It's been a while since my last blog post. I have, however, been pretty busy. I have tanked every 5 man and most of the Heroic dungeons. I have also Main Tanked a few Naxx 10 runs, a CoA 10, off-tanked a Naxx 25, and a CoA 25. I have been a few variations of Unholy, and Frost throughout this.

The sum of my experiences is that I enjoy boss tanking as Frost more than any other spec. I'll link my proposed spec and Glyphs.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Pestilence - Minor - Increases the radius of your Pestilence effect by 5 yards.
• Glyph of Blood Tap - Minor - Your Blood Tap no longer causes damage to you.
• Glyph of Horn of Winter - Minor - Horn of Winter costs 10 less runic power.
• Glyph of Unbreakable Armor - Major - Unbreakable Armor grants an additional 5% parry chance but no longer increases your Strength.
• Glyph of Dark Command - Major - Increases the chance for your Dark Command ability to work successfully by 8%.
• Glyph of Death Strike - Major - Your Death Strike's damage and healing increase by 2% for every 5 runic power you currently have. The runic power is not consumed by this effect.

When I have enough hit to make Glyph of Dark Command unneeded I will replace it with likely an Obliterate Glyph.

Talents

Spec: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=0350000000000000000000000003...

I chose this spec because I think Lichborne, Acclimation, Unbreakable Armor, Frost Aura, and Frigid Dreadplate make the best tanking package. I chose Hungering Cold over Deathchill because I feel that Hungering Cold can be useful for mitigation on AOE packs especially if you're the only one doing damage to most of them.

If you are wondering why I did not pick up Icy Talons and Improved Icy Talons it is because currently they are extremely over budget, and I feel that with a tanking spec I need my points to count. It is over budget because Icy Talons does NOT stack with Windfury/Improved Icy Talons so if someone in the raid is dropping a 20% Windfury Totem you just spent 6 talent points on 5% haste.

I picked up Epidemic because sometimes your rune rotations go longer than 10 seconds, especially if you have a lot of Frost Strikes to cram in. I grabbed Subversion to buff Blood Strike and Obliterate some more.

Recent Changes

Blade Barrier now increase your parry chance by 2/4/6/8/10% for 10 seconds whenever your Blood Runes are on cooldown. (Old - Only worked whenever you had no runes active)

- I love this change. As long as you have both Blood runes on cooldown every rune you use until one of them is back up refreshes Blade Barrier. Hello 100% uptime.

Dark Command's range has been increased to 20 yards. (Up from 5 yards)

- Amazing change. It should save a lot of lives, and could even make a decent pulling tool giving the 8 second cooldown.

Frost Presence -  The death knight takes on the presence of frost, increasing total health by 10%, armor contribution from items by 60% (Up from 45%), and reducing spell damage taken by 5%. Increases threat generated.

- The increase in armor was definitely needed to put our mitigation in line with the other tanking classes. This should put Death Knights in the number two spot as far as armor goes second only to Druids, but not by much. This will also make items with armor that much better for us.

Black Ice now Increases your Frost damage by 6/12/18/24/30%.

- Great buff for Frost specced Death Knights. Icy Touch feels worth using, and Frost Strike hits very hard now.

Frost Strike can't be dodged, blocked, or parried anymore.

- Amazing for tanking. I love knowing that my Runic Power dump is going to land. This plus the Blade Barrier change makes extending a rune rotation to dump your Runic Power not a big problem.

Tundra Stalker now increases the damage of Icy Touch by 5/10/15/20/25%, and 1 more Expertise per rank.

- Gotta love the extra Frost damage. It's going to buff Obliterate and Howling Blast soon too, and 10 expertise for 5 talents is amazing as well.

Rune Strike has been changed to Strike the target for 200% weapon damage plus [ 20% of AP ]. Only usable after an attack is dodged or parried. Can't be dodged, blocked, or parried. 

- Biggest change so far. This is now the ultimate tanking ability. I can only hope that they alter our two-piece tanking bonus to go off of Rune Strike now instead of Plague Strike.

Overall they made some changes that made tanks lives easier. Being able to count on Frost Strike and Rune Strike landing is huge for threat generation, and the extra expertise in deep Frost will help ensure smooth rune rotations. Add 5 expertise for Orcs using axes, and you're looking at 15 base Expertise which I believe is -3.75% dodge and parry.

Tanking Weapons

Some people are pushing to get two-handers with tanking stats put in the game, but I don't ever see that happening. We're expected to tank with the same weapons that DPS Warriors, Retribution Paladins, and DPS Death Knights use. That being said since Kel'thuzad items have the highest item level he also drops the best weapons for tanking in both tiers of raiding. They both happen to be axes.

Race

I'm leaning Orc at this point. The fact that both end game weapons right now are axes, the fact that my ghoul gets 5% extra damage, Blood Fury is great for DPS, and Hardiness is excellent on anything that stuns. This coupled with the fact that Tauren HP got nerfed, and that two of their racials completely suck (herbalism and nature resist).

Professions

I will be going Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting. I like the added flexibility to pad pretty much whatever stat I want to on any of my sets. I feel Enchanting doesn't have enough options. This should let me stack defense hard early on, and then switch it to something else once my gear pans out.

Leveling

I see myself going Unholy for leveling. With good use of Death Strike and perma-ghoul there's very little down time. I will likely try to nab a Glyph of the Ghoul (Your Ghoul receives an additional 20% of your Strength.) for added efficiency. However, leveling with a perma-ghoul is pretty much the most amazing thing ever.

I hope this blog was useful to some people. If you have any questions feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer.