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Death Knights

Blood Talents

31/0/0 + 10 This will be your basic core for your spec.

In this spec, you can move the points freely between Scarlet Fever and Abominations's Might. If the Scarlet Fever debuff and the Abominations's Might buff are covered by other classes that you are playing with (two of the same category of buffs will not stack), then feel free to move the points in to Blood-Caked Blade for extra threat generation or in to Hand of Doom. If you are playing mainly in 5 man dungeon groups, it is most likely that you will be the only one that is providing the Scarlet Fever or Abominations's Might de/buff, so you should pick one of those two.

You will have 10 remaining points to play with as you see fit. There's no real wrong way to spend these points, but the following talents are the more useful:

• 3 points in Epidemic for baseline play support.
• 2 points in Unholy Command (only if you wish to reach tier 2 of the Unholy tree)
• 3 points in Morbidity followed by 2 points in Crimson Scourge will substantially increase your threat on AoE groups.
• 2 points in Crimson Scourge will allow your to debuff AoE packs more easily with Scarlet Fever if no one else is performing that role.
• 2 points in either/or Scarlet Fever and Abominations's Might if you are assuming the role of providing both the buff and debuff.
• 3 points in Blood-Caked Blade to increase your single target threat generation.

Blood Talent Tree Explained:

Tier 1
Butchery; the main problem with this talent is that you have to be the one to deal the killing blow in order to benefit from the 10/20 Runic Power. There's not much of a chance of that happening as a tank. Of more use is the 1/2 Runic Power generated every 5 second while in combat. With two points invested in the talent you'll end up with 24 Runic Power per minute. Considering you won't really be Runic Power starved, it isn't much of a bonus. Blade Barrier In practice this will be up all the time. Bladed Armor, as a tank this is going to be pretty impressive especially since Blood Presence will also boost it.

Butchery is the poor man of tier 1. You simply don't get enough bang for your talent points. Bladed Armor and Blade Barrier are stunning talents in their own ways; Bladed Armor will increase your threat greatly and Blade Barrier will do similiar wonders for your survival. You only need spend 5 points in tier 1, meaning one of the two will only receive 2 talent points; though you can always invest one of your remaining final 10 talent points here.

Tier 2
Scarlet Fever is the obvious choice in tier 2 as it will usually be expected that tanks pick up this debuff; there could be circumstances though where you have the same raid set up every week and someone else has this covered. Scent of Blood is very powerful in a rather perverse way; the Runic Power it provides is actually most useful because using it on your Rune Strike is a way to refresh your runes. The down side of this talent is that you will suffer a little from diminishing returns the more points you put it. The ideal point for maximising the worth per talent point is investing 2 points; though of course three will get you overall more Runic Power. Improved Blood Tap is very handy for tanks; the main advantage of this talent is the greater flexibility it offers. Any time you need a rune immediately for one of your survival abilities, Blood Tap makes sure you have a rune available. Hand of Doom is pure utility and it is not that strong for a utility buffing talent; best to skip this one. If you have left over talent points to spend to reach tier 3, you can always invest them by filling out Bladed Armor and Blade Barrier.

Tier 3
Bone Shield is compelling in both its usefulness and its forgiving cooldown of 1min; an easy choice. Toughness is another easy choice; as a constant passive buff it really isn't something that you can pass up. Abominations's Might, while a very good buff, can also easily be performed by a DPS player in your raid. If you do 5 man groups a lot, then it will be more useful as the chance of having an equivalent (non-stacking) buff from another player is a lot less. Blood-Caked Blade has the upside of improving your single target threat; the downside of this talent is that there are other talents on this tier that are outstanding talents, meaning this will be your last choice for this tier. If you do want to pick up Blood-Caked Blade for extra threat, make sure you invest first in Bladed Armor as point for point Bladed Armor will give you more threat per talent point.

Tier 4
Improved Blood Presence is one of those core must-have talents for any tank engaging in raids. The same holds true for Sanguine Fortitude, it will turn your Icebound Fortitude in to your strongest defensive ability for no resource cost; it simply cannot be passed over. Blood Parasites have a great deal of raid utility in the healing they do (especially in the new mana wars dynamic of raid healing). Not as strong as the other two talents on this tier, it is nonetheless a good place to invest some of your left over talent points.

Tier 5
The main problem with this tier is that you will want it all. Vampiric Blood is one of your key core survivability abilities and you will clearly want all your survival abilities so you must pick this talent up. Rune Tap is a great ability in its own right with a very short cooldown. Additionaly it will open up Will of the Necropolis. The main advantage of Will of the Necropolis is its automated nature. This automatic reacting buff will ensure your survivability goes up immediately. Also, the refreshing of both a Blood rune and Rune Tap further enhances your ability to handle tough situations.

Tier 6
Improved Death Strike is highly desirable and an easy choice as it plays in to both the threat that you generate as well as your survivability through your self-heals and Blood Shield. Crimson Scourge is very hit and miss in terms of its usefulness. As a Blood Death Knight you'll have your Heart Strike hitting three mobs anyway, meaning you'll use that as a higher priority. Mass tanking of large AoE mobs has tended to be marginalized of late, meaning this talent becomes a little more situational. If you are responsible for debuffing on AoE fights with Scarlet Fever then you will get a lot more mileage out of this talent. It is not a bad talent, it just depends on your role as a tank.

Tier7
Dancing Rune Weapon really is the best of both worlds for a tanking talent. Both the increased threat it generates (as long as you are glyphed for it) as well as the survivability it affords are considerable. However, all good things have a downside and this talent is no different. Dancing Rune Weapon will be a big hit on your Runic Power and investing that Runic Power in something other than Rune Strike means you will be missing out on possible refreshes of runes.

Additional Talents from Frost and Unholy

Frost Tree
The main problem with the low tier talents in the Frost tree is that they are either irrelevant to tanking or they do not play in to the abilities that a Blood Death Knight uses. Runic Power Mastery is not an option; as a Blood tank you are doing something wrong if you are hitting the maximum of 100; increasing it to 130 won't solve a more fundamental issue of why you have so much left over Runic Power that you have not used. Icy Reach looks handy, but in reality you will just not get enough benefit from it. Nerves of Cold Steel is not an option as no Blood tank will be dual wielding. Annihlation isn't an option as you won't find a situation in which you'd use Obliterate instead of Death Strike. Lichborne and On A Pale Horse are meant for PvP; though as a PvE tank you could get some limited use but it is far too situational to warrant spending points here. Endless Winter could be tempting, but the cost to pick it up (5 points in tier 1 Frost tree) is far to prohibitive.

Unholy Tier 1
The Unholy tree offers much more enticing low tier talents for Blood Death Knights. Epidemic is an obvious choice as the longer you can go without having to reapply your diseases means you can spend those resources on something else. Virulence is a great talent for what it is, but as a Blood Death Knight the only things in your rotation that will benefit from it are Icy Touch and Death Coil, making it far less appealing. If you intend on pushing through to tier 2 of the Unholy tree, then Unholy Command is the best choice, but only because Virulence is so weak for Blood Death Knights.

Unholy Tier 2
The downfall of Resilient Infection comes in that there will almost never be mobs that will dispel your diseases. Desecration provides great utility, but the is a big negative side to it in that you cannot control when it is up meaning it will be a hinderance on fights where you want to reposition mobs fast without leaving them behind. As a Blood Death Knight you are not going to Death Coil very often at all, meaning the only usefulness from Morbidity is going to be the Death and Decay aspect. The talent will be good if you are up against a lot of AoE fights, but it is only good for AoE fights and there are other choices out there to buff your AoE threat.

 

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