Endnote:
Q: I'm still all confused!
A: Read more, post less.
FAQ credits: Sunny, Ratri, Rabinahau, Barkek, Villaness
General Information:
What are the three trees and what do they do?
Blood:
Blood specs are mostly physical damage based. They mirror the retribution paladin tree fairly reasonably. A blood spec also excels at keeping him or herself high health, and is pretty much a grinding machine. They scale well with other physical DPS classes, and gain the most from physical damage debuffs like sunder armor, armor penetration, blood frenzy, etc. A blood spec typically provides Abomination's Rage to the group, granting +10% to attack power.
Frost:
Frost spec is the 'burst' spec. They play like a sort of hybrid to the unholy and blood styles. Unholy is much more heavily DoT based, and Blood is just about hitting hard and very little DoT at all. Frost is about finesse, setting up Frost Fever on your targets, and then hitting them much harder once you set it up. Frost also has the best mitigation talents, and is the dubious dual wield spec of choice. A frost spec will usually bring Improved Icy Talons, granting the team +20% to haste.
Unholy:
Unholy spec is the area effect spec. There are more pet options in the unholy tree, but it is not a pet spec. Unholy is best at getting a lot of diseases on a lot of creatures, and eating away at them. They have less burst than frost, since they only have one really heavy-hitting attack (Scourge Strike), but their DoT abilities and AE effectiveness makes up for it. An unholy DK is probably the most casterish of the three, bringing +13% to magic damage to the group on any enemy she drops a disease on.
Important Numbers:
Special Melee Attack hit cap: 9% (Strikes)
Two-hander melee hit cap vs. a boss: 9%
Dual wield melee hit cap vs. a boss: 28%
Spell hit cap vs. a boss: 17%
Hit rating for 1%: 25.4
Melee: 32.79
Spell: 26.23
This means that if you get 9% hit to ensure all of your melee attacks land you will still need 5.75% more hit or 151 more hit rating to reach the spell hit cap. If you are 2H capped and have Virulence, and a 3% hit debuff on the boss (Such as Misery or Imp. Faerie Fire) you will be spell hit capped as well.
Our melee attacks and spells have a critical damage bonus of 100%.
Hit rating does NOT increase the amount of critical strikes you will have on a target. It reduces the number of times that you will miss the boss.
It takes 45.91 critical strike rating to generate 1% melee or spell critical strike. The reason that hit is such a good stat until capped is because it is so much cheaper to hit 1% hit rating wise than 1% crit. Once you hit the two hander hit cap hit is no longer worth gemming or enchanting.
Haste rating does not reduce our GCD. Our GCD is only affected by Unholy Presence.
Our abilities scale with AP. Spell damage does nothing for us.
Runic Power Generation:
10 RP is generated per rune used
Any ability that consumes a single rune = 10 RP
2 rune ability = 20 RP
3 rune ability = 30 RP
Starter Tank Set Numbers (level 70ish):
Name | armor | str | sta | def
------------------------+-----+-----+-----
Cobalt helm | 1054 | 33 | 51 | 50
Cobalt shoulder | 973 | 33 | 36 | 30
Cobalt chest | 1297 | 39 | 60 | 39
Cobalt bracers | 567 | 25 | 25 | 45
Cobalt guantlet | 811 | 37 | 39 | 25
Cobalt belt | 730 | 25 | 39 | 37
Cobalt leggings | 1135 | 40 | 66 | 32
Cobalt boots | 892 | 29 | 44 | 30
----------------+-------+-----+-----+-----
Total : | 7459 | 261 | 360 | 288
Credits: Myrx, Sunny, Integer
Common Death Knight Talent Specs
Blood:
51/18/2 PVE dps build. Good for the 20% haste buff in frost. Allows for using obliterate without clearing diseases off. Not my favorite but some may like it.
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMqh0IcfoxzAoG0xxhZb
51/13/7 PVE dps build again. Good for the longer duration on diseases as well as top quality deathcoil damage and the ability to get 4x heartstrike rotations.
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMqh0IcfoxzAoG0x0hZfM
48/14/9 PVP/Arena build. Gives you the healing cooldowns in blood as well as nice dps with annihilation and epidemic. You also gain the -12 seconds off AMS cd, lichborne and reduced cooldown on deathgrip.
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jf0GqI0IsbotuhZ0xxzhZfMM