Due to the huge talent variety and the goal of making every talent tree viable for tanking and damage dealing has lead to many different possibilities for talent allocations, so called talent specs. Especially for DPS Specs there are up to four possible talent allocations, as a good two-weapon-spec requires a hybrid talent allocation.

A Blood DPS spec will allocate at least 51 points in the Blood talent tree to get the ultimate talent: "Dancing Rune Weapon". The remaining points will be split up between lower tier Unholy and Frost talents that improve the Death Knight's damage.

A Frost DPS spec will forgo points in the Unholy talent tree and invest at least 54 points into Frost, but without taking the ultimate talent, as this is more of a survival Talent and doesn't improve the Death Knight's damage. The remaining 17 points are then spent in the Blood tree to get the 5% increased critical strike chance.

An Unholy specced Death Knight will not take any Frost talents, putting at least 54 points into Unholy and, similar to the Frost-spec, 17 into Blood.

The Dual Wield Death Knight tries to get as many talents that have a special effect on a weapon hit. The high attack speed will enable those Talents to "fire" very often, greatly increasing the Death Knight's damage. The corresponding talents can be found in the lower tiers of the Frost and Unholy talent tree, making such a spec take around 30 points from both trees. To get as many weapon hits as possible two fast weapons are the weapons of choice for a Dual Wield Death Knight.