New year, new spec

Happy 2010 to all, hoping that the the holidays have treated everyone well and have recovered from the festivities of December 31st/January 1st.
2010 is sure to some big changes for Azeroth. Icecrown Citadel is hinted at opening a new wing tomorrow (1/5/10, wow.com), the rest to follow within the coming months. After Arthas has been dethroned, another major content patch will be readied and setting the events leading into Cataclysm into motion.
As for myself, the new year has brought my family outside the game a bit closer and resolved some issues there. Inside the game, it's brought me to 3 new pieces of gear (neck from Heroic Halls of Reflection, T9 tanking helm and tanking sigil from Emblems of Frost), my first venture into Ulduar and as of this morning, a new tanking spec.
I have left the frozen realm of the Frost tree for the warm crimson pools of death in the Blood tree. Shocking I know.
I've been noticing when I compare DK tanks on my server of Zul'jin, there is a large majority that are Blood tanks. I know that all 3 trees were capable of tanking but how well Blood actually did seemed to be lost on me. Being as I've not really raided in almost 2 years, I've not been exposed to enough DK tanks to know. Most of the DK tanks I've been with have been Unholy or Frost. Now it seems that Unholy has fallen out of favor as a tanking tree and Blood may be in line to take it's place and form a larger user base. Frost still holds ground as a good all around tanking tree and I think it may always do so. It seems that Frost will possibly be in favor of DKs just starting out tanking due to the strong threat and strong damage reductions.
Blood on the other hand offers strong threat but not as much in terms of damage reductions. Instead, Blood relies on self-healing and beating the snot out of the mob you have. There are some damage reducing talents but not as strong or as many as there are for Frost. While the tank will actually be taking more damage, the amount of healing coming in from attacks and properly executed Rune Taps make for some very nice heals. I used Rune Tap in my Unholy build when I played with it and it makes for some really nice heals.
I haven't been able to try out the spec yet and most likely won't get to until tomorrow morning but we'll see how it works out.

Happy 2010 to all! Leave comments and questions if you have any!