Hiya. Gestalt Aka Zalkir (live) aka Zalkir (beta) aka Zalthraze (Live DK). We're going to be getting a lot of "What should I spec?" questions. Here's a stab at heading some of them off.

So, you're rolling a DK and don't know where to spend your talents. Maybe you've followed the discussions on MMO-champ, on deathknight.info, and the beta forums very closely and are looking for feedback on fine-tuning a specific spec. If that's the case, there are plenty of threads around to help you, and plenty of people (myself included) who are happy to help streamline your build.

Maybe the last thing you heard about DK talents was a press release more than a year old and you're wondering whether you need to spec X, Y, or Z to tank, DPS, or PvP. If that's you, you're in the right place.

Everything is Everything
All three trees are capable of maintanking a raid, leading the damage meters, or becoming a juggernaut in pvp. The Deathknight talent trees are a new approach in Blizzard design. Instead of a given tree for a given role, each tree gives you the tools necessary to be a triple-threat, but in very different ways. You don't spec X to tank, Y to dps, or Z to pvp. Instead, you are speccing down a given tree to determine HOW you will tank, dps, or pvp.

This isn't "pie in the sky" or a deluded fantasy about "how things should be". I've main tanked a kill on every boss in Northrend as Blood, Frost, and Unholy. I've seen chart toppers from all three specs. I've been horribly ganked by all three specs when I momentarily forget that I'm awful at PvP.

So, how ARE the trees different?
Thus far every "such and such is best for so and so" comment I've seen is a grotesque oversimplification. Something important to bear in mind is that, unlike the talent trees of other classes, Death Knight talents were designed from the beginning with 71 talent points in mind. It's assumed that you're going to be doing some cross-tree speccing. To that end, the early portions of each tree was designed with cross-spec synergy as the goal. Any and everything in the first four rows are splashable. We can't consider these rows as spec-defining because they're easily accessible: A Blood DK may be 20 deep in Unholy, so talking about how Unholy plays in terms of early talents isn't terribly useful. You're only talking about "X spec does this" when you get deeper than that. From that context, we're looking at how a DEEP tree spec (at least 50 points) plays out.

The TLDR section

Blood DPS is a hard-hitting, steady stream of hits. The tree favors single-rune abilities, letting a Blood DK use more instants per rune cycle.
Blood utility offers the best variety of targeted buffs (i.e. Mark of Blood and Hysteria), a raid AP buff, allowing raid DPSers to do some self-healing, and can glyph to do some minor raid healing.
Blood tanks get stamina and strength buffs, strong self-healing from their attacks, reduced damage on hits that take them to low HP, and an armor buff when they're below 35% hp, and a cooldown to increase all healing they receive and increase their HP.

Frost DPS is the most "bursty", tied to short cooldowns and frequent, large crits from 2-rune abilities.
Frost utility offers melee/ranged haste, snares, slows, and resist buffs.
Frost tank get an extra 3% avoidance, a chance to proc resist buffs, longer duration on Icebound Fortitude, and an armor boost cooldown.

Unholy DPS is a mix of DoT's, AoE, Strikes, and pet damage. They have the most simultaneous damage sources but this damage is not very "bursty".
Unholy utility brings strong caster damage buffs (extra spelldamage on the target, stacks with spell crit debuffs), raid-wide runspeed buffs, a pet capable of minor offtanking (i.e. comparable to a BM hunter pet), and a cooldown to protect themselves and other melee from spell damage.
Unholy tanks get stamina and strength buffs, magic damage reduction, the cooldown mentioned above, and a cooldown for damage reduction (that can be prepped out of combat).

From a DPS player perspective:
-Blood brings the most non-redundant buffs and has DPS least reliant on elemental damage. Resists and immunities effect Blood DPS the least. Blood DPS is best suited for single targets.

-Frost haste buffs become redundant with an Enhancement shaman and resist buffs are redundant with Improved Mark of the Wild. Frost is helpless against Frost-immune mobs (none in game, though Sapphiron is fairly resistant) but does very well against targets with high armor as much of their damage bypasses it. In AoE fights Frost is between Blood and Unholy in effectiveness. Frost can DW or 2H with very minor talent adjustments.

-Unholy +dam buffs free up a Curse slot and there is nothing in the game that performs the same function as Anti-magic Zone. Runspeed buff is redundant with enchants. Ghoul provides substantial DPS and utility and Unholy can spec to bring it back instantly when it dies. Unholy DPS is strongest in AoE encounters and almost all damage sources bypass armor. Unholy fares very poorly on Shadow or Disease resistant/immune mobs.

From a Tank perspective (i.e. most of what I know):
-Blood tanks are more closely linked with their healer than any other tank. Their damage reduction plays off their strong self-heals: an HoT healer will be more efficient than, say, a paladin. Blood threat is best suited for single-target fights and here they shine. A Blood tank does very well with a 2-hander and get great returns from weapons with Strength, having the best base crit chance and better Strength multipliers than other specs.

-Frost tanks have higher base avoidance and the most flexible threat model, handling singles and multis with about equal ability. Their talented mitigation is flexible, offering different solutions for dealing with physical and magic damage. Frost cooldowns are a subject of great debate in comparison to the other trees. One thing no one contests, however, is that the 1m cooldown for Frost offers no protection from magic damage, leaving Frost to rely on their strong resistance procs. Frost damage is least reliant on weapon top-end, allowing Frost to dual-wield effectively. Frost does very well with a Strength 2h weapon or two slow one-handers. Frost has the highest base crit on its specials, so crit returns from Agi are relatively poor.

-Unholy tanks have the most flexible defensive cooldown rotations. With some splashing, an Unholy DK can have one of their cooldowns active almost all the time, giving them some of the strongest damage reduction for mixed-damage fights. This ability is weakest on physical-only encounters (of which there are very few), but is offset by the general strength of their 1m cd Bone shield. Unholy threat is best in AoE encounters, though their single target threat is still strong thanks to armor bypass (almost none of their damage is mitigated by armor). An Unholy tank does well with a Strength 2-hander thanks to strong AP coefficients, but certain specs might consider an AP+Agi two hander instead. Unholy has the lowest base crit of the specs, and Wandering Plague gives them great AoE threat from their base crit chance.

From a PVP perspective:

I'll leave this to be answered by someone who knows PVP well (which sure isn't me).

"I currently play X. Which spec is best for me?"
I have no earthly idea, and chances are you won't either until you get your hands on a DK. While someone can take a gander at the talents and get an idea of how that spec will play, they'll probably wind up discarding most of those ideas within the first few hours of actual gameplay.

DK's are DIFFERENT. The resource system, skill pacing, and playstyle is truly unique. They're not a frankenstein stitched together from other classes, but a bold experiment in Blizzard's new approach to class design. Lessons learned over the course of the game have been applied and this is the first time the Devs have had a chance to design something from scratch after learning those lessons.

And they've done a FANTASTIC job.

My advice: take a look at the descriptions above. Do NOT ask which sounds viable for the role you want. They all are. Seriously. Instead, ask yourself which sounds like the most fun. It's purely a matter of taste, and years of raid and guild leading have taught me this little snippet of wisdom:
The spec and style you enjoy the most is the one you will play the most skillfully.
Do yourself and your guild a favor and pick something you'll actually LIKE. You can always respec later, and unlike many classes, you won't have to do much (if any) regearing.

"So, I know which tree I want. what's the best spec for DPS/PVP/Tanking?"
This is the next layer of the new design approach. There isn't a "best spec" for a given role. The champ theorycrafters have been hammering this question for months, and the results (so far) are in: there are countless possible, viable specs for a given role and a given tree. The cookie cutter has been shoved to the back of the drawer.

Instead of asking or looking for the "best spec", think about how you want to do what you want to do, look at the talent trees, and ask what you're willing to give up. DK speccing involves serious sacrifices. At most points in a spec you'll have to choose between multiple talents that all look very, very nice.

The main thing to look out for is redundant or contradictory speccing. The best example of this is the Death Rune talents. Each tree has a talent that lets you temporarily convert some runes that aren't super useful for your spec into ones that are. It's possible to spec into more than one of these talents, but not useful. A talent that turns F and U runes into Death runes isn't useful if you will always use those runes as UF anyway.

DK rotation talents in a nutshell
Many DK talents are directly based off DK rotations, and these talents can be the most confusing for a player unfamiliar with the DK class. Passive buffs, stat boosts, etc are usually pretty easy to figure out, but many talents can seem useless or mystifying. Don't sweat it, that's what we're here to clear up.

Death Knights were designed around a basic ability rotation:
-Icy Touch (to apply Frost Fever)
-Plague Strike (to apply Blood Plague)
-Blood Strike x 2 (to get damage bonuses from the diseases)
-Obliterate (get extra damage from diseases and remove them right before they would expire)
-Death Coil (uses runepower the other abilities generated, doesn't matter whether you have diseases up or not)

If you have no talent points spent whatsoever, that's usually the most efficient skill rotation. The trick is that your talents are there to change that rotation, mix it up, give you more options, replace some of those abilities with better ones, etc. In a very general way, there are a few ways talents do this:

-Replace an ability in that rotation with another. Examples: Heart Strike replaces Blood Strike, Scourge Strike replaces Obliterate, Frost Strike replaces Death Coil.
-Change how diseases relate to abilities. Examples: Annihilation prevents Obliterate from removing diseases, Epidemic makes diseases last longer.
-Change how you spend / regenerate Runes, giving you more flexibility with Rune abilities. Examples: Death Rune Mastery, Blood of the North, and Reaping cause runes to repop as Death Runes that can be spent like wildcards, some talents give you new things to spend Runes on.
-Change how you spend / generate Rune Power, giving you more flexibility with Rune Power abilities. Examples: Sudden Doom gives you Death Coils that cost no RP, Chill of the Grave cause some abilities to generate extra RP.

Replacement abilities:
-Icy Touch: nothing. Some talents will let you set up so you can spend this F rune with a U rune instead of doing another IT, but there is no direct replacement for IT.
-Plague Strike: same as IT.
-Blood Strike: Heart Strike. Frost and Unholy get Death Rune talents that let you Blood Strike to get death runes that you will then use as UF.
-Obliterate: Death Strike is a base ability that sometimes gets used instead of Obliterate. Scourge Strike is a direct replacement for Obli, Howling Blast replaces Obli whenever its cooldown is up. Blood can spec to get Death Runes from this.
-Death Coil: Frost Strike, Corpse Explosion, 51pt "Rune Power Dumps".

This is one of the reasons that planning a DK spec without having played a DK can be difficult. Fortunately, you can usually figure out whether or not a given talent choice is useful by looking at that basic rotation and asking a few questions:
-Am I investing in more than one ability for the same spot in that rotation?
For example, there isn't much point in buffing your Death Coil damage if you're specced into Frost Strike.
-What point in this rotation is my strongest, and what am I doing to extend that?
Blood is strongest in the BB point in the rotation, Frost and Unholy in the latter UF. Many talents let you set up your second rotation around that point of strength (i.e. all strong), many more apply stacking buffs to your point of strength.
-How often do I need to reapply diseases?
The abilities that apply diseases (IT and PS) are generally weaker than the ones that use diseases. The less often you need to reapply, either from timers expiring or your diseases being removed, the more time and runes you can spend on higher damage abilities.

With that in mind you'll be in good shape to hammer out a workable spec for your DK.

Enter World
The DK starter quests are fantastic. They are also misleading. Much of the time you're in the starter zone you'll be participating in scripted events, fights with special conditions, being assisted by NPC's, or with buffs that would let you easily solo SWP. When you finish the starter quests and head to outland, you're still on training wheels. You are ridiculously overgeared for HFP (about equivalent of Tier 2~3). Your first few levels outside the scripted starter zone are part of the "tutorial".
-Don't be afraid to experiment. This is the time to figure out how to comfortably work "extras" into your rotations.
-Think about how you're spending your resources and why. You'll be picking up quite a few more abilities as time goes on and it will be easier to use them to best effect if you're already comfortable with the flexibility and limitations of the Rune/Runepower system.
-Push your luck. If you can easily handle two mobs, pull three. Find out what your limits as a player are while you still have a massive gear advantage.
-Get off the beaten track. You're going to have a fair bit of competition for kills and quest objectives. Working on the quests that most people skip means faster quest completion.
-Cooperate. If there's someone working on the same kill quest as you, toss em an invite. You'll both finish faster.
-Don't be afraid of upgrades. Yes, the DK armor looks awesome. Yes, that upgrade looks like a pink duck on a pizza box. You are self-gimping if you put vanity over function. Just because someone told you that you CAN get to Northrend in your original blues doesn't mean you want to.

That's about it. See you in Acherus.

Quick request:

Analyze 2h vs Dual Wield, advantages, disadvantages, etc.

It's a bit much to cover (maybe another post), but I did do a quick writeup on the Parry issue at http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=26064.0

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Q u o t e:
It's a bit much to cover (maybe another post), but I did do a quick writeup on the Parry issue at http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=26064.0

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Just from a leveling point of view then.

Oh, that's easy. 2h for anything but Frost (only tree with linear returns from DW), and even Frost should give 2h a serious look. 2h is effective for all three trees with no effective stat minimums and can more or less disregard weapon speed (it's difficult to find a 2-hander fast enough for it to be a problem). DW is very stat demanding and requires a slow mainhand at least, which can be difficult to come by.

If you want to level as DW-Frost, go for it. Just be aware that it's not the easiest way to go.

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Q u o t e:
Oh, that's easy. 2h for anything but Frost (only tree with linear returns from DW), and even Frost should give 2h a serious look. 2h is effective for all three trees with no effective stat minimums and can more or less disregard weapon speed (it's difficult to find a 2-hander fast enough for it to be a problem). DW is very stat demanding and requires a slow mainhand at least, which can be difficult to come by.

If you want to level as DW-Frost, go for it. Just be aware that it's not the easiest way to go.

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Thanks.

What I was thinking about was Frost - KIlling Machine would be more effective Dual Wielding, but is the increased proc rate worth the lose to Weapon-based damage?

Thanks Gestalt , very helpful post, I did not read anything @ all about DK's I just made one and played it. From reading your post it looks like it's gonna be a pretty solid class and fun to play, I really like it so far.

Ey, Gestalt, you're that pro pally who made the prot guide right? You rolling DK now? What made u do it?

I split my six months in beta between my tankadin and my DK. The revised Tankadin guide is almost done (actually polishing this one instead of slamming through it in an all-nighter). From there, on to DK's.

It's a tank class I haven't run into the ground. One of the aspects of the game I find most rewarding is the question of the "unsolved problem", a class question for which the theorycraft isn't finished and the playstyle isn't already common knowledge. Paladins are currently a solved problem, i.e. the equation is already more or less complete and most anyone who cares to know the ins and outs already does.

DK information, on the other hand, is scant and largely speculative, even among experienced beta players. Some aspects of the class were thoroughly stat-ed and calculated during beta, but many questions were left up in the air or to generalized guesswork. As you may recall from the Paladin forums pre-tbc, I tend to crunch the numbers for a while before producing user-friendly material.

A Death Knight tank guide would be a serious challenge. All 3 specs are fully tank capable, and each tree offers multiple viable tank builds. There are so many disparate options that it's hard to come up with concrete advice more specific than "don't suck". It's likely that after the Tankadin guide revision is posted I'll work on a guide on general tank theory for the new Tank forum.

bump, since the front page is covered with "ZOMG NEED SPEC" questions

Okay... That done... I like Blood, it matches my style. Nice, simple, not too much downtime (or any). I just like examples of viables specs, as different as the DK is, I doubt you can throw random points at it and get a viable leveling build.

Being a newb again is a very awkward experience.

here we go again... think this is the last one before I just let the sucker sink

bump for useful info!

10/10 guide man

Very nice guide.
I know its annoying as junk, but could you rate this build?
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jfEGV0cIofo0zAohxhth
It is supposedly for jack of all trades, viable to tank, dps anything below a heroic, and solo easily.
Thanks for the guide, and perhaps for the feedback.

tag

BUMP

I swear to god it needs to be stickied and made like 5x as big and glowing orange...

Bump.
Some of the best info on here.