I leveled as Unholy because it sounded like the most fun. And as far as playbility goes they are all somewhat similar. Blood has a lot of self-heal built into the tree. Which may be helping soloing. But just take a look at all the talents and see which one most benefits what you want to accomplish.
Go unholy for 2 reasons: Pale Horse and Unholy Aura.
Sounds retarded, but you'll spend most of your time running after mobs and riding between quest locations. Since you'll smash mobs in 5s regardless of your spec, I'd stick with unholy for these two talents alone.
I know blood has a lot of self-healing, but I had zero downtime as unholy. Death Strikes are handy, and on the worst scenario I just used a bandage in between pulls.
When i level'd, i started out as frost, it worked fine, was planning on staying that way untill 80, but later on i tried unholy.. for about 5 hours, then respecced back to frost, unholy simply just sucked, it was boring, in my opinion of course. Anyways, at about 77 i tried blood, loved it, no downtime, a great lot of damage, and it's a fun specc overall, so i'd recommend blood for sure.
Great thing about blood is that, unlike the other specs, you don't need to deathstrike unless you're soloing elites. All three trees level extremely fast so do whatever you like.
I played a DK on the beta to 80, I just started a new one on live after levling my hunter and druid to 80.
I play pretty hardcore, I love to get info on what is best for what, crunch numbers etc.
I'd say spec Unholy, no doubt, by FAR highest dps, best AoE and 20% mount speed is quite alot of time cut off.
At the moment Unholy is really the only viable tree for anything, it's the best for dps, it's the best for AoE dps, it's the best for tanking.
I know all 3 trees are made with tank talents for the DK, but Frost atm is so fucked up that it's far weaker than Unholy, and if anything Frost is the tree with the most cool and good tank talents, just that they don't really work out to be the best atm due to Bone Shield being so insane.
There is however a patch comming very soon that will make the 3 trees more what they were sposed to be, Blood will be the most single target focused dps tree and will be doing good dps in the new patch. Unholy will still have good single target dps, but not as good as Blood is spose to be, but it will have more AoE. Frost will become a much better tank tree, slightly better for dps, but mainly for tanking.
From what I'v seen and done and tested so far this is my conclusion:
Blood = Best Single Target dps tree with fair AoE utility.
Frost = Best tank tree with slightly better AoE than Blood but not as good single target dps.
Unholy = Best AoE tree, still very good single target dps tree, but no longer the obvious tank tree.
So to finaly awnser your question of what spec to level as. Go Unholy, it is by far the best for now. After the patch, respec Blood, it will be better for soloing elites aswell as killing single mobs faster which is what you mainly do for quests.
I really don't get the people who praise blood's selfheals and no downtime thingy. I mean, I had no downtime as Unholy either. Death Strike is all the selfhealing you need.
If you want to level up fast and effectively, you go Unholy. If you want to be a tard and think the massive selfheals of blood will make fuck all difference, by all means gimp yourself with Blood spec and cry while the Unholy DK's AoE grind 6-7 mobs at a time with no downtime at all and laugh at you taking single pulls. I never bothered with frost, but I imagine even that yields better DPS than blood while leveling. Blood DPS requires proper gear, it really doesn't shine while leveling.
Oh, and unholy has the pale horse and unholy aura. Those 2 talents alone boost your leveling speed more than any DPS talent from any tree.
Janz does have a good point, Death Strike is all you need. On my unholy there is 0 downtime and i can pull 6 mobs, put diseases on one, pestilence, and then death strike for a ton of health. But blood is a great tree if you want to spec into it for self heals and Abominations Might. In my opinion, Unholy is the best for just about anything.
I leveled as blood/unholy and then respecced at 80 to put 13 pts in frost. Here is how -IMO- your spec should be at 56, http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jfcMqI0IkZZfMh0pb (idk if it goes without saying, but the way I leveled was using Death Strike -definitely get Glyph of Death Strike-, then at 80 switched Obliterate when I got Annihilation).
Some people might argue that I have too many survivability talents in Blood, but the server I'm on, Alliance is outnumbered like 6 to 1 or something crazy like that so I still get a LOT of use out of talents like Vampiric Blood and Mark of Blood (and besides having both of those talents is only using up 2 points). Rune Tap is also amazing for pve imo, but only if you get Glyph of Rune Tap. It helps out a LOT on fights like Sapphiron if all of the melee is in one group.
OK, my main (hunter) dinged 80 last night so it's time for me to start levelling my dk a bit more seriously. At present I've got a few points invested in frost in Imp Icy & Toughness, I'll drop them and go for a more all-out dedicated Unholy spec.
Is blood caked blade worth investing in?
Any points I should avoid? Unholy Blight & Gargoyle sounds kinda weak to me?
Looking forward to your responses, have had lots of good info so far
I specced holy for a bit and didn't really like it...but gargoyle is *&$%ing awesome. If you pop it when you have 100 RP, you can keep it up pretty much til you're out of combat....and it does a LOT of dmg...definitely a significant amount for a 3 min CD....as long as you can supply your gargoyle with RP, it will stay out. Severely OP imo...but amazing for us DKs
Hey...thought i'd drop a quick update, my dk is lvl 76 now, so I've had a bit of practice with both blood and unholy. IMO, blood rocks. Prob do do a lil more dps as unholy, but the self-healing and uptime of blood is insane.
Atm I'm using a dw, with 2 nice lil weps I had made for me, could a few of you guys maybe take a lookie now at my spec, see if I'm doing anything massively wrong:
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