use it before the next rune comes up. What this means is that once you get your rotation going Blade Barrier has a near 100% uptime. 10% parry is amazing for tanking. This talent is a must have.

FROST

Improved Icy Touch (3/3): More damage to a core rotational ability, more speed reduction on Frost fever, and required for Icy Talons. Need I say more?

Glacier Rot (2/2): Everything you fight should have at least Frost Fever on it, so a 10% damage increase to your core Frost abilities for 2 points is a great investment.

Toughness (5/5): 15% armor. Standard tanking talent. Grab this.

Black Ice (5/5): 10% damage to all of your core Frost abilities, and your disease damage. Not much better at this point to spend points on.

Icy Talons (5/5): Icy Touch should be in your rotation, so this is like a permanent 15% haste buff. This will lead to more threat, and more Killing Machine procs.

Lichborne (1/1): 25% miss, and fear immunity for 30 seconds when you need it. Great burst mitigation talent.

Annihilation (3/3): If you use Obliterate in your rotation, which you probably should, this should ensure that in most cases your Frost Fever stays on the target. Even if it doesn't, Obliterate should be at the end of your rotation anyways. 3% crit on specials is nice as well.

Runic Power Mastery (3/3): Extra Frost Strike damage, extra Hungering Cold freeze duration, and extra mitigation on Icebound Fortitude all in one talent? Definitely a good pick.

Killing Machine (5/5): With Frost Strike replacing Death Coil in a Frost rotation those melee crits are going to be fueling Frost Strike crits, which mitigate armor already. This will really make your Frost Strike a heavy hitter. Also helps for a crit Howling Blast when Deathchill is on cooldown.

Deathchill (1/1): Free crit Howling Blast, Frost Strike, Obliterate, whatever you need at the time. This should help burst threat. Crit a Howling Blast on a fresh pack of mobs, or crit a melee special on a boss in your first rotation to bump up your initial threat.

Merciless Combat (2/2): 60% extra damage on Frost for the end of a fight. This should  cover the same abilities that Deathchill does meaning your rotation has 3 abilities doing 60% more damage at the end of the fight.

Howling Blast (1/1): Amazing AOE threat and damage ability. One point investment, and your instance buddies will love you.

Frost Aura (2/2): Two points for 6% more HP. I'm not so sure about the Frost Resistance, but we don't know what the raid bosses are going to be like yet. I would imagine in a cold themed expansion quite a few things will throw frost damage your way.

Blood of the North (5/5): This allows for a lot more liberal rotations. Your second round could have two Obliterates which should be subatantially more damage and threat than the Blood Strikes the extra Obliterate replaces.

Unbreakable Armor (3/3): Ghostcrawler has stated this ability will function as an on-use burst mitigation ability. It will be off the GCD as well. I'm not sure if it will still be 3 talent points, but an off the GCD burst mitigation ability is something I don't want to pass up.

Acclimation (3/3): Death Knights are supposed to be proficient at tanking spellcasters or bosses that deal spell damage heavily. If anything in the fight is resistable, this should help you and your party quite a bit.

Frost Strike (1/1): Hits harder than Death Coil, has many talents in the Frost tree that will amplify its damage, and it is a melee swing that ignores armor. This is a must have, and will replace Death Coil as the Runic Power dump at the end of a rotation.

Guile of Gorefiend (3/3): Massive critical strike damage buff to three abilities you will use in nearly every rotation, and an extra 6 seconds ever minute on Icebound Fortitude assuming you use it on cooldown. This is a 50% increase to the potency of Icebound Fortitude. Way too good to pass this up.

Tundra Stalker (5/5): 10% damage increase to Frost Fevered targets. Since we'll likely use Icy Touch every rotation this could be considered a flat 10% damage increase.

Hungering Cold (1/1): Spreads Frost Fever now. An amazing mitigation tool in a 5-man, or on trash to apply Frost Fever quickly, and synergizes amazingly with Howling Blast for AOE threat.

UNHOLY

Anticipation (5/5): 5% passive dodge. Need I say more?

Unholy Command (2/2): Reduced cooldown on both of the Death Knight taunt abilities. This should help immensly on any trash and 5-man packs, but also on any "taunt rotation" oriented fight.

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So with these talents in mind let's talk about what your rotation on a boss might be like.

U - Unholy Rune
B - Blood Rune
F - Frost Rune
D - Death Rune (Universal Rune)
R - Runic Power

Rotation 1:
1F - Icy Touch - Applies Frost Fever
1U - Plague Strike - Applies Blood Plague
1B - Blood Strike - Bonus Damage for 2 diseases - Creates 1D
1B - Blood Strike - Bonus Damage for 2 diseases - Creates 1D
1U1F - Obliterate - Bonus Damage for 2 diseases
50R - Frost Strike

Rotation 2:
1F - Icy Touch - Applies Frost Fever
1U - Plague Strike - Applies Blood Plague
2D - Obliterate - Bonus Damage for 2 diseases
1U1F - Obliterate - Bonus Damage for 2 diseases
50R - Frost Strike

You would rotate between 1 and 2 for maximum threat. I am not sure if the Frost Fever and Blood Plague will persist through two sets of rune cooldowns, but if they did you  could possibly use 3 Obliterates in the second rotation.

This rotation can be sustained indefinitely with the exception of perhaps you might not have enough Runic Power to Frost Strike every rotation. What this means is that you can be a static threat machine at any level of content without worrying about being rage starved nbecause you don't get hit hard enough, or running out of mana because the fight took too long and you didn't need that much healing. All of our abilities scale off of Attack Power, and our Parry scales off of our Strength, so as our tanking gear gets better (STR goes up) our threat will scale with that.

I think with this talent setup you have the best setup for raid tanking, and you'd do pretty darn good in a 5-man instance as well. It will be interesting to see when these changes push to the beta realms how much improved our tanking will be.

- Myrx (Mayong) -