Scent of Blood

Some DKs felt like they were runic power starved for Rune Strike and other abilities while tanking. Others said it was their avoidance that was the problem and still others have no problem maintaining threat at all.

If you need runic power, Scent of Blood is for you. I wouldn't consider it nearly as mandatory as something like Anticipation for a tanking build. But we'll see what the community ends up doing.

I have tanked in the game a lot, and I have found cookie cutter builds to be less mandatory than the forums and articles often suggest. Certain *talents* are mandatory, but you nearly always have a few extra points to get what you want, depending a great deal on your gear and the group you run with. If you have great healers and never die, then you probably don't need as much survivability. If you have amazing and impatient dps, then you might want to emphasize threat more. Again personal experience here, but I have also found many tanks to be more reluctant to swap out gear per encounter than they should. Good tanks often swap out their rings, trinkets etc. from fight to fight. Again, just throwing that out there since I know the DK class attracted some players to tanking that have never tanked before. Your mileage may vary.

Regardless, the talent was pretty lackluster with its current numbers. We nerfed it back in beta when DKs had so much rp while leveling that they just spammed Death Coil. Enough has changed that that may no longer be a problem, and DK leveling is pretty easy regardless.