Let’s talk about some of your arguments and questions.

First, I’m pretty sure that 2 pts will give you a total of 30 runic power.

Second, it looks like you’ll still enjoy taking less magic damage. Improved Frost Presence gives you even less magic damage while in Frost Presence.

Third, you might just have to use BB instead of Pestilence for aoe tanking now, especially with BB being buffed. AoE tanking was NEVER an issue for DKs though, we have the best AoE tanking methods. DnD causes plenty of threat, so that if you just use your blood runes for BB on your main dps target, you’ll never lose threat.

Howling Blast as well was never moved to the 51pt talent to make it harder to tank. Tanks should always spec to Frost Strike, since it’s the best way to unload runic power without the threat of the damage being avoided. The new Howling Blast is only 6 points away from this.

The reason Howling Blast was moved was to prevent certain specs from being able to output horrendous amounts of AOE and single target damage. A DK could (and still can until 3.1) spec to Howling Blast in the Frost Tree, then go Unholy the rest of the way, and be able to have a permanent pet with stun abilities and half decent dps, a gargoyle with great dps, howling blasts and icy touches that crit for 4k surprisingly often. Moving gargoyle and HB apart prevents people from getting both, now they have to choose between the two. From a tanking perspective, it changes nothing, the problem with DK tanks has always been single target threat, not aoe threat.

I still think Blizzard did well here. The old spec was just too strong in terms of DPS.

Black ice changes are ok imho , %damage stays the same but turning 10% into shadow damage is rather nice
Question – runic power mastery going to 2 points means that it’ll only give out +20 more runic power OR 15 per rank ( total of 30 as the 3 rank version ) ?
ALSO i specd to frost aura and i have to say it’s rather nice to have a +80 protection to any magic school , makes me feel warm and fuzzy while tanking .
ALSO #2
RETARDED Pestilence nerf is retarded . WHY ?
I must admit ,i think i’ve used blood boil 2-3 times before i got D&D but hey ,that’s me … i think that (pestilence nerf) along with the hb nerf will really mess up aoe tanking at the start of the fights .
Anyway that’s just my 2c
/rant off

I really like the look of the new frost tree though, it will give DKs some serious advantages to speccing up to improved frost presence. To be able to stay in blood presence or unholy presence with the hp active from frost presence? booya, that’s an extra 2.2k hp for me. And along the way, I get an AOE CC, and a talent that increases both my unholy and ice damage? icy touch still being a nice little nuke (pwn!), plague strike with added damage to help out with burst damage (PWN!), and blood boil doing more damage hopefully with BB glyph working the same.

Now the loss of Gargoyle with a shadowfrost spec will hurt, but I have to say it was a little Overpowered. I’d wait until a healer started getting pressured, and that Gargoyle would throw it over the top. I can still decimate healers without it, it would just make it that much easier.

But I think I would gladly trade that with Hungering Cold. HC is just too viable for PVP, and face it guys, DW dks were just doing too much damage. It’s about time they got nerfed.

And you can still spec out of unholy for PVP viability. There are 2k+ rated arena teams with blood DKs now.

I think this will be awesome. I love how unholy presence increases rune regen now. Should be able to pump out some nice burst. I’ll probably be PVPing with improved frost presence and with unholy presence active, but I believe you can have enough points to even get both improved presences, then you can hang out in blood presence for more damage! I don’t have access to any talent calculators on this computer, but I think it’s possible.

ill prob go a 0/53/18 DW spec… unless BotN is -/3 in that case 0/51/20 DW

Your talking shit.

And really who specs the auras anyway? they are all crap for 2 points worth and in their new guise they still look like a waste of 2 points IMHO.

Other than that, seems like ill stick with blood tank, frost now seems a bit weaker cause i wont got for howling, 51point in frost is a waste.