Update

Just a quick update to those who follow me online, I've recently made a switch from PHD to shadowcleave with very good results. The amount of survivabiliy/cc/pressure shadowcleave can output is much higher than PHD. At 2100 in a night, will see where this takes me.

Deaths Advance

Now recently blizzard gave us a new talent called death's advance and it reads like this:
While your Unholy Runes are both depleted, movement-impairing effects may not reduce you below 100% of normal movement speed. 
Two days after giving us this talent they nerfed it to a 75% move speed. Even with this nerf i am very happy with where this talent puts us for mobility. Out running rogues, warriors, other dks and ret paladins makes this talent very useful. Our damage although nerfed too recently seems just fine for pvp and we should still hold our own in pvp. Just a little thought for the day.

Hotfix for 3.0.6

Just a day after the patch that smacked unholy dks in the face we come across more changes, i guess blizzard wasn't done with pushing us down the charts.

• Dark Transformation now increases pet damage by 60%, down from 80%.
• Death Coil damage has been reduced by 15%.
• The pet damage bonus from Shadow Infusion is now 6% per stack, down from 8%.

DC down another 5% and pet damage down another 20% across the board, at this rate we may hit like ret pallies. At least the mastery change has made mastery better than crit for us, making it the second best secondary stat next to haste once hit capped. Stay tuned, i'm sure blizzard is going to change some more.

Changes in 3.0.6

The Changes to the unholy spec are as follows, i'll add my thoughts after each point.

• Blightcaller (Mastery) has been redesigned and renamed Dreadblade. It increases all Shadow damage by 2.5% per point of mastery. With the current design causing Unholy DKs to completely ignore all mastery this comes as a welcomed change. With 20% shadow damage being base line this will be just above Crit in our stat rankings.
• Dark Transformation now increases pet damage by 80%, down from 100%. 20% reduction to enrage pet damage will be a big blow for us. The pet should be usually around 30-40% of our overall damage, so this will be quite a bit of dps lost for us.
• Death’s Advance (new talent): While both Unholy Runes are depleted, movement-impairing effects cannot reduce the death knight below 75/100% of normal movement speed. Finally a talent that lets DKs not be kited by every other class in the game! A very welcomed change, while finding 2 talent points we can use for this talent may be a big choice, definitely a necessary talent for pvp.
• Desecration is now also triggered by Necrotic Strike. This should of been in since they released Cataclysm! But better late than never.
• The ratio of runic power return from Magic Suppression has been reduced by roughly one third. Not a huge nerf, but with our pvp spec having 3/3 in this, you should cap rp just fine if your taking some heat.
• Rage of Rivendare now increases strike damage by 12/24/36%, down from 15/30/45%. A 9% strike damage reduction will hit our dps, but not be as bad since Necrotic Strike will be our main source of pressure.
• Runic Corruption procs while the aura is already active now add 3 seconds to the existing aura duration, instead of simply refreshing/overwriting the existing aura. This is a very nice change, as it was before the patch you wouldn't want to reproc RC when it was up as you would lose time on the buff that way. Now you can DC back to back without having to worry as much about those procs overwriting themselves.
• Shadow Infusion now increases pet damage by 8% per stack, down from 10%. The pet nerf carried down from above.
• Sudden Doom is now triggered only from main-hand auto attacks, and is normalized according to weapon speed rather than having a fixed percentage chance. This change won't affect pvp at all, it was done to stop DKs from being Unholy DW in pve. 
• Unholy Might (passive) has been reduced to a 5% Strength increase, down from 10%. A 5% strength nerf is huge! With my DK having in the range of 5k str in pvp gear, this will hit all damage i do.
• Virulence has been redesigned. It now grants 10/20/30% additional disease damage. The change to the talent comes as Blizzard rolls in 9% hit for our spells into the class itself, making hitting that cap not require the talent, we will now skip this talent for pvp.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Dark Succor (new glyph) raises the minimum healing done by Death Strike from 7% to 15% of maximum health, but only while in Unholy or Frost Presence. This is a nice addition to the DK arsenal, a way of using DS to actually gain some health, but i think it should of been left at 20% like it was on the PTR, the way our runes work will not allow you to have more than 3 back to back in the very best case scenario, while 1 will be the norm to get off with runes. 
• Glyph of Death’s Embrace no longer refunds Runic Power when self-healing via Lichborne. This is a HUGE nerf to our self healing, letting only 3 DCs off with a full bar instead of the 6-7 we could get with this glyph, the glyph will still be taken as it affect DCs sent to your pet for healing him. 

Runeforging

• Swordbreaking and Swordshattering now reduce disarm duration by 60%, up from 50%. They changed all disarms to 60%, so this is just following suit. All DKs should have a second weapon with this on it for fighting players who can disarm them.

A lot of changes are happening tomorrow (err today depending on your timezone) so buckle down and wait for the storm. I believe there are too many nerfs in store for the unholy DK, but only time will tell if blizzard agrees with me.

Lack of Posts

Sorry for the lack of posting recently, but I've been busy with somethings. There is a lot of changes coming to the DK class this tuesday, and i'm going to try and get a post up tonight or tomorrow during maintenance about them, stay tuned.

Glyphs

Don't have a lot of time today, so i'll tackle glyphs.

You can have 3 prime, 3 major and 3 minors. The ones i use are below.

Prime:
Glyph of Death Coil - Increases damage and healing of DC by 15%. Since DC is always in the top 3 moves for damage this is a huge dps increase. Plus it also helps with DC heals via Lichbourne.
Glyph of Raise Dead - Your Ghoul receives an additional 40% of your strength and 40% of your stamina. This is huge for you pet because he counts for about 30-40% of your damage. Also more stamina will make him harder to kill.
Glyph of Scourge Strike - Increases the shadow portion of scourge strike by 30%. Although your more likely going to use Necrotic Strike for damage, this will help increase your burst for when using NS will be useless.

Major:
Glyph of Anti-magic Shell - Increases the duration of Anti-magic shell by 2 seconds. This doesn't sound like a lot but its huge! The more time your not taking magic damage the better. Can also be used to avoid spells like Ring of Frost and Ice trap.
Glyph of Strangulate - Increases the duration of your Strangulate ability by 2 seconds when used on a target casting a spell. This is huge! Strangulate is already 5 seconds, so a 7 second silence could be game breaking.

Minor:
Glyph of Death's Embrace - Your Death Coil refunds 20 runic power when used to heal. When healing your pet or yourself with Lichbourne this will give you enough RP back to keep the heals going. Well worth it. Also not many other choices for pvp.

Thats it for now, stay tuned for more DK notes soon!

Talents

Talents are a big part of being a proper dk in arena and pvp. I'll go over each talent i chose and give you some reasons why you need it.

http://wowtal.com/#k=-k42WmNI.a8t.deathknight.

Lets start with the unholy tree.

From the first tier you have 3 choices and because Virulence doesn't help us in pvp at all we must skip it. Making 2 points go in Unholy command (which is huge, 10 seconds off your only closer) and 3 points in epidemic which means you don't have to apply your diseases so often.

Second tier we have 3 choices. Now this comes down to play style, but Desecration is a must. 50% reduced speed for anything over the spot where you SS, means you won't have to worry so much about people chasing you. The next talent is Resilient Infection, which i have skipped. I skipped it because it doesn't work well with Unholy Blight which protects your diseases and should always be up on your current target. Might be more useful for 5s if you spread your diseases often with lots of dispels going out, but for bgs and 2s/3s i wouldn't pick it up. Last talent in the tier is Morbidity, which is a huge dps upgrade for our DC. It also ups your healing done to your pet and yourself through Lichbourne (which i'll talk about later on).

The third tier is pretty full, first off Runic Corruption changes the dks from a random rune pop up to a constant  faster rune cooldown. Also 6 RP off your DC is another huge dps upgrade. Unholy Frenzy is next and 20% Haste is huge for dks. Not only does it affect our melee attacks, but haste affects our rune regeneration. On a 3 minute cd though, it should be paired with Summon Gargoyle for best effect. I skipped Contagion because diseases make up about 8% of our pve dps with this talent. So losing a bit of dps from just spread diseases won't have much of a effect on your dps in bgs or arena. Last in the tier we have Shadow Infusion. This makes your DCs enrage your pet. When you get to 5 stacks he is doing 50% more damage with all attacks. Which can be upgraded with another talent we grab 2 tiers down, but more on that when we get there.

The fourth tier i hope is self explanatory but here we go. Magic Suppression is the way dks survive vs Casters. But AMS isn't only useful for them, some melee do alot of magic damage including rogue poisons, enhancement shamans, and other dks. Getting it up to 100% reduction is great, but another part about the talent is converting that damage to RP. More RP is more damage or more survivability. Rage of Rivendare is definitely not skip able as it ups all our strike damage.

Fifth tier is a lot more interesting, we start with Unholy Blight which does damage based on your DCs as a dot (which isn't dispellable) and prevents your diseases from being dispelled. This is why we skipped Resilient Infection above. Anti-magic Zone is next, and when your teammates are being hit from a caster or even when you are and AMS is down, its a great way to save the day. Improved Unholy Presence speaks for itself, 5% haste is huge for unholy dks, and should not be skipped. Also keeping up with people when you have to switch to Blood Presence when your focused is also quite nice. Dark Transformation is a HUGE talent, not only does it make your pet do 100% more damage, but it changes his form. Now i won't go into the skill changes that happen to your pet here, i'll save that for another day.

Sixth tier is very plain but has very necessary talents. Ebon Plaguebringer looks very lack luster at first glance, but its not the 30% disease damage your worried about (unless your near a shadow priest) but the 8% magic damage increase towards the target. This affects your DC and your Gargoyle, also helps for any casters on your side to output more dps. The last talent on this line is Sudden Doom, Free chance on DC when you melee is nice. More DCs means more ghoul charges which leads ultimately to him dealing more dps.

The last talent of this tree is Summon Gargoyle. He is the simple most burst threat you have as a DK. Unskipable.

We then move into the Frost Tree because it has more pvp talents we need.

First tier we have Runic Power Mastery which increases the amount of RP we can hold, works nicely with Magic Suppression and second we have Icy Reach, which is nice for Chains of Ice, but taken mostly because the last talent is just for DW dks in Frost.

Second tier we have Lichbourne, the single most biggest pvp talent i have seen. Not only can it be used to break from Fear, Charm or Sleep, but can be pre popped to stop Polymorph and Hex. It can also be used to DC yourself as it makes you Undead for the duration. It you spam DC yourself when your low and you have the RP you can easily hit full HP is just 5-6 GCDs. Last but not least, we have Endless Winter. I take this talent because interrupting heals is a huge part of killing healers as a DK. Having them free means more RP for damage and survivability.

Hope you enjoyed this first look at my talent spec, any questions leave them below and i'll get back to you. Next we will tackle Glyphs and maybe your spells and when to use them better.

Launch

Official launch of the PVP Deathknight blog!

First post will be stats to get for your unholy DK.

Strength - Always top for dps.
Hit - Are you 5% capped?
Haste - The next best stat out there.
Crit - Not the greatest (reforge to haste unless you need more hit)
Resilience - This should be your choice above all other ratings since its only from pvp gear and can't be reforged.  With the way dks are being nerfed with the next patch i would get as much as this as you can, because a dead dk is no dps at all.

For gemming i would go mostly strength as you get the most bang for your buck there. Strength/Haste is a good choice for yellow sockets if the bonus is worth getting (strength or resilience). For your blue sockets gem Spell Penetration. You need 195 to be capped, so 4 50 spell pen gems will get you capped (3 with cloak enchant work too, more on that later).

I'll put up a enchant list and BiS list for your pvp needs later on.