Post by Kurtosis
You can plan a DK around Attack Power, or around Haste. For example, a DK tank based on AP would have a spec similar to
this or
this, with Bladed Armor. Such a tank would ideally be an Orc with
Blood Fury macro'd into ability so that it is up as much as possible.
#showtooltip
/use Blood Fury
/use Deathchill
/use Obliterate; Frost Strike;Howling Blast
All DK abilities are buffed by Attack Power - melee, strikes, spells, even diseases - so maxing AP is one way to max both dps and threat gen.
You can also make a Haste DK, but that is better for single-target dps than tanking, since melee haste increases the parry-haste damage you take as a tank. A DPS dk attacking from behind the mob/boss doesn't have to worry about parry haste though. If that's your goal, Troll's
Berserking is a nice compliment to a haste-based dps build
like this (or whatever the fotm is, and you can macro it into your abilities similarly.
However, I think Blood Fury is the more flexible of the two racials, being equally viable for both tanking and dps, and on a 2m cd instead of 3.
Regarding the other racials, Axe specialization is really nice for tanks if you can get an axe. It adds 5 expertise (not rating, but full expertise), requiring you to only have to gem to 21 expertise to reach the cap, instead of all the way to 26 (or less if you use a
food buff). That frees up a gem or two for stamina, dodge, def, or hit that would otherwise have to have been used for Expertise.
Orc Command only buffs your Unholy-tree talented perma-ghoul, not Gargoyle, Army, or the non-perma-ghoul, despite comments above. Unless that was changed in patch 3.2 or something.
And stun resist is useful only in pvp, I don't know if there are any pve encounters where it's particularly useful.