Let's come up with a new 5 man DK spec

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Originally Posted by mmo-champion

Blood

Blood Aura: Replaced with Improved Blood Presence. This allows the deathknight to keep the healing from damage done bonus of Blood Presence in any presence, and increases healing received while in Blood Presence.
Blood-Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise.
Bloody Strikes now increases Blood Boil damage instead of Pestilence.
Bloodworms now heal more.
Dancing Rune Weapon: Fixed a bug making it trigger an unusual number of effects from the weapon equipped by the Death Knight. In addition, it will now only echo Death Knight spells whose primary purpose is dealing damage. Also corrected a bug making the effect last 8 seconds longer than intended.
Scent of Blood will now proc on a dodge, parry or taking damage, and internal cooldown lowered to 10 from 20 sec.
Sudden Doom now procs a free Death Coil instead of requiring you to push the button. Ranks reduced from 5 to 3.

Frost

The following talents have moved in the Frost tree: Runic Power Mastery, Glacier Rot, Killing Machine, Chilblains, and Endless Winter.
Black Ice now grants 2/4/6/8/10% Shadow damage in addition to the Frost damage.
Black Ice: Frost Damage bonus lowered to 4/8/12/16/20%
Blood of the North is 3 ranks instead of 5 for the same effect.
Chillblains: Now a 15/30/50% movement speed debuff (up from 30%). Moved to position currently occupied by Glacier Rot.
Endless Winter: Moved to position currently occupied by Chillblains.
Frost Aura: Replaced with Improved Frost Presence. Allows the deathknight to keep the health bonus of Frost Presence in any presence, and decreases magic damage taken while in Frost Presence.
Glacier Rot: Third rank added, and damage bonus increased to 7/13/20. Moved to position currently occupied by Endless Winter.
Howling Blast: Swapped positions with Hungering Cold in the talent tree (HB is now at 51, and HC is now at 31). In addition, the damage bonus for targets with Frost Fever is now only 20%.
Icy Talons - This talent how has a new icon.
Runic Power Mastery down to 2 ranks.

Unholy

Blood-caked Blade: Now has a 3 second cooldown on the effect.
Desecration: This talent now has a 100% chance to be triggered. Additional points in the talent increase the damage bonus and snare magnitude instead of increasing the chance.
Epidemic: Epidemic now has 3 ranks (adding an additional 3 sec of disease duration). Magic Suppression is 3 ranks (down from 5) for 2/4/6% magic damage reduction.
Master of Ghouls: Now also reduces the cooldown on Raise Dead by 60 sec.
Necrosis: Can now only be triggered by main hand attacks.
New talent: Improved Death Strike. Increases Death Strike damage by 10/20.
Night of the Dead: Redesigned to grant a flat reduction on cooldown to Raise Dead and Army of the Dead instead of a reduction from using abilities.
Outbreak bonus for Scourge Strike lowered to 10/20/30%.
Scourge Strike: Damage increased.
Unholy Aura: Replaced with Improved Unholy Presence. Allows the Deathknight to keep the movement speed bonus of Unholy Presence in any presence, and increases rune regeneration rate while in Unholy Presence.
Unholy Blight and Gargoyle have swapped places in the Unholy tree. Gargoyle is the new Unholy 51 talent.

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Ok with these changes in mind Im thinking deep blood and some frost/unholy to finish for talent choices on 5 man DK teams. Notice the blood worms heal more! WOOT. However it seems that blood stacking has been fixed, so all DK teams (no healer) may be in for no more hi level dungeon runs (heroics), but we will have to see!
I would link a talent page, but my work has most of them block or they dont work on our lame computers. So I will make up one later and we can critique it! :thumbsup:

edit: by deep blood I mean taking Heart Strike and Will of the Necropolis for reduced damage taken <35%.

Another thing I noticed.. Unholy Blight is now in range of blood aura and with that you can also get corpse explosion!! Hmm AE DK group is sounding fantastic right now 8o

At this point in time, assuming there are no new drastic changes to the trees in 3.1 (and there could be so who knows) I am planning on making my blood DK 50/0/21 in order to get unholy blight in lieu of DRW. While DRW will do more DPS in general I think UB will be much easier to manage (especially if I glyph it to make it last 30 seconds).

We'll see.

wow didnt know it could last 30secs with glyph. That definitely decides it, I will be doing at least 45 into blood as you have to take the armor boost from frost as well =(

From mmo-champion.com

Glyph of Unholy Blight *new* -- Increases the duration of Unholy Blight by 10 sec.

its 20 seconds base.

I guess these are not official yet so... we jus thave to wait and see =)

Ok thats really nice, however I have to give up some talents to hit UB that Im not sure I want to give up i.e. Will of the Necropolis. I can't use a real calculator right now, but its not looking good =(

Necessary talents for tanking: +10 parry, +15% armor talent, +5% dodge talent. This means you will always spend at least 5 points in each tree. It's even arguable that you need the IT talent in frost to slow down the melee speed of what you are killing. Even worse is that one of my slaves has to spec into improved IT for the group haste. 20% melee haste is A LOT to give up :cursing:

Current spec across the board cept for one with improved Frost and two less in the end in Dodge in unholy.

Don't see much changing in my specs, though, I will go where my damage tells me to go.

36/33/3

So you wont get Howling Blast come 3.1 and that will drop your AoE dps. Im guessing you will spec up to heart strike to fill the gap? Or will you do Unholy Blight? I dont think staying in a 30x/30x/5x type spec will work anymore. If anything the new top teir talents are even more desirable. Free Death coil proc? Yes please! Heart Strike hits harder and two targets? Yes please!

edit: The more I think about losing HB the more I like Heart Strike. HB was really cool in BG pvp as you could do HB X 4 (or 5 in your case) and do some massive AOE dps. Now it looks like you either spec 51 into frost (and lose blood aura and worms) or take Heart Strike and live with the fact you will hit less targets, but harder. Which is great for instances too.

Depending on how the talents end up I will likely do something like.

50/0/21

Are you attempting instances with that build? I would really like to suggest you take the +10 parry talent. It's expensive, but its also one of the best damage avoidance talents DKs have. It's almost broken because it doesnt take into account diminishing returns on avoidance. Your blood runes refresh at 10secs so it will always be up once you do your first rotation. I wish our computers werent such POS's, they run IE6, so I cant really see what you chose until I check it out at home :S