Originally Posted by
kleinlax21
I always try to Dark Sim fun utility stuff like Blink, Divine Shield, Hand of Freedom, Psychic Horror, etc. You can also use Death Grip as a charge if you target a Warrior who has Spell Reflect up, and also to pull Ele Shaman, Hunters, and Druids to you if they knock you off a ledge or cliff like the one at LM in Arathi Basin.
If you dark sim, for example, a Blink, you can grip an enemy to you, turn 180 degrees, use Blink, and use Death Grip again on the same enemy if you need to move him a great distance, upwards of 60 yards. You can also use this combo and then tack on a Gorefiend's Grasp at the end of it to increase your potential pull distance up to around 100 yards if you can time everything correctly.
A lot of the crazy tricks we can pull off include some awesome spell we steal using Dark Sim. Hand of Freedom is possibly the easiest spell to steal of all time; just use Chains on a Pally and Dark Sim him/her in the same GCD, then profit. Since they can't dispel Chains, Holy Paladins can only use Freedom to get away from you so they are the best spec to try this on. Ret's will sometimes use Emancipate which isn't a terrible steal, but you really want that Hand of Freedom.
Blink is just as easy to steal, just Death Grip the Mage to you, and Chains + Dark Sim him/her at the same time. If he blinks away before your 2nd charge of Death Grip becomes available, grip him back to you and save the stolen Blink and use it whenever you need it beyond that.
Those are some of your basic Dark Sim steals that you want to be setting up whenever you find yourself against a Hpally or a Mage. They take a bit of practice to get down though, and I recommend finding a willing punching bag to try it out on.
As far as your concerns about survivability go, our sustained healing/defense outside of cooldowns is quite paltry, and this is the source for the feedback you hear regarding our defensive capabilities. We aren't Warriors with passive 25% damage reduction and 10k HPS below 35%. However, we do have some great cooldowns that can really save your life. A 1.5 minute cd stun breaker/20% damage reduction CD, a 45-second cd Anti-Magic Shield, a 2-minute cd Fear breaker that acts as a self-heal, and our 2 minute cd heal for 50% of our max health. So, while we are healthily endowed in the defensive cooldown department, we most certainly are lacking in the sustained self-healing one. Because of this, expect to be the consistent focus target in your Arena matches.
Both Frost and Unholy have very similar survivability, the main differences is that Unholy focuses more on sustained damage, whereas Frost is much more bursty by nature. Both have access to all the same defensive cooldowns and abilities, so I'm not sure where you are hearing about a disparity between the two as far as survivability is concerned.
DK's are most definitely the premiere anti-caster melee. AMS allows us to get up close and personal with our favorite caster buddy and gives us some uninterrupted cuddle time. It also allows us to set up stuns from Remorseless Winter much easier, because very few casters have any tools they can use to peel us once we are next to them with AMS up. Our silence is also getting its cooldown halved, down to 1 minute instead of 2. This, on top of all the nerfs other classes are seeing done to their silence, leaves us and Shadow Priests as the only specs with Silence effects left in the game. In addition, if you're a Blood Elf (yay!) you have access to an additional silence, bringing your total to 1 interrupt and 2 silences (1 silence and 1 stun if talented). Those reasons are why we are known, for good reason, as the anti-caster melee.
As far as defending against melee goes, well, you have Chains of Ice + Chillbains. We have lackluster defenses against melee, but our ability to keep any target at 40% run speed shouldn't be underestimated. Kiting melee is quite easy in MoP and can get you some quick breathing room. We are also great at throwing out peels and keeping melee off our precious healer friends with Death Grip. I always try to use both charges of Death Grip when the need to use 1 arises: one to yank a kill target to me, and another to use at my discretion. I frequently use the second charge as a peel for my healer partner in the arena. Throw in a Chains of Ice to the mix, and that melee player isn't getting back onto his target for a good 5 seconds at least.
I hope that answers your questions, and I bid you good luck in making your decision.