So, asking because the links(If there were any) in the OP are non-functional.
What's a good tanking spec for starting out with lower end gear? I hear Blood is supposed to be best when you're all geared up but that overall it's very spiky, which seems undesirable if you're still doing 5mans in blues.
I'd go for blood Ash. All the self healing you have will make up for any healer shortfalls you experience while levelling. AoE wise, you can just glyph DnD to alleviate some of the trigger happy dps issues. You'll get "spiky" regardless of spec due to our lack of blocking, but you should be fine with regular abuse of cooldowns.
Go Blood for the 3% extra stamina as a buffer against people who will see a tank with less than 35k (or whatever) health and start itching to votekick.
I hear people say that, but I can't figure out why.
Threat? Threat is a joke. Next.
Survivability? Eh, if you were really worried about min-maxing that, then you'd be blood.
So what's the big deal?
I certainly feel the threat difference between 2H and DW, then again my group has had me dust off my tanking DK to do ICC so he was wearing mostly Uld25 with a smattering of ToC 25 gear. On the flipside, you do get a lot more choices about your spec as 2H over DW. I've been able to sustain threat well enough as 2H to justify it. Besides, I love Endless Winter, so its been good for me.
Survivability-wise, there is no difference between 2H and DW except that 2H will probably get a little bit more stam off their weapon than DW will.
ExistentialSoundandFury on
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GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
edited June 2010
I did not really enjoy my time in Blood, but that was just me. Frankly, I think it had as much to do with the fact that I felt forced to make the switch to Blood because I could not get my hands on decent 1h weapons as it did with the style of play.
It seems to me like Blood is really dependent on a few key talents for tanking. Maybe it's that way in every tree, I dunno. But I was missing a few and could barely tank Utgarde Keep. Grabbed 'em, things improved tremendously. But I will say that soloing was a breeze. I killed things so fast, and I never ever had to sit down. Even fighting 3 or 4 yellow mobs I always came out ahead. But I still didn't like it much.
Last night I switched to Unholy out of boredom and frustration. And at 74 I'll be back to Frost tanking/level. Which of course is all fine, as I'm cool with flexibility. Sounds like we'll be getting major changes with Cataclysm anyway.
I did not really enjoy my time in Blood, but that was just me. Frankly, I think it had as much to do with the fact that I felt forced to make the switch to Blood because I could not get my hands on decent 1h weapons as it did with the style of play.
It seems to me like Blood is really dependent on a few key talents for tanking. Maybe it's that way in every tree, I dunno. But I was missing a few and could barely tank Utgarde Keep. Grabbed 'em, things improved tremendously. But I will say that soloing was a breeze. I killed things so fast, and I never ever had to sit down. Even fighting 3 or 4 yellow mobs I always came out ahead. But I still didn't like it much.
Last night I switched to Unholy out of boredom and frustration. And at 74 I'll be back to Frost tanking/level. Which of course is all fine, as I'm cool with flexibility. Sounds like we'll be getting major changes with Cataclysm anyway.
All DK tanking is based on a few key talents. There is, after all, only a few DK tanking talents to begin with.
shryke on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited July 2010
So if you guys want to see some Cata beta stuff, here's the talent trees. Blizzard wasn't kidding about Blood spec becoming the tanking line. Everything is in it now. And I loved the tree to begin with and now it fulfills what I like best in this game.
Bone Shield, Blood-Caked Blade (took that one long enough), and Toughness have moved to the tree.
Hemorrhagic Fever Gives your Blood Boil a 50/100% chance to afflict enemies with Hemorrhagic Fever, reducing their physical damage dealt by 10% for 30 sec.
Crimson Scourge Increases the damage dealt by your Blood Boil by 15 / 30 / 45%
Improved Blood Presence While in Frost Presence or Unholy Presence, you retain 2 / 4% damage reduction from Blood Presence, and the chance you will be critically hit by melee attacks is reduced by 3 / 6% in Blood Presence.
Blood Parasite Your weapon hits have a 3 / 6 / 9% chance to cause the target to spawn a Bloodworm. The Bloodworm attacks your enemies, gorging itself with blood until it bursts to heal nearby allies. Lasts up to 20 sec.
Sanguine Fortitude While active, your Icebound Fortitude reduces damage taken by an additional 10 / 20 / 30% and costs 33 / 66% / no runic power to activate.
Blood Swarm When you Plague Strike a target that is already infected with your Blood Plague, there is a 33 / 66 / 100% chance that your next Blood Boil will consume no runes.
Will of the Necropolis When a damaging attack brings you below 30% of your maximum health, you generate a Blood Rune and the cooldown on your Rune Tap ability is refreshed, and all damage taken is reduced by 8 / 16 / 25% for 8 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once every 15 seconds. (not sure if this is changed, been a while)
Dancing Rune Weapon Summons a second rune weapon taht fights on its own for 12 sec, doing the same attacks as the Death Knight but for 50% reduced damage. The rune weapon also assists in defense of its master, granting an additional 20% parry chance while active.
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited July 2010
Did you see epidemic by the way? 3 / 6 / 9 / 12 / 15 second duration increase? And the diseases themselves I think last longer.
All that shit above is the blood tree only. I never spec'd frost so I don't really understand the context of some of those things. Unholy I'm lookin' at now.
Henroid on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited July 2010
Resilient Infection [NYI] When your diseases, other than those applied via Prestilence, are dispelled, you have a 50 / 100% chance to have their cost refunded.
Desecration only slows targets. No damage boost.
Desolation Your Blood Strikes cause you to deal 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5% additional damage with all attacks for the next 20 sec. (no way this is staying in)
Edit - Oh I guess a couple of those are in. EXCUUUUUUUUUUSE ME for WoW-quitting!
Henroid on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited July 2010
Uh, Desecration only snaring and Desolation are both on live.
reVerse on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited July 2010
Well I haven't played in a while, gimme a break! :P
So if you guys want to see some Cata beta stuff, here's the talent trees. Blizzard wasn't kidding about Blood spec becoming the tanking line. Everything is in it now. And I loved the tree to begin with and now it fulfills what I like best in this game.
One of our guild's MTs who has mained a warrior since MC in vanilla is talking about switching to a DK in Cataclysm because of the new Blood tree.
Resilient Infection [NYI] When your diseases, other than those applied via Prestilence, are dispelled, you have a 50 / 100% chance to have their cost refunded.
Desecration only slows targets. No damage boost.
Desolation Your Blood Strikes cause you to deal 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5% additional damage with all attacks for the next 20 sec. (no way this is staying in)
Edit - Oh I guess a couple of those are in. EXCUUUUUUUUUUSE ME for WoW-quitting!
Why would you think a <5% damage increase talent for 5 points wouldn't be staying in anyway?
forty on
Officially the unluckiest CCG player ever.
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GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
edited July 2010
Wow, those Blood talent changes look great. Hopefully Frost doesn't get the shaft as a DPS spec now, but man... I think Blood tanking is going to be a blast.
So, I spawn worms that fill up with blood, burst and heal those around me?
They should probably apply some sort of haste slowing effect to blood elves since they're going to have to spend some time cleaning that shit out of their hair.
dougly on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Resilient Infection [NYI] When your diseases, other than those applied via Prestilence, are dispelled, you have a 50 / 100% chance to have their cost refunded.
Desecration only slows targets. No damage boost.
Desolation Your Blood Strikes cause you to deal 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5% additional damage with all attacks for the next 20 sec. (no way this is staying in)
Edit - Oh I guess a couple of those are in. EXCUUUUUUUUUUSE ME for WoW-quitting!
Why would you think a <5% damage increase talent for 5 points wouldn't be staying in anyway?
Because I thought they said they're trying to remove talents of that nature. The general "do more damage" bullshit. Like, I know this one is circumstantial (Blood Strike = 5% more damage over 20 seconds), but wouldn't you be using Blood Strike often enough to make that buff permanently up? That's boring as shit. And they can do better.
Henroid on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Resilient Infection [NYI] When your diseases, other than those applied via Prestilence, are dispelled, you have a 50 / 100% chance to have their cost refunded.
Desecration only slows targets. No damage boost.
Desolation Your Blood Strikes cause you to deal 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5% additional damage with all attacks for the next 20 sec. (no way this is staying in)
Edit - Oh I guess a couple of those are in. EXCUUUUUUUUUUSE ME for WoW-quitting!
Why would you think a <5% damage increase talent for 5 points wouldn't be staying in anyway?
Because I thought they said they're trying to remove talents of that nature. The general "do more damage" bullshit. Like, I know this one is circumstantial (Blood Strike = 5% more damage over 20 seconds), but wouldn't you be using Blood Strike often enough to make that buff permanently up? That's boring as shit. And they can do better.
They later said that percantage damage increase talents that proc off certain abilities (Blood Strike in this case) are considered "exciting and interesting enough" to stay.
reVerse on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Resilient Infection [NYI] When your diseases, other than those applied via Prestilence, are dispelled, you have a 50 / 100% chance to have their cost refunded.
Desecration only slows targets. No damage boost.
Desolation Your Blood Strikes cause you to deal 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5% additional damage with all attacks for the next 20 sec. (no way this is staying in)
Edit - Oh I guess a couple of those are in. EXCUUUUUUUUUUSE ME for WoW-quitting!
Why would you think a <5% damage increase talent for 5 points wouldn't be staying in anyway?
Because I thought they said they're trying to remove talents of that nature. The general "do more damage" bullshit. Like, I know this one is circumstantial (Blood Strike = 5% more damage over 20 seconds), but wouldn't you be using Blood Strike often enough to make that buff permanently up? That's boring as shit. And they can do better.
They later said that percantage damage increase talents that proc off certain abilities (Blood Strike in this case) are considered "exciting and interesting enough" to stay.
Even in that regard, Desolation is kind of a lame talent. "Every time you use this ability you're probably using anyway, you get a small damage increase." I mean come on.
Well, Blood Strike isn't part of the Unholy AoE rotation, so there's already a reason why it isn't just "+5% damage." This is just one example of how they can tune Unholy DPS to be higher or lower in single target vs. AoE if needed.
Also, talents like these help put some ramp-up time on DPS specs so that they can't just end up going full bore right out of the gate, which is probably especially important for PvP. Debuffs have to be applied, or self buffs need to be set up, or talents need to start procin' before you're doing your "raid DPS."
Of course there are issues with some specs having notably more ramp-up or some *cough* Fury Warriors *cough* having notably less. Cataclysm will give them a chance to reevaluate these discrepancies. Here's hoping they use the time to achieve better parity.
So anyone got a good Frost levelling/instance tanking spec?
I mean, Blood is fun, but I've been rocking it for 10 levels, and want to try and sort of branch out a bit.
My talent spec is pretty much the standard Frost tanking spec right now. If you'd prefer not to dual wield, just skip those talents.
It seems to work pretty well. My gear is mediocre at best, I haven't even glyphed spells yet, but I don't lose aggro, and I don't seem to tax the healers too badly either. Also, those big HB crits are pretty satisfying.
Speaking of solo stuff, yeah I have good heroic gear on my DK, 232s in almost all slots, but I remember right after I switched my DPS spec to DW Frost. I flew over to Icecrown and found some of those big elites, the giants and the giant skeletons and took them on.
Dear fucking god I ripped them apart, taking barely any damage. Was rather fun.
On a random note, my friends and I did a class run of VoA10 last night, I brought my DK as DPS, amusingly enough because my friends were both tanking. I'm not really sure if my DPS was better or worse with the War Token instead of the Mark of Supremacy for hit, but I did alright I suppose 6.4k I think? But I *finally* saw a DK piece drop... T10 gloves. Not bad. Then we went ahead and did the fire boss despite one person dropping. Did much worse there, 5.something, I guess because of lack of Bloodlust on that fight. Saw another DK piece drop, Furious Gladiator pants, so kinda cool I guess.
Now I need to run 25 and hope for T10 pants... I'd *love* to switch from 4 piece T9 to 2 piece T10, the Obliterate damage increase seems a great deal better than the Blood disease critting for Frost's weak Blood disease damage to start with.
One of the things that might've screwed my damage is that I hadn't played my DK in a bit and was a little rusty on my priority.
Hows this for a Blood levelling spec? kinda wish i could get Vendetta/Rune Tap but i cant really make them fit. Also should i go for Dancing Rune Weapon first or get some unholy stuff first? Level 60 atm.
Saban on
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GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
Capable in a solo quest grinding capacity as well, I assume?
Yeah, definitely. You're not going to have any problems killing stuff, though there are probably faster ways to do it. But if you want to practice tanking instances, Frost is the way to go--though obviously that will change when Cataclysm hits.
But yeah, I have no problem running quests. It's easy to take on a bunch of mobs at once without losing too much health. Leveling as a DK seems to be a pretty evenly-paced experience no matter what. But then, I played a Druid in the early days of WoW, so everything seems kinda fast to me now.
Hows this for a Blood levelling spec? kinda wish i could get Vendetta/Rune Tap but i cant really make them fit. Also should i go for Dancing Rune Weapon first or get some unholy stuff first? Level 60 atm.
For the point you're putting into it, Dancing Rune is perfectly fine.
I opted to grab Rune Tap soley for it's increase of survivability, and getting me back to that 75% Blood Gorged Bonus. Same thing applies for Vendetta; both skills really help keep me topped off and good to go.
If anything, maybe sacrifice Bloodworms for Vendetta, if you find they're not consistent enough.
Hows this for a Blood levelling spec? kinda wish i could get Vendetta/Rune Tap but i cant really make them fit. Also should i go for Dancing Rune Weapon first or get some unholy stuff first? Level 60 atm.
For the point you're putting into it, Dancing Rune is perfectly fine.
I opted to grab Rune Tap soley for it's increase of survivability, and getting me back to that 75% Blood Gorged Bonus. Same thing applies for Vendetta; both skills really help keep me topped off and good to go.
If anything, maybe sacrifice Bloodworms for Vendetta, if you find they're not consistent enough.
I haven't really paid that much attention to how much bloodworms have been healing or doing damage, so i might have to look into that. What about my Glyph choices? Death Strike looks nice and Disease looks really handy.
Major: Death Strike is an absolute must, and Dark Death is also very useful, especially with your choice of Sudden Doom, and the general use of Death Coil in Blood rotations.
I've also been a fan of Glyph of Death Grip, as it allows me to just keep on rolling with a refreshed Death Grip. Makes downtime even less of an issue. But go for Dark Death/Death Strike first.
Minor: Glyph of Pestilence is useful for groups where you want to throw a Blood Boil off. Glyph of Raise Dead always seems expensive at whatever AH I'm at, but I love it for saving the reagent for a ghoul.
Damage-wise, Bloodworms are a pretty weak investment for 3-points. I'm not sure how much healing they work out to be, though. Overall though it's a decent leveling talent as long as you're doing mostly single/double pulls so all your blood runes are going into heart strike.
How is DW frost for levelling? Playing a DK on beta and DW frost pretty much destroys everything, but that has more to do with the gear level, i think.
Resilient Infection [NYI] When your diseases, other than those applied via Prestilence, are dispelled, you have a 50 / 100% chance to have their cost refunded.
Desecration only slows targets. No damage boost.
Desolation Your Blood Strikes cause you to deal 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5% additional damage with all attacks for the next 20 sec. (no way this is staying in)
Edit - Oh I guess a couple of those are in. EXCUUUUUUUUUUSE ME for WoW-quitting!
Why would you think a <5% damage increase talent for 5 points wouldn't be staying in anyway?
Just because I like to poke back at forty:
When do DK get to pick a specialization? When they get their first talent point for completing a quest. (Source)
Deleted talents Looking at Unholy, talents like Impurity, Desolation, Wandering Plague, Crypt Fever (but not Ebon Plaguebringer) and Rage of Rivendare (sad about the lore hit there) are gone.
Posts
he owns
Oh, you mean with a staff?
I certainly feel the threat difference between 2H and DW, then again my group has had me dust off my tanking DK to do ICC so he was wearing mostly Uld25 with a smattering of ToC 25 gear. On the flipside, you do get a lot more choices about your spec as 2H over DW. I've been able to sustain threat well enough as 2H to justify it. Besides, I love Endless Winter, so its been good for me.
Survivability-wise, there is no difference between 2H and DW except that 2H will probably get a little bit more stam off their weapon than DW will.
It seems to me like Blood is really dependent on a few key talents for tanking. Maybe it's that way in every tree, I dunno. But I was missing a few and could barely tank Utgarde Keep. Grabbed 'em, things improved tremendously. But I will say that soloing was a breeze. I killed things so fast, and I never ever had to sit down. Even fighting 3 or 4 yellow mobs I always came out ahead. But I still didn't like it much.
Last night I switched to Unholy out of boredom and frustration. And at 74 I'll be back to Frost tanking/level. Which of course is all fine, as I'm cool with flexibility. Sounds like we'll be getting major changes with Cataclysm anyway.
PSN: Threeve703
All DK tanking is based on a few key talents. There is, after all, only a few DK tanking talents to begin with.
Bone Shield, Blood-Caked Blade (took that one long enough), and Toughness have moved to the tree.
Hemorrhagic Fever
Gives your Blood Boil a 50/100% chance to afflict enemies with Hemorrhagic Fever, reducing their physical damage dealt by 10% for 30 sec.
Crimson Scourge
Increases the damage dealt by your Blood Boil by 15 / 30 / 45%
Improved Blood Presence
While in Frost Presence or Unholy Presence, you retain 2 / 4% damage reduction from Blood Presence, and the chance you will be critically hit by melee attacks is reduced by 3 / 6% in Blood Presence.
Blood Parasite
Your weapon hits have a 3 / 6 / 9% chance to cause the target to spawn a Bloodworm. The Bloodworm attacks your enemies, gorging itself with blood until it bursts to heal nearby allies. Lasts up to 20 sec.
Sanguine Fortitude
While active, your Icebound Fortitude reduces damage taken by an additional 10 / 20 / 30% and costs 33 / 66% / no runic power to activate.
Blood Swarm
When you Plague Strike a target that is already infected with your Blood Plague, there is a 33 / 66 / 100% chance that your next Blood Boil will consume no runes.
Will of the Necropolis
When a damaging attack brings you below 30% of your maximum health, you generate a Blood Rune and the cooldown on your Rune Tap ability is refreshed, and all damage taken is reduced by 8 / 16 / 25% for 8 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once every 15 seconds. (not sure if this is changed, been a while)
Dancing Rune Weapon
Summons a second rune weapon taht fights on its own for 12 sec, doing the same attacks as the Death Knight but for 50% reduced damage. The rune weapon also assists in defense of its master, granting an additional 20% parry chance while active.
All that shit above is the blood tree only. I never spec'd frost so I don't really understand the context of some of those things. Unholy I'm lookin' at now.
When your diseases, other than those applied via Prestilence, are dispelled, you have a 50 / 100% chance to have their cost refunded.
Desecration only slows targets. No damage boost.
Desolation
Your Blood Strikes cause you to deal 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5% additional damage with all attacks for the next 20 sec. (no way this is staying in)
Edit - Oh I guess a couple of those are in. EXCUUUUUUUUUUSE ME for WoW-quitting!
PSN: Threeve703
They should probably apply some sort of haste slowing effect to blood elves since they're going to have to spend some time cleaning that shit out of their hair.
Because I thought they said they're trying to remove talents of that nature. The general "do more damage" bullshit. Like, I know this one is circumstantial (Blood Strike = 5% more damage over 20 seconds), but wouldn't you be using Blood Strike often enough to make that buff permanently up? That's boring as shit. And they can do better.
They later said that percantage damage increase talents that proc off certain abilities (Blood Strike in this case) are considered "exciting and interesting enough" to stay.
Even in that regard, Desolation is kind of a lame talent. "Every time you use this ability you're probably using anyway, you get a small damage increase." I mean come on.
Or the talent might get axed in the future as they are nowhere near done apparently.
Also, talents like these help put some ramp-up time on DPS specs so that they can't just end up going full bore right out of the gate, which is probably especially important for PvP. Debuffs have to be applied, or self buffs need to be set up, or talents need to start procin' before you're doing your "raid DPS."
Of course there are issues with some specs having notably more ramp-up or some *cough* Fury Warriors *cough* having notably less. Cataclysm will give them a chance to reevaluate these discrepancies. Here's hoping they use the time to achieve better parity.
2H or 1H will work!
Seriously, Death Strike everything.
So anyone got a good Frost levelling/instance tanking spec?
I mean, Blood is fun, but I've been rocking it for 10 levels, and want to try and sort of branch out a bit.
My talent spec is pretty much the standard Frost tanking spec right now. If you'd prefer not to dual wield, just skip those talents.
It seems to work pretty well. My gear is mediocre at best, I haven't even glyphed spells yet, but I don't lose aggro, and I don't seem to tax the healers too badly either. Also, those big HB crits are pretty satisfying.
PSN: Threeve703
Dear fucking god I ripped them apart, taking barely any damage. Was rather fun.
On a random note, my friends and I did a class run of VoA10 last night, I brought my DK as DPS, amusingly enough because my friends were both tanking. I'm not really sure if my DPS was better or worse with the War Token instead of the Mark of Supremacy for hit, but I did alright I suppose 6.4k I think? But I *finally* saw a DK piece drop... T10 gloves. Not bad. Then we went ahead and did the fire boss despite one person dropping. Did much worse there, 5.something, I guess because of lack of Bloodlust on that fight. Saw another DK piece drop, Furious Gladiator pants, so kinda cool I guess.
Now I need to run 25 and hope for T10 pants... I'd *love* to switch from 4 piece T9 to 2 piece T10, the Obliterate damage increase seems a great deal better than the Blood disease critting for Frost's weak Blood disease damage to start with.
One of the things that might've screwed my damage is that I hadn't played my DK in a bit and was a little rusty on my priority.
Hows this for a Blood levelling spec? kinda wish i could get Vendetta/Rune Tap but i cant really make them fit. Also should i go for Dancing Rune Weapon first or get some unholy stuff first? Level 60 atm.
Yeah, definitely. You're not going to have any problems killing stuff, though there are probably faster ways to do it. But if you want to practice tanking instances, Frost is the way to go--though obviously that will change when Cataclysm hits.
But yeah, I have no problem running quests. It's easy to take on a bunch of mobs at once without losing too much health. Leveling as a DK seems to be a pretty evenly-paced experience no matter what. But then, I played a Druid in the early days of WoW, so everything seems kinda fast to me now.
PSN: Threeve703
For the point you're putting into it, Dancing Rune is perfectly fine.
I opted to grab Rune Tap soley for it's increase of survivability, and getting me back to that 75% Blood Gorged Bonus. Same thing applies for Vendetta; both skills really help keep me topped off and good to go.
If anything, maybe sacrifice Bloodworms for Vendetta, if you find they're not consistent enough.
I haven't really paid that much attention to how much bloodworms have been healing or doing damage, so i might have to look into that. What about my Glyph choices? Death Strike looks nice and Disease looks really handy.
I've also been a fan of Glyph of Death Grip, as it allows me to just keep on rolling with a refreshed Death Grip. Makes downtime even less of an issue. But go for Dark Death/Death Strike first.
Minor: Glyph of Pestilence is useful for groups where you want to throw a Blood Boil off. Glyph of Raise Dead always seems expensive at whatever AH I'm at, but I love it for saving the reagent for a ghoul.
Glyph of Horn of Winter to cap it off, I suppose.
Just because I like to poke back at forty: