Talents?

[Guest]

I started a Death Knight and am trying to figure out spec. Since DK aren't healers I'm guessing the trees run as Tank/ PvP/ DPS... or there about. I get that it matters how you use your points within each tree. But I'm have a heck of a time settling into anything.

Tried blood, which was nice, but now I'm trying Frost. Also seems like a lot of people are using Unholy.

Can any of you that have already been playing for a bit help us noobs out? What would be a good choice to level with? Or what would best serve the Tribe at level 80?

Thanks-
-Cord

[Shillatae]

The three trees of DK specialization are meant by Blizzard to each be able to pass as a tank, DPS or PVPer depending on just /how/ you spec that tree and perhaps some supporting talents from other trees.

I would characterize them as follows in terms of style:

Blood: Melee oriented with self healing
Frost: Focus on crits for big numbers
Unholy: More powerful AoE and pets
Tri-spec: Viable dual-wield, white damage/procs

Looking at tanking for example, there are low level and mid level talents in each tree that could be considered tanking talents - such as Blade Barrier, Toughness and Anticipation in tier one of each tree and Bone Shield, Unbreakable Armor and Vampiric Blood at about the eighth. Obviously no build can have all of the "tanking" talents available to Death Knights, so choosing based on your preferred style or RP, or doing number crunch based on what type of tanking you want to be doing is perfectly fine.

Personally, I didn't want what I perceived as the excessively "evil" flavor of Unholy for Kuskuh. I like the flavor of Frost myself but chose Blood as I read in beta that it was fastest for killing single mobs for questing, and best at soloing elite "thug" mobs. I specced into everything for self-healing and raw damage as I levelled. Now, at 80th with us starting heroics and raiding soon, I respecced out of some of the solo self healing and into Hysteria (a buff I can cast on myself or others) and Blood Aura (a group heal similar to Vampiric Embrace for Shadow Priests) for example.

Even speccing into raid DPS mode I had choices between a more Blood focussed spec that picks up our top tier talent and one that used 21 in Unholy to get Summon Gargoyle. Since both seemed close to as effective, I stuck with my RP preference and minimized the Unholy used.

As far as what the Tribe "needs" right now we have 4 DKs over 70th. Three are Unholy and I am Blood. The Auras you can spec into for group buff don't stack, so arguably we need Frost the most but really, in a ten man we aren't usually going to want three DKs anyway so try them out and see what you like. I might try a Frost or Tri-spec someday, though I love my Blood spec so far. Next I want to work out a Blood tanking spec for when we can dual spec.

Hope this helps! Ask away!

[Cloudjumper]

My question would be, what do you want to do with your Death Knight?
Do you want to Tank or just DPS?

If you are going to DPS then you can do fairly well in any of the trees.

As Shill said the Blood tree is primarily a solo or single target kill spec. You can do large volumes of damage to a single target quickly.

Frost tends to be what I think of as a "crit" spec, you get the big numbers and can take a punishing.

Unholy tends to be high damage and a lot more AE focus, you do get a fair number of talents that upgrade your damage and diseases.

To level I used and Unholy/Blood spec as here.
It worked very, lots of damage and survivability, you can also use it long term as a DPS spec.


For tanking I would stay away from blood until you have more experience using a DK. Blood tanking can be a bit more to handle than many folks are used to, DKs are not one button tanks.

Right now I have Hebren using an Unholy tank spec as here
It was something that was recommended to me by some high end raid friends, as well as our favourite Elitist Jerks. It focuses on AE agro, while still having all the low tree tank skills from the other trees.

You can also go for a pure Frost with a blood offspec, which gives you a nice solid tank platform with a little more melee DPS.

[Guest]

Thank you both. That was exactly what I wanted to know.