I'm 71 and Unholy with only quest greens and Outland blues, and I have absolutely zero problem doing anything except tanking instances in Northrend, and farming anything in Azeroth (Strat, ZG, etc), and any instance in Outland in Hellfire or Coilfang is easy. Auchindoun and above is cake with even a sub-par healer. I haven't been able to solo or duo anything in Northrend yet, but like I said, I'm in quest greens and Outland blues with almost no +defense. I've just begun collecting tanking gear which will make tanking a breeze as I get close to maxing out my defense, but like I said, I have no issues pretty much anywhere. I almost never single-target anything, and I typically pull 5-8 or more mobs depending on how hard they hit and how well I can keep my RP charged for Death Strike with the glyph.
Check WowInsider.com's
Lichborne series where they outline tanking and DPS gear upgrades in Northrend, both from quests and drops, and/or start with a
Wowhead.com query for plate quest rewards with +Defense (click the Def column header to push higher numbers to the top).
The key to unholy is to use the biggest, slowest two-hander you can find (Voidaxe from Nagrand until you get to Northrend) with Razorice or Fallen Crusader in Blood Presence. All your big hitting spells and abilities depend on weapon damage, so you want to maximize that (frost isn't as dependent upon weapon damage, so you dual wield with two different Runeforging enchants and spam Howling Blast). Also, get the major glyphs of Death and Decay (the 2 second cower is nothing short of amazing for spell and incoming melee damage) and Death Strike (40% healing/damage - keep your RP maxed and only use Death Coil when you know you won't need to heal yourself, or to finish off a runner), and minor glyphs of Pestilence (+5 yards) and Horn of Winter.
Use a build like this at 58 (once you have all your talents from the starter area):
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jcZZfM0IxcogcoMfouo Building up to this at 80 (3 in Subversion first for when you group, then finish Unholy before continuing in Blood):
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMVZZfMhIxcogcoMfout I typically do 40% or more of a group's total damage in any instance with people as far as 5 levels above me. I was only about 5% behind an 80 frost DK last night in Nexus, UK and AN. I'm currently attempting to split out the 500MB of logs I've had running since I started my DK, so I'm hoping to have some WWS of my DK career soon.
Although, with the upcoming removal of the cooldown on Howling Blast, frost is quickly becoming very desirable for DPS and for tanking, perhaps a frost/unholy build or the tri-spec discussed on the Elitist Jerks forums.
Edited, Dec 31st 2008 3:35pm by KaaNog