Unholy Death Knight 5.2 (17 replies to this topic)

This thread is for comments about our Unholy Death Knight guide for Patch 5.2.

Great introductory guide. Just one little bit of errata.
Order is defined as Strength > Hit + Expertise > Crit > Haste > Mastery, but then in the section about haste, "It is your most beneficial secondary statistic after reaching the hit and expertise caps."

Cheers.

Sucellus, on 08 September 2012 - 09:43 PM, said:

Thank you for pointing out this inconsistency! We'll resolve it as soon as possible.

Awesome guide!

A quick suggestion- under the "Mastering your Unholy Death Knight" section it would be worthwhile to mention proper usage of AMS. Using it strategically will not only help out your healers, it will grant more Death Coils and therefore more runes and higher uptime on Dark Transformation. In my book, using AMS properly really sets a great Unholy DK above the rest.

Thank you very much for your hard work on this guide!

Edited by viciousMinion, 10 October 2012 - 09:52 PM.

viciousMinion, on 10 October 2012 - 09:52 PM, said:

Thanks for the suggestion. I've added a section for this in both the Unholy and Frost guides

Quick question:  Does runic corruption and the unholy stance stack the regeneration rate for Runes?  I know you are recommending Blood Tap, but I wasn't sure if there was some statistical backing here.  Also, minor glyph of Geist I have found to be much easier to use.  Everytime I have been flying with the pet summoned as a ghoul, he continues to have to come out of the ground first before attacking targets.  The Geist is right there every time and immediately starts to attack.  I posted in the Frost section about how I didn't like using Unholy due to pet issues.  This has been one of the biggest fixes for me.

I have a question. When using the glyph for death coil, does casting it multiple times on a friendly target stack the damage absorption ability or is it a waste of runic power to do so? Thank you.

Fletch, on 22 October 2012 - 03:00 PM, said:

I am sorry, I didn't see your post until now. Yes, the increased rune regeneration rates from Unholy Presence and Runic Corruption do stack. Glad you're happy with your pet now

Beeba, on 09 November 2012 - 03:21 PM, said:

Sadly, it does not stack. Each subsequent cast of Death Coil just refreshes to shield to its initial duration and size. The shield size seems to depend on your attack power at the time, and for me it's roughly 15-19K. Not much at all frankly, but it could still save someone's life in a pinch.

Great guide, and clarified a lot of things that I couldn't figure out with my DK. I do want to expand a little bit on the usage of Soul Reaper. The optimal time to start including it in one's rotation is 5 seconds before the target will go below 35% life. The earlier you can apply it without wasting it (by having the countdown expire above 35%), the better. Depending on the HP pool of the target, you may sometimes open with it and still benefit from its effect, whether it be the extra shadow damage or the massive haste buff.

Edited by Tarazet, 10 December 2012 - 09:51 AM.

Tarazet, on 10 December 2012 - 09:51 AM, said:

Thanks. You won't be able to open with it on any raid bosses, and it won't even work on something with low HP like an Energy Charge on Elegon - but the rest of your tip is good and I will include it in the guide

Vlad, on 11 December 2012 - 09:00 PM, said:

Actually, on a trash mob or add with low HP, you will get the 50% haste buff when the target dies, which has a large impact on rune generation. On my level 88 DK, it improves the rune speed from 7.4 seconds to 4.96, which means that it's actually regenerating faster than I can spend the runes. (I realize the stat scaling changes dramatically at 90!)

Elegon's Energy Charges are pretty much the ideal type of fight for an Unholy DK. Use your glyphed Pestilence off the boss to hit all the orbs, drop a Soul Reaper on one of them then focus it down, get all your runes back from the haste buff, Festering Strike the boss to prolong the dots, rinse and repeat.

There is a minor glyph worth noting: Death's Embrace. You use Death Pact to drop your pet's health down to half, and using Death Coil with Death's Embrace will refund 20 Runic power each time you use it, so the net cost is only 12 RP. If you have 60 Runic power, you can use this technique to quickly force a Dark Transformation on your ghoul. Depending on the length of a fight, you can pop 1 or 2 more super ghouls.

I don't think that blood tap is actually random, it always seems to return the last used rune type. Maybe someone else can confirm this, but after using it while raiding as frost for some time, this is definately a trend I have noticed. however if you are just macroing it into your runic power attack (frost strike/etc) then it would be random, of course. I stopped macroing it just for the slight bonus of stacking the 2 extra runes just before pillar of frost is coming off cooldown, etc.

Hi I would just like to mention that in this guide the macro you recommend is for death coil then blood tap however in the frost guide it is blood tap the frost strike. I believe it would be more beneficial to do it in the order in the unholy guide other then that great guides thank you!

Isn't PLague Strike the way to apply the diseases?

Mutterkorn, on 18 March 2013 - 11:54 PM, said:

I would think no since it costs an unholy rune which would be better used on a Scourge strike and outbreak costs nothing

Is the stats on the polearm so beneficial that it outweighs having absolutely no STR? seems really weird 2 me atleast :/

Double Post

Edited by Mutterkorn, 21 April 2013 - 10:06 AM.