Seeing as I cant play the game right now due to waiting on my house to close I will write a quick DK guide for beginers or those that may have a few questions. In no way am i saying that my methods are superior to any that current 80's are using I am just bored and writing this is entertaining to me.

I am mostly asked what rotations I use by differant people so if you are interested in rotations it will be at the bottom of each spec.

First i can clear a general misconception about DK's as tanks. all specs can tank, if the tank is not automatically frost as i hear many complain about does not mean there a bad tank and from what I have read it seems that unholy is actually the superior tank spec at the moment. but all in all each spec has tanking talents in them so a blood tank should not be an automatic group fail just becasue you notice his spec is not what you want him to have. And come next patch blood is actually getting a few new tanking abilities making them better aoe tanks on top of what they already have. Usually if you have a bad tank its just that, a bad tank not a bad spec. I will not touch on tanking other then what i just said because I am not a tank myself nor interested in becoming one so someone with more knowledge on that can chime in if they like.

As far as dps goes the 3 trees all over a differant play style

Blood - This is for heavy single target dps, It falls behind a bit in party's or raids because so much aoe is going on and if you are a blood spec you are doing the least aoe damage of the 3 specs. Dont be discouraged by falling behind in numbers if you are blood since when a boss fight comes you should shine over the other 2 specs. At the same time if you are not geared or are using a bad rotation that can drop your *dps a bit as well. A few things to remember is to use whatever cooldowns you have that are availible. dont ever hold onto runic power dump it on what you have that is availible. Dancing rune weapon should always be on cd since when it is ready to go it should be used unless you know a boss will be coming in the next 3 minutes and are saving it for him (make sure you are 100 runic power before you dump it on DRW or you are sacraficing a large amount of dps). When DRW is on cd make sure you are dumping you runic power with deathcoils at the end of the rotation. You should not have to watch for a sudden doom proc since you will have 15 seconds to use it and a deathcoil will naturally fall into your rotation before that time is up.

This is a pretty standard spec for blood, there is another spec that allows you to use the gargoyle instead of DRW but is considered an inferior spec.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2305021530003313201250013513200500030000000000000000000230200000000000000000000000000&glyph=000000000000

Rotations - For the spec i just posted above the roations would be : PS, IT, OB, HS, HS, DC, OB, OB, HS, HS, DC, DC. your diseases will have just expired on the last DC and you should start the rotation over again at that point. This rotation also allows you to get in 3 OB as opposed to 2 and using another HS. This rotaion also starts under the impresion that you are at 0 runic power, if you are coming from another fight and have runic power left over then you can add another DC after your first one to close the 2 second gap that you will have  between your first DC and OB. I am not listing when to drop a DRW since it is not part of a rotation and is used at your discretion.

Frost - This spec has the possibilty of being a heavy dps spec though it can be harder to use. Frost has the hardest hitting move of all our abilities and that is frost strike (I know that rune strike hits harder but its a tanking move and is not used often seeing as we dont dodge or parry while we are dps'n normally, besides its damage is getting nerfed in an upcoming patch) Frost strike will replace deathcoil as your means of a runic dump. When I say this is the harder spec to use it is because you need to have more of an awarness of your procs and if the situation calls for you to use them. An example of that would be Howling blast, it uses the same runes as obliterate but does less damage, but HB can hit multiple targets to your front therefore making it the better choice. But you want to make sure that you have a rime proc (makes HB consume no runes) and if deathchill is off cd you would want to pop that as well to ensure HB crits everything it hits plus you need to be sure all targets are infected with icy touch since that doubles HB's damage. HB can crit for around 5k depending on gear and if you have mutiple targets to your front this can lead to an insane amount of damage very quickly. but other then potentially nice aoe damage frost falls short in general, you are relying on frost strike to crit to try to keep your dps up with other specs and its not a reliable way to push ahead with dps.

This is a solid frost spec - http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2305020500000000000000000003202505133502112301005101350000000000000000000000000000000&glyph=000000000000

Rotations - PS, IT, BS, BS, OB, FS, PS, IT, OB, OB, FS, FS. This rotation will require you to pay a bit more attention as well since instead of diseases lasting 12 seconds they will only last 6 meaning that need to be applied more often. If you are going to use a HB then use it where you would normally use an OB.

Unholy - This is your standard heavy aoe spec. It can fall a bit short on single target dps but if you use your cd's correctley you can minimize that as well. There is not to much to say about this spec since it actually does alot of work for you. a large portion of your dps will come from things that you dont directly controll, things like wandering plague and blood caked strike or necrosis. they are all happening automatically without any attention from you. This is a gear heavy spec though meaning untill you hit certain numbers in atp and hit it wont work nearly as well for you. If you are or were a warlock you can think of this spec as destruction spec from a lock tree. destruction did not shine untill you hit certain numbers in crit, hit and spell damage (in bc at least) Ways to maximize your single target dps for things like a boss fight is carefull use of cd's, your gargoyle is a large dps boost if you can keep him up for a full minute. When you are ready to use your gargoyle make sure you are at 50 or more runic power and after you unleash him stop using moves that deplete runic power, after 10 seconds the gargoyle will start taking runic power away from you and when you hit 0 he will leave. a easy way to make sure you dont hit 0 is to just keep your dps up and dont use any runic dumping moves like UB or DC. If you can keep your runic power up the gargoyle will stay for 1 minute and do some hefty dps while he is out. I think he was doing around 2k a hit every 3 seconds when i had him out last so add that into your dps numbers for 1 minute and that will keep you from dropping to far behind on a single target.

This is my current unholy spec - http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2305020500000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000230200305103115203140023033151&glyph=000000000000

If you notice in my spec i picked up night of the dead, come next patch it will grant your ghoul 70% damage reduction from aoe and if you have been unholy before you know how fast your ghoul dies so this is a valuable talent in the near future.

Rotations - PS, IT, BS, BS, SS, UB, SS, SS, SS, DC For 2 or more targets you always want to pop UB if it is single target stick with DC

Dual Wield - I wont try to lie and say I know alot about this spec because I dont. I tried it for a little while and was not impressed but that was with some weak weapons and I was not as geared then as now so i may like it in the future with a few upgrades. The one thing I can tell you is that tri spec is the way to go for dual wield and frost will be your deepest tree. You will want to grab Howling blast from frost and make that your primary attack seeing that it is the only move that does not go off of your weapons base damage. this spec will mainly boost your white damage and proc generation

Spec - http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2305000500000000000000000003200535130502112301000000000230200305003100000000000000000&glyph=000000000000

Rotation - PS, IT, BS, BS, (OB or HB depending on if a rime proc is up) DC, DC pretty easy rotation just DC untill out of runic power then repeat.

This has turned out alot longer then i thought it would be so sorry for the huge wall-o-text and now that I wrote all this i forgot some of the other things I wanted to add in the begining so if there are any questions feel free to ask here or whisper me in game (I wont be on untill the 3rd of Jan) If you see something i can improve on or is just plain wrong then let me know about that to you might have more expeience in something that I dont.

Demention