blood vs frost vs unholy comes down to survivability (via self-healing) vs control/frost damage and good burst aoe vs shadow damage, a nice pet, some area denial abilities and high magic/disease damage.
each has their pros and cons, but of them, blood tends to be on the bottom because its almost completely physical damage. this means you need a lot of ArP to be successful, which is a stat you cant really afford to stack in pvp (even as a DK). plus you have to sacrifice a major glyph spot for a reliable snare (heart strike glyph). you get a lot of survivability due to death strike being a main part of your rotation, and vampiric blood + blood worms + rune tap can be a huge amount of burst healing. combine with draenei racial and herbalism for even more healing power. in short, blood dks can be very hard to kill, but they tend not to be able to apply a lot of pressure, and they lack in control.
frost comes with the only true CC for the death knight (hungering cold) as well as the highest burst aoe you can find in the form of howling blast (minor glyphed corpse explosion can come close, but requires wayyyy too many conditions to be practical in pvp....altho it IS fun in AV). still, thanks to killing machine and rime procs, howling blast is quite useful, and being able to CC everyone in a 10 yard radius for 10s every minute is nothing to scoff at either. in frost presence with unbreakable armor up youre pretty much immune to most white damage and almost all DoT effects while its up, and frost strike can hit like a god damned truck (being nerfed next patch tho). chilblains is annoying; frost fever lasts longer than the snare, so youll find yourself overlapping your frost runes with a CoI or IT every 10s. being able to spread an aoe snare with pestilence is nice sometimes tho.
unholy gives you the highest magic damage in the form of ebon plaguebringer, some area denial with AMZ and desecration, and the extra utility of having a pet that can keep people in combat, do decent dps, and most importantly, stun for 3 out of every 30 seconds. AMZ can take some classes and completely destroy their damage under the right circumstances, as well as protect teammates from coordinated burst (i.e. vs an RMP team or something). scourge strike hits quite hard as well, and wandering plague + pestilence means you can get a lot of aoe damage going with diseases, which is good for putting pressure on healers who cant heal multiple targets at once very effectively (druids, paladins). bone shield provides some nice fire-and-forget protection, but the burst healing of blood and the longer IBF of frost is something to be missed. desecration is my favorite of the snare effects; its the only one druids have a lot of trouble shifting out of. it also makes life generally difficult for all other enemies nearby.
my personal preference has me as unholy most of the time, with a frost pvp build for times when im feeling the need for more CC or if im running with my unholy DK buddy. ultimately tho, i find unholy/blood to be my general pvp build, both for arena and bgs (altho to be fair its more of a bg build than a pure arena one). good survivability with rune tap, ibf and bone shield, the ghoul for more utility, glyph of rune tap for some extra group healing every 30s (10% can save lives sometimes) and high damage hits from scourge strike, as well as strong overall pressure with gargoyle, ghoul and diseases.
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Second, what's the deal with playing a 'tank' in PvP? In a similar fashion to prot warriors, that is. Is it viable, or do you have to focus primarily on DPS to stand any chance?
DK's kinda tank by virtue of chains of ice, at least when it comes to melee. if you can chains a melee next to you, and you dont mind sacrificing your FU moves, then you can keep them on you literally until you die or they die. theyre forced to engage you at that point unless they have some kind of escape mechanism (shadowstep, freedom, charge/intercept). saving death grip for the right time alleviates a lot of that (warriors become the only problem, pallies need a dispeller, but all that can be worked around with some good skill usage).
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Last but not least, do any of you have any other tips? Are there any common pitfalls I need to avoid?
blood tap is your friend. i use that skill religously, altho it took me awhile to incorporate it.
um, also, its better to IBF early than not IBF at all, especially vs pallies and if you think a rogue is around. a combination of DnD + horn of winter will give you enough runic power to IBF if youre at 0, and most pallies will open with a stun in BG's to try and get some kind of damage advantage.
strangulate works on other DK's; it'll keep them from doing anything but strikes. this means no rune tap, no icy touch, no IBF, AMS, AMZ, death coil, DnD, death grip, strangulate, chains of ice or blood boil.
if you use army of the dead, do yourself a favor and AMS before hand. try to IBF too. that means only physical interrupts will work on you (pummel, kick, shield bash, feral charge).
mind freeze, frost strike and scourge strike are considered magic effects. as such, having a certain amount of spell pen is nice (135 is the accepted number, which is five blue-quality spell pen gems (stormy sky sapphire iirc) and a spell pen enchant to cloak). this ensures no random mind freezes get resisted, and keeps resistances from taking off a chunk of your SS or FS damage. also, since these three effects are considered magic, they go thru physical immunity, i.e. hand of protection. howling blast and icy touch are also magic damage, in case you happen to not be in range to use FS or SS. chains of ice is also magic if you need to snare someone.
making a blood tap > frost presence macro probably isnt a bad idea; it helps deal with target swaps in arena quite nicely by ensuring you can swap a presence without getting tripped up by rune CD's. in fact, having that for any clutch ability isnt a horrible idea (use your discretion of course).
thats all i can think of.
Edited, Jun 23rd 2009 4:03am by Quor