He didn't ask which is easiest. He asked which is the most efficient and gear independent. There are a lot of varying opinions on this, but in my opinion, Blood is neither of these. I say Frost is stronger than both Blood and Unholy when your gear is weak, and is competitive with Blood at average gear. It loses traction when you're near BIS, especially if you're building armor because Unbreakable Armor will put you over the armor cap - thus diminishing its usefulness.
As for efficiency, it depends on what sort of efficiency we're talking about. Are we talking about raid efficiency? Blood has terrible multi-target threat, and in a 10-man raid setting, the only thing it likely provides for the group is Hysteria. An Unholy/Frost hybrid tank that specs into Imp. Icy Talons and Ebon Plaguebringer is more efficient in all of this.
Or perhaps we're talking about surviving efficiency? Both Frost and Unholy have CDs (Unbreakable Armor and Bone Shield) that are perfect for dealing with the melee portion of Soul Reaper, while Blood has slightly superior healing to Unholy. Death Strike heals for the same, leaving only Rune Tap, Vampiric Blood and Blood worms-which nobody takes on here.
I mean, I'm pretty sure this dead horse has been beaten a million times already, but I also want to make sure the guy knows specifics that he asked for. Ultimately, there are 50 thousand different opinions on what is better than what, and I often choose to settle for "agreeing to disagree". But the point is that there is no universally "best tank spec".
I would agree with that. Blood is not a bad starting point for beginner tanks due to the small learning curve.
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Field Medic Moderator
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Member
blood dk's death strike heals more then another spec Death strikes because of talent Improved Death Strike
easiest tank spec: blood > frost > unholy
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Field Medic Moderator
This is actually false. Unholy has 3 diseases. Death Strike's healing scales with the number of diseases on the target. The 3rd disease boosts the healing of Death Strike by the same amount that Improved Death Strike does.
Edit: To provide some math;
Improved Death Strike with 2 talent points increases the healing of Death Strike by 50%. Death Strike with 2 diseases will heal you for 10% of your health without the talent (5% per disease). With the talent, it will heal you for 15% of your health. Since Death Strike heals you for 5% of your health per disease you have active on the target, this means that Unholy Death Knights with 3 diseases on the target will heal also for 15% of their health when they use Death Strike.
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Member
blood can have more hp then unholy and there is vamp blood that is busting healing and hp
p.s. i dont say that you are wrong but blood have more healing than any another spec
i am playing frost tank with two hand, because i like it and it's fun with def cd's but all spec are fun to play. you just need to learn them and pull max of them ;)
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Field Medic Moderator
Yes, 3% more via Veteran of the Third War. It's a good talent overall.
I'm not saying Blood doesn't have more healing. It definitely does. However, those differences come from a variety of other talents. Not so much Death Strike itself.
It should be noted that while Unholy does have stronger healing that Frost, Unholy's strength isn't in its healing, but in its passive spell damage mitigation for burst spells and the strength you get from Bone Shield which synergizes with avoidance.
Agreed. There are a lot of build varieties that are viable for Death Knights. Perhaps not necessarily for Light of Dawn, but the vast majority of people don't farm that fight anyways.
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Member
well in this moment in our guild for now we have 2 bis dk and 1 is unholy and main tank for lod and another (me) frost for add's
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Forum Veteran
Vampiric Blood.
15 second God Mode on demand. The more gear you have, the more godly your God Mode becomes.
Plus Will of the Necropolis, always there, always ready to work in your favor against everything and anything.
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Member
I got an Unholy Tank guildie with an alright gear (around 4k gs/Lordaeron). He seems to rely on Bone Shield (with its' internal cds) to survive and Wandering Plague to hold aggro.
His biggest achievement? Solo tanking Onyxia 10's third phase with me the main blood tank and some dps (probably also healer) downed (because I derped)
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Member
Could not agree more on the frost tanks. The amount of ppl underestimating the spec is way too high.
I always love to start gearing as frost. I find myself with less aggro problems than in blood spec, and Unbreakable Armor is more useful for me than Vampiric Blood. Have not tried unholy out just yet, so can't say much about that one.
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Wind of Northrend
Ubad bois being nice as always givin away free tips how to plei.
peace
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Wind of Northrend
Will of the Necropolis 3/3
Damage that would take you below 35% health or taken while you are at 35% health is reduced by 15%.
I will just leave this here.
Oh, and a bit improved tanking spec:
http://wotlk.openwow.com/talent#j0Er...obsZhxbxcMIzZz
No, u dont need Heart Strike. It does no aggro, deals almost same amount of dmg as Blood Boil and Blood Strike, and 1% more spell hit is more valuable since u cant afford to miss IT / Taunt sometimes. If u reached hit cap somehow, go for 4/5 Killing Machine.
p.s. smd knez
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Member
is it trolling attemtp, sapphire, srsly? lul oke, if u dont trust me (as experienced dk player, with exp of like 4 years playing dk) just look at community choice on lord at its start - MAJORITY of dickey tanks out there choosed blood even with **** gear to start raiding (even if on retail choice of community was uh, due to their talent system during fall of naxxramas patch)
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Member
WoL of Unholy Halion Tank (Me): http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=2245&e=2685
Unholy Tanking Halion Outside: https://www.twitch.tv/kblizz/v/98978787?t=03h30m32s
WoL of a Blood Halion Tank: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=3471&e=3911
Looking at pure numbers, as well as the stream for visuals sake, it's perfectly viable to run any DK spec to tank an end-game boss, like Halion 25hc for example. (My Unholy DK took around 300k less damage than the Blood DK above, who was also similarly geared to me). I would personally argue that a mitigation-based tank is better suited to tank Halion, to reduce the chance of a breath+cleave+inferno one shotting a tank.
Just because 10 players jump off the LK edge, doesn't mean you have to blindly follow them.
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Member
so from were those logs were taken from? from private server with broken Twillight presicion ( -20% to dodge)? are u ****ing kidding me? avoidance-stacked tank on encounter with such mechanic? it was near-death experience for me, cuz almost died laughing, trying to imagine that uh dk is better that blood for hallion. holy **** dude
ye, if those 10 players were actually decent and rest of the raid were full mongol baboon style, i would definitely jump off platform and leave dat group just for the sake of saving my time
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Member
If you actually clicked on the links before tooting your horn, you would have seen they're from this server about a week ago... If it was a "near-death experience" for you, either you're not that geared or not nearly as good a DK as you think you are.
Also, Unholy Dk's are not about stacking avoidance, they emphasize mitigation, are you familiar with the terms and the difference between the two?Edited: November 12, 2016
