Tanking - Blood or Frost

[Ruger]

What is the 30% buff yall are talking about?

I play on Lordaeron, I thought that the raids are actually harder here and there is no handicap for the players?

There has been some good discussions going back and forth and I think I will try: http://wotlk.openwow.com/talent#j0EM...ZcgG0x0zgchz0u

There are some talents that I took that I can trade for others but I'm not sure which route to go.

1. Reaping and/or Dirge to Desolation and or/Imp Holy Presence.
2. Some points from Conviction to Scent of Blood.

Is it viable to have Dirge and Scent of Blood to always have a constant supply of RP?

Thank you all for taking the time to help me out here. I really appreciate it.

[Bensten]

What is the 30% buff yall are talking about?

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Hellscream's_Warsong

There are some talents that I took that I can trade for others but I'm not sure which route to go.

1. Reaping and/or Dirge to Desolation and or/Imp Holy Presence.
2. Some points from Conviction to Scent of Blood.

Is it viable to have Dirge and Scent of Blood to always have a constant supply of RP?

As you already noticed opinions differ. There isn't just one way of doing it and I'd suggest to just go with whatever suites your playstyle. Try the talents you posted and if you feel you are lacking DPS, Threat, Mitigation, Avoidance, w/e just adapt to it. All the variations - you posted a Frost subspec yourself - are already mentioned in the thread.

The problem with RP is that you technically don't want to cap it. If your RP is capped every RP you gain is lost. This RP could've been spent on damage or defensives. However, you don't want to RP starve yourself either. You want to have at least 20 RP, 40 to be safe. Get to a point where you can spam Rune Strike and still feel comfortable with the amount of RP you have left.

[taralej]

The dodge debuff in ICC and Halion's dodge bypass pretty much rule out Unholy. Combined with the health buff, you end up with a pretty simple conclusion that Blood is the spec that ends up in the best position when it comes to end-game raiding. Frost is behind, lacking Will of the Necropolis and having less self-heals, and Unholy is last, having nothing that Blood or Frost have and offering nothing apart from the 8% magic damage reduction.

[Ruger]

Thank you for the link about the 30% Bensten. I quit playing retail shortly after Ulduar release so I had no idea this existed. Will this buff be disabled on Lordaeron?

So I know that you can't cover all bases in regards to talents, but just to put it into perspective, what major talents am I missing out of this spec?

http://wotlk.openwow.com/talent#j0EG...ZMgGox0zxchd0u

The dodge debuff in ICC and Halion's dodge bypass pretty much rule out Unholy. Combined with the health buff, you end up with a pretty simple conclusion that Blood is the spec that ends up in the best position when it comes to end-game raiding. Frost is behind, lacking Will of the Necropolis and having less self-heals, and Unholy is last, having nothing that Blood or Frost have and offering nothing apart from the 8% magic damage reduction.

ICC is not yet released and my guild will not be there for awhile as we have just recently move here from another server. This means that we will be doing progression through Naxx/Ulduar before hand. I've already came to the realization that I will be going Blood once we are hitting ICC content.

But before this point, I want to try tanking as something that you usually don't see with high upside/difficulty. General consensus is that on Lordaeron, before ICC, Unholy played correctly is the best build to go in terms of damage mitigation and making the lives of my healers easier.

[Lynea]

ICC is not yet released and my guild will not be there for awhile as we have just recently move here from another server. This means that we will be doing progression through Naxx/Ulduar before hand. I've already came to the realization that I will be going Blood once we are hitting ICC content.

But before this point, I want to try tanking as something that you usually don't see with high upside/difficulty. General consensus is that on Lordaeron, before ICC, Unholy played correctly is the best build to go in terms of damage mitigation and making the lives of my healers easier.

When it comes to ICC, I would encourage you to play whatever is appropriate for your group or your preference on what is fun. Them trying to dismiss an entire spec on the basis of 20% dodge is ridiculous, but unfortunately, I can't argue with a potato. All three of the specs are very much capable of clearing the entire raid with relative ease, even though your healers will hate you if you go Blood.

[Ruger]

That's good to know, thanks Lynea. Did you happen to take a look at my build?

More specifically, what major talents that I don't have am I really going to feel?

Blood
Will of the Necroplis - This is obviously a no brainer but going Unholy it's not possible to get this. However, getting proficient with Bone Shield is much better than having Will of the Necropolis. 20% on up time at all times is better than the 35% when low health.
Imp Death Strike - Would be nice to have, but again, with high up time Bone Shield is a better trade off.
Abominations Might - Nice raid buff, but doesn't pertain to my survivability/threat generation.
Hysteria - Same as Abominations Might
Vampiric Blood - Probably the best oh **** cooldown for DKs

Frost
Imp Frost Presence - 2% reduction to all damage is nice, although not sure if this is a huge miss.
Frigid Dreadplate - 3% avoidance is a nice buff but getting to that point is what hurts.
Howling Blast - Staple tanking spell AoE spell but with Unholy disease's you can sort of offset this.
Unbreakable Armor - Another staple DK tanking cooldown.

So at the end of the day, the stuff I'm missing out on is Vampiric Blood and Unbreakable Armor. Each being great survivability cooldowns that are staple to the respective trees. I'm having a tough time wrapping my head around on why Unholy isn't the spec to be if you know what you're doing and have decent gear to keep Bone Shield up.

[Thydus]

If you really wanna experiment try this build its pretty amazing in certain situations.
http://wotlk.openwow.com/talent#j0eR...ZhxxxbMGzfzbuu

[Ruger]

Alright so I've got one last spec to talk about. I hope yall aren't getting annoyed with me. This spec is going to be focused on getting the benefit out of Veteran of the Third War, Imp Rune Tap and Mark of Blood out of the Blood tree. It will also include Bone Shield out of the Unholy tree. Lastly, in the Frost tree, I am going to take advantage of Nerves of Cold Steel. My thought was that with this build, I could duel wield to take advantage of getting extra avoidance to benefit Bone Shield uptime. I know that if you're duel wielding you usually need to go with Threat of the Thessarian so that is a huge hit. That being said, I think I can keep enough threat output with the other talents I have taken.

Let me know what yall think.

http://wotlk.openwow.com/talent#j0EG...ZcgG0x00Tfhz0k

[Rahvin]

Abbreviations, the thread.

This is what I think.

Itygsrctotww, ioae. Tw, wnpclfi, tdhthWoWotresaitsbtswomta.

Did I do it right? I think I did. In case I didn't, here's what I said.

I think you guys should really consider typing out the whole word, instead of using abbreviations. That way, when new players come looking for information, they dont have to have World of Warcraft open to read every single ability in the spell book to see which ones match the abbreviations.

[taralej]

Most of us have intentionally used the whole terms in this thread exactly because it's a new player asking. Either way, the abbrevs used are mostly from the DK spells and talents.