Major Glyphs

It's been a while since we looked at the Prime Glyphs. A three week vacation, and a weekend trip as a graduation party for my son kept me away, but I'm back with the next part in our Glyph series: Major Glyphs available for Bloody Death Knights.

• Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell: This Glyph increases the duration of our Anti-Magic Shell from 5 to 7 seconds. I must plead guilty to not using Anti-Magic Shell in Heroics. If you do, you may find the extra 2 seconds worthwhile.
• Glyph of Blood Boil: This Glyph increases your Blood Boil radius to 15 yards. While this may sound great, if you have CC targets nearby, you could break CC with the additional range. Use with caution.
• Glyph of Bone Shield: This increases your movement speed by 15% while your Bone Shield is up. I used to find this invaluable in Violet Hold to get from one portal to the next. In Cataclysm Heroics it helps get to the next group a bit faster, or if your group wiped to run back through the instance faster.
• Glyph of Chains of Ice: This will cause some additional damage to a target when using Chains of Ice, but the damage is not worth spending a full Glyph slot on.
• Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon: Adding this Glyph will give you 50% more threat generation. Very useful if the DPS is right behind you to give you a boost. The downside is that Dancing Rune Weapon costs 60 Runic Power, so you often can't pop it at the beginning of a fight.
• Glyph of Dark Succor: This Glyph only works if you're in Frost or Unholy presence. Great for solo questing to heal yourself a fair chunk between fights, but useless for tanking.
• Glyph of Death Grip: This Glyph increases the range of Death Grip from 30 to 35 yards. It has some situational use while tanking, but you should be able to position yourself 5 yards closer if need be.
• Glyph of Hungering Cold: Hungering Cold is a Frost talent that a Bloody Tank can't get.
• Glyph of Pestilence: This Glyph increases the range of your Pestilence to 15 yards (50% increase). Quite nice if you are tanking trash with diseases and have a caster standing further off. But overall of minor use.
• Glyph of Pillar of Frost: Pillar of Frost is another Frost talent us Bloody Tanks can't get.
• Glyph of Rune Tap: Healing your whole party for 5% of their maximum health every 30 seconds is nothing to sneeze at. Definitely a must-have Glyph for Bloody Tanks.
• Glyph of Strangulate: Increases the silence duration to 7 seconds. However as Strangulate has a 2 minute cooldown, there really is no use for this Glyph in Heroics.
• Glyph of Vampiric Blood: This Glyph is a double edged sword. On the one hand it increases the Vampiric Blood healing bonus from 25% to 40%, which is very nice. On the other hand, you no longer get the temporary 15% maximum health boost to buffer yourself until the next heal lands. In both cases, your Rune Tap lands for roughly the same amount. (Both heal about 14% of your total health, unglyphed Rune Tap doing slightly more at 14.375%). If your healer is still alive, this Glyph will give you a huge boost. If your healer is dead, you may be better off without the Glyph.

In summary, there are about 5 good Glyphs and 2 situational Glyphs that Bloody Tanks can benefit from. Again in the age of Cataclysm, there are no wrong choices in those 7 Glyphs (the other Major Glyphs ARE wrong choices).
I would suggest at the very least to take Glyph of Rune Tap. Beyond that, take your pick from Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon, Glyph of Vampiric Blood, Glyph of Bone Shield or Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell.