pre-3.1 Blood tanking

This blood build goes straight for the tanking skills. You have the talents in Unholy to buff your blood boil which youll be using a lot for aoe pulls, plus death runs in blood for more blood boils/heartstrikes. Youll have more hit points, and more avoidance/mitigation than with other builds. Only thing you dont get with this build is the magic dmg suppression of frost/unholys, unless spell deflection turns out to be more useful after the next patch.

Death strike becomes your main hard hitting ability for tanking with this spec for three reasons:
1. Come patch it will be hitting very hard and the self heals generate threat.
2. It generates death runes without using up your diseases.
3. you need Annihilation for obliterate to be viable with diseases.

For single pulls do It-Ps-Ds-Hs-Hs-Hs-Hs-Hs-Hs (thread in/ macro rune strikes)

For aoe pulls it goes DnD-It-Ps-Pes-Blood tap-BB. Next thread in a deathstrike, and youll have death runes on standbye for blood boils or heart strikes if needed. This technique will be even more effective after 3.1 hits and blood boil hits non-diseased targets as well.

note: unless you need deathrunes or self-heals, usually take 2 heartstrikes over deathstrike.

-Build main points-

AVOIDANCE wise, this spec is better than my old frost spec (with frigid dreadplate). You have:
Blade barrier - 10% parry
anticipation - 5% dodge
ravenous dead - 3% strength (strength = more parry)
shadow of death - 2% strength
abominations might - 2% strength
veteran of the third war - 6% strength
*13% more strength = more threat + more parry

MITIGATION wise, this spec is also better than the old frost spec. You have:
Toughness - 15% more armor from items
Veteran of the third war - 6% stamina
Shadow of death - 2% stamina
Blood aura - healed for 4% of all dmg done
Vampiric blood - increase max health by 15% and self-healing by 35% for 20 sec.
Mark of blood - Every time the target hits you, you receive 4% of max health back

Major Glyphs: (pick 3)
Death and decay - I use this for every aoe pull so the extra threat is a plus
Death Strike - 2% dmg for each 5 runic power you have. More dmg = more threat.
Icy touch - 10 extra runic power per It.
Icebound Fortitude - no runic power cost.

Minor Glyphs:
Pestilence - 5 extra yards
Horn of winter - 1 min longer
raise dead - no corpse dust (free 40% health with death pact if needed)

This spec is not so much focus on Self-healing like other blood specs because I dont see the point in wasting your healers mana with over-heals, and it is just not needed with all the avoidance and mitigation which this build puts a premium on. Many parts of this build also receive a nice buff when patch 3.1 comes out.

3.1 upgrades include:
Much improved Death strikes.
Vastly more useful Blood Boils.
This build will include Unholy Blight from the unholy tree

Remember with any Dk tank build, always make liberal use of Icebound Fortitude, and/or any of your 1min CD's.