A great many of the fixed talents are extremely straightforward, but we shall list them all for completeness' sake:

• 3/3 Blade Barrier: reduces damage taken by 6%.
• 3/3 Bladed Armor: this is a threat/DPS talent, which increases your attack power. There are no other survival alternatives.
• 2/2 Improved Blood Tap: reduces the cooldown of Blood Tap by 30 seconds.
• 2/2 Scarlet Fever: reduces the physical damage done by targets affected by Blood Plague. This effect does not stack with other tanks' similar effects such as Demoralizing Shout or Demoralizing Roar. This talent is listed as mandatory because you cannot reliably guarantee that other tanks will be able to maintain their equivalent debuff on the boss or adds the whole time.
• 1/1 Bone Shield: this is a self-buff with a 1 minute cooldown. It grants you a buff with 6 charges. Each time you receive a damaging attack, a charge is consumed. While at least 1 charge remains active, all damage taken is reduced by 20%, and all your damage dealt is increased by a very small amount (2%).
• 3/3 Toughness: increases the amount of armor you gain from items by 10%. This is a simple survival talent.
• 2/2 Sanguine Fortitude: increases the damage reduction from Icebound Fortitude by 30% and also makes Icebound Fortitude cost no runic power to use. This is especially useful as it allows you to use it exactly when needed without having to consider your resources.
• 2/2 Blood Parasite: gives your melee attacks a 10% chance to spawn a Bloodworm. Bloodworms attack your enemies and, after a varying amount of time (not longer than 20 seconds, though), explode. When they explode, the worms heal you and other raid members for a small amount.
• 2/2 Improved Blood Presence: increases your rune regeneration rate by 20% and grants you immunity against critical strikes, while in Blood Presence. This effectively allows you to tank.
• 1/1 Rune Tap: provides you with the Rune Tap ability, which converts a Blood rune into 10% of your maximum health.
• 3/3 Will of the Necropolis: each time (not more often than each 45 seconds, though) that your health drops below 30%, the cooldown of Rune Tap is reset and the next Rune Tap is free to cast. Additionally, when this effect occurs, all damage taken is reduced by 25% for 8 seconds.
• 1/1 Vampiric Blood: provides you with the Vampiric Blood ability. This increases your maximum health by 15% for 10 seconds, and also increases all healing you receive by 25% for the same amount of time.
• 3/3 Improved Death Strike: this talent greatly boosts your Death Strike. It increases its damage and critical strike chance, as well as the amount of healing that it does to you.
• 1/1 Dancing Rune Weapon: grants you the Dancing Rune Weapon ability, which increases your chance to parry by 20% for 12 seconds, in addition to dealing some damage to the boss.
• 3/3 Runic Power Mastery: increases the maximum capacity of your runic power by 30. This is a threat/DPS and a filler talent.
• 2/2 Icy Reach: increases the range of your Icy Touch and Chains of Ice abilities by 10 yards. It has some usefulness in certain encounters, but it is mostly a filler talent.
• 1/1 Lichborne: grants you the Lichborne ability. This is a self-buff with a 2 minute cooldown and 10 second duration. While this effect is active, you can heal yourself by casting Death Coil on yourself.
• 2/3 Epidemic: increases the duration of your diseases by 8 seconds, meaning that you need to worry about refreshing them less often.

The only meaningful choice you will have to make, within the Blood specialisation, depends on whether you wish to pick up Crimson Scourge, for improved AoE tanking.

Additionally, you may choose not to take Abomination's Might, if the buff is provided by someone else in your raid (Paladins, Enhancement Shamans or Marksmanship Hunters). This situation is extremely unlikely to occur outside of 10-man raids, and even there it is exceptional.

Below, we list all the optional talents and the reasons for possibly choosing some of them.

• 1/3 Scent of Blood: gives you a small chance to generate extra runic power. This is a threat/DPS talent, for which there are no survival alternatives. You should choose this if you do not need to pick up either Abomination's Might or Crimson Scourge. We advise taking points in this talent over the less desirable Blood Caked Blade and Epidemic talents.
• 1/3, 2/3 or 3/3 Blood-Caked Blade: this is another threat/DPS talent, for which there are no survival alternatives. It gives your auto attacks a chance to cause another, relatively weak attack. You should take points in this talent if you do not need to take any points in Abomination's Might and Crimson Scourge, although Scent of Blood is a better alternative.
• 2/2 Abomination's Might: you should only take this talent if no one in your raid can provide the 10% increased attack power. Otherwise, this talent is not useful.
• 2/2 Crimson Scourge: increases the damage dealt by Blood Boil (your AoE ability) and gives you a chance to gain cost-free Blood Boils. This is an AoE enhancing talent and should not be taken if you do not need to improve this aspect of your tanking.
• 3/3 Epidemic: increases the duration of your diseases by 12 seconds (up from the 8 seconds granted by 2/3). This talent point simplifies your tanking somewhat.