Unholy wasn’t changed all that much in the last patch. Scourge Strike has been altered so that it now deals 70% weapon damage plus 12% physical damage dealt as shadow damage, per disease on the target. According to the notes, this change was made to allow Scourge Strike to hit a little harder in Pvp. Also, now Unholy Blight prevents diseases from being dispelled. This change is intended to make Unholy a more attractive Pvp option.

Unholy spec focuses on disease damage, with strikes as a backup. These mechanics make Unholy the ultimate AoE spec; but a little less ideal for single-target battles. The primary specs are these:

Unholy AoE [17/0/54]

Glyphs: Death and Decay, Icy Touch, Disease

Rotation Openner:       

Rotation 1:     Dump(   )

Rotation 2:      

Unholy Single-Target [14/0/57]

Glyphs: Dark Death, Ghoul, Icy Touch

Rotation 1:        

Rotation 2:     Dump(   )

Now that the 3.3 DPS Specs are all but done, let’s talk a little about tanking. I was surprised that I pretty much like my tanking specs from 3.2, with the exception of Unholy. There’ve been some changes to Scourge Strike and some other abilities in Unholy, so it warrants a second look at the spec I picked out.

Blood
53/8/10

Blood hasn’t changed at all since I looked at it in 3.2. This spec provides strong regeneration and mitigation as well as nice utility talents in the top of the other two trees. I think Blood is a superior raid-boss tanking spec.

Perks
Health Regeneration via Imp Death Strike, Imp Blood Pres, and Vampiric Blood
Enhanced mitigation via added Stamina, Armor, and Parry
Hysteria and Might of Mograine raid buffs
Improved Runic Power generation

Frost
10/51/10

From my experience, Frost is the superior Aggro spec. Along with other abilities; you get stronger initial threat thanks to Howling Blast. I use Frost the most for Heroic tanking and on raid trash, due to its snap-aggro on the pull.

Perks
Improved Avoidance and Mitigation via Frigid Dreadplate and Unbreakable Armor
Improved AoE threat via Howling Blast and Morbidity

Unholy
13/8/50

This unholy spec focuses more on raid tanking. It drops talents for magic immunity because they’re pretty much useless in a raid situation. Unholy focuses more on AoE threat and avoidance. I’d imagine it would be great for trash tanking, but I think it falls short on aggro generation for raid bosses.

Perks
Superior AoE Threat via improved diseases and wandering\ebon plague
Improved Avoidance via Bone Shield

Frost DPS is my favorite spec, I guess I just like the style. It suits me.

Following Naxxramas, Blizzard pretty much killed Frost-based Dual-Wielding specs (and Unholy-Based Dual-Wielding specs). The problem was that these specs relied on Icy Touch spam to make ridiculously consistent Killing Machine procs. At the time, Killing Machine wasn’t really normalized, so the faster your weapons were, the more procs you could get, essentially buffing your crit percentages to insanely high numbers at the time.

In response to this, Blizzard nerfed Icy Touch, and some Sigils that took advantage of it. They also normalized Killing Machine to a procs-per-minute setup. The damage of Dual-Wielding specs was slaughtered, pushing most dps Death Knights to Unholy and Blood.

Popular demand forced Blizzard to redesign the Frost tree and make Dual-Wielding a viable option again. Nerves of Cold Steel, Threat of Thassarian, and changes to Obliterate were added to essential turn Frost into the Dual-Wielding tree. Frost is an iconic path for Death Knights in Wow Lore, while Dual-Wielding is a play-style that many players are drawn to. Part of it is rebellion against the norm and being different, part of it I believe is just personal preference.

The frost tree has always been more magic damage than melee. While Blood fills the melee-based roll, and Unholy is traditionally for AoE, Frost fills a spot in between. In a fight like Lady Deathwhisper a Death Knight can help kill those mobs that your Warriors, Paladins, or Hunters would be otherwise unable to kill effectively.

Strengths
* Frost excels at single-target damage, while still retaining competitive AoE damage via Howling Blast.
* Frost relies more heavily on magic damage than Blood.
* Frost provides raid utility in the form of Imp. Icy Talons, a haste buff similar to Windfury.
* Enhanced damage and survival via Unbreakable Armor.

Weaknesses
* Other classes can provide similar raid buffs.
* Weaker AoE damage performance.
* Weaker defensive capabilities, lacking the avoidance and mitigation of Blood or Unholy.
* At this time Blood or Unholy have a slight dps advantage.

Weapon Speed and Frost DPS

In previous incarnations, Dual-Wielding relied on Fast\Fast weapons or Slow\Fast weapons to achieve maximum dps. Since Killing Machine, one of Frost’s best procs is now based on procs per minute, slower weapon speeds are best. Get yourself a good 2.60 swords or axes (or maces if you’re a dorf) and you’ll achieve maximum dps. For best effect, you should use Fallen Crusader on your MH and Razorice on your OH.

Glyphs

Glyph of Icy Touch
Glyph of Obliterate
Glyph of Frost Strike

0/54/17 Rotation

Rotations for Frost are based on a priority system. Which will look kinda like this: Frost Strike (Killing Machine) > Diseases (IT, PS) > Howling Blast (if Rime and Killing Machine are up) > Obliterate > Blood Strike > Frost Strike. A priority system means that the priority queue is evaluated when deciding which ability to use; instead of following a set rotation. Please keep this in mind as you consider the rotation below.

General Frost rotations will look something like this.

Rotation 1
     Dump(  )

Rotation 2
    Dump(  )

NOTE: This ability list is prone to change based on your Killing Machine and Rime procs. For instance, when you have a Killing Machine and Rime proc, you should use Howling Blast. When you have a Killing Machine proc, you should use KM prior to hitting Icy Touch again. Also, I'm still trying to find some good stat weights for Frost.

I tried out Unholy in ICC this past week. I was really impressed with the results. Keep in mind that my 2-hander is pretty crappy. Despite having the worst 2-hander in the guild, I was still very competitive on dps, hitting as high as #2 on bosses.

To raid, I chose a heavy AoE build which favors multi-targetting over single-target damage. I expected it to fare well on trash, but not so well on bosses. My previous DW-Frost build did exactly the opposite. My hope was that this spec would make me at least competitive with the consecrate-batteries on the trash packs.

You will notice that this build does not take Reaping, so you will not get Death Runes. At this point, especially with lower gear level (I don’t really have much from ICC) Reaping is not recommended.

Strengths
High, Sustained AoE Damage, the highest possible for a Death Knight, doesn’t rely on procs.
Raid Utility – Ebon Plague provides great raid utility and a nearly unduplicated raid buff.
Perma-Ghoul, Bone Shield – Enhanced survivability and damage

Weaknesses
This spec suffers some in Single-target dps. While competitive, it won’t get you the highest possible numbers because the spec is geared specifically toward AoE damage. It might be a good idea to set a decent single-target spec as your alternate spec.

17/0/54 Rotation

Multiple Target AoE – Opening Rotation ONLY
     

Rotation 1
    Dump(   )

Rotation 2
    

Single Target

Rotation 1
       

Rotation 2
    Dump(   )

Glyphs

Glyph of Disease
Glyph of Icy Touch
Glyph of Death and Decay

Stat Weights

Stat weights are how you compare the benefit of one stat over another for a given spec. Stat weights are different from spec to spec, so if you are not unholy, these stat weights will not apply to you and will be different for your spec. So after getting 8% melee hit (also called "Hit Capped") your best stats are Strength > Crit Rating > Armor Penetration. Strength has a stat weight of 3.02, while Armor Pen has a stat weight of 2.01. This means that Strength is just about 50% better for you, per point than Armor Pen. For a more detailed explanation of how to work with stat weights, please see my BiS (Best in Slot) post.

Please be aware that as you start getting more ICC gear especially Tier 10 Armor Pen starts to scale more than Crit Rating. Keep this in mind as you get better gear from Icecrown Citadel.

The current stat weights for Unholy are:


WeaponDPS: 6.67
MeleeHit (<8%): 3.62
Strength: 3.06
Crit Rating: 2.16
ArP Rating: 2.01
Haste Rating: 1.75
Expertise Rating: 1.63
Agility: 1.55
Attack Power: 1
Armor: 0.028

Stat Weights via ElitistJerks