Unholy Death Knight 7.1

[Tegu 1]

It really depends of your raid dps and what boss youre gonna be using them on. If you're the only one assignedd to aoe the spirits then RH is really strong for NP but usually everything dies too fast these days which results to dropping RH completely. Try RH + UeH for AoE if adds die too fast then drop RH and get the Cleave trinket.

 

But if you get only 1 burn phase you might want to go with VIal + UeH. The cleave trinket is good on Xhul'horac, Mannoroth, Iskaar.

 

Basically trinket value change depending on your raid dps.

Edited January 27, 2016 by Tegu

[Guest Malgrimm]

1. Can you make a Stat Weight numbers (Pawn string or smth like it) in Stat Priority section for NP and BoS?

2. Why top players, according to warcraftlogs.com, improve their Multistrike, despite of using Necrotic Plague??

[demonardvark 556]

 

Why does Reaper's Harvest trinket have such a low score for Unholy...? It seems like it would be very good .o.

Because they most likely are using a patchwerk style sim, I'd advise reviewing logs on a fight like mythic gorefiend where unholy + rh pretty much carry the fight. I've noticed that I.V. guides lack really detailed info or breakdowns of trinkets.

 

 

*edit* tengu you beat me to it XD

 

 

One fight and one raid comp does not save a trinket. Reapers harvest is under powered for unholy especially in mythic progression. The reason is that adds and trash don't stay up long enough for necrotic plague to tick (and thus trinket as well). The re-introduction of valor added an extra 10 ilvls, the power of which just melts down everything. Once reaching even heroic content unholy should switch to BOS on every fight really. Its point blank just superior, if you are in a fight and can pull 7 seconds of bos at 30% ms you do more damage then necrotic plague even with class trinket. 

 

Necrotic plague and class trinket is strong, just purely outclassed right now by BOS and the fact that we are now in the burst everything stage that progression reaches.

 

Now, for mythic gorefiend you can have an unholy dk on spirit duty however a warrior will do it better by leaps and bounds. In this one case, under one raid comp you could see the unholy class trinket working out. However, even then, other trinkets will still out perform the class trinket.

[demonardvark 556]

1. Can you make a Stat Weight numbers (Pawn string or smth like it) in Stat Priority section for NP and BoS?

2. Why top players, according to warcraftlogs.com, improve their Multistrike, despite of using Necrotic Plague??

 

Multistrike is more valuable to necrotic plague over mastery now in most situations. This is because  you want each tick of the disease to multistrike doing more damage. This damage outclasses mastery until there are almost 4-5+ adds at the same time. Multistrike is just a really op stat in a lot of cases. So, more multi ticking diseases is better then more mastery buffed diseases.

[Guest Guest]

Hello. I read the guide and i have some questions.

 

1.) Is Runic Empowerment unviable? I noticed that with the particular talent you can do some good tricks, such as stacking your death coils (without wasting sudden doom procs or capping your runic power ofc) and casting them while your runes have almost 10 secs cooldown. This maximizes the efficiency of the talent. I mean, when you replenish a rune at 10 secs cd is much better than replenishing it when it has 1 or 2 secs cooldown, right?

 

2.) Is Unholy Blight really that good? If you play with Necrotic Plague it adds only one stack. That sounds really minor to me if we take into account its long cooldown. About spreading the dots, it essentially saves you from one Blood Boil cast, then again its cd seems way too long to worth it. What about Plague Leech? Even in aoe, in worst case, ull lose a 15-stacks necrotic Plague on one target to replensih two runes which you can use for Blood Boil which will give you for sure more damage. For single target necroblight style, u can cast Plague Leech 0.5 secs before Necrotic Plague drops off (before the last tick essentially) so its like 2 runes for one Necrotic Plague's tick which sounds like a really good deal. Plaguebearer sounds also good for singletarget since it allows you to stack Necrotic Plague much faster than you do with Unholy Blight.

 

3.) About the runes/rune-regeneration, i noticed that sometimes you tend to use one type of runes, for example, mostly unholy runes for single target (on plague strike and scourge strike) and blood runes in aoe (on Blood Boil). My question is, does it worth it to let the other runes just sit there? What i do is, if a set of runes is ready, for example, blood runes or frost runes, i will immediately cast a spell that consumes one of those, to prevent them from "overflowing". I mean, sooner or later, your unholy runes will run out, and there the downtime comes. If your secondary runes always regenerate, doesnt this reduce the downtime by alot? Im not sure though if casting a weaker spell just to prevent your runes form "capping" is a dps increase or not. Please, confirm that if possible.

 

Im fairly new to DKs, so any help would be much appreciated 

[arson94 0]

Here's my understanding and perspective:

 

1.  Runic Empowerment can only activate a fully-depleted rune (meaning both runes of that type are recharging) if it procs and it's a random rune if you have multiple types recharging.  It'll cause you to activate orphaned Blood/Frost runes often which are useless to unholy.  Blood runes can be used in aoe but useless in single target and Frost runes are ALWAYS useless.  Never use a Frost-only ability for DPS.  If you have a orphaned Frost rune wait for a Blood rune, or even a Death rune if urgent, and use Festering Strike to turn them both in Death runes.  Frost rune's only DPS purpose to an Unholy DK is for Festering Strikes.

     Runic Corruption, when procced, speeds up base rune regeneration which affects ALL of your runes.  This synergy with Unholy's rotation is nice compared to Runic Empowerment because it keeps your runes synced for the most part.  It regens runes quicker in the manner that you spent them.  So, as long as you spent your runes efficiently, they'll recharge as so.  It's also the most passive, as in completely passive, so it's friendly to beginners while still being useful.

     Blood Tap is still the way to go though.  It provides the most utility and flexibility.  You create a Death Rune whenever you need.  You can use it to get that extra Blood Boil last second in an AoE situation before some adds die or an extra Scourge Strike or two last second in an execute.  You just get more runes for the abilities you need in all the situations you need them for higher DPS.  Hell, you can even pop a Death rune real quick to use Festering Strike to get rid of that orphan Frost Rune to get back a pair of Death runes (runes spent on Festering Strike always recharge as Death runes).

     If you don't want to micro manage Blood Tap, then use Runic Corruption.  My stance is to never use Runic Empowerment.

 

 

2.  Unholy Blight applies a stack of Necrotic Plague every time it ticks, which is every 1 second.  Necrotic Plague left on it's own only stacks when it does damage, which is every 2 seconds.  Unholy Blight lets you stack Necrotic Plague to 15 stacks in no more than 10 seconds as Necrotic Plague still stacks itself every 2 seconds while Unholy Blight is stacking every 1 second.  This lets you get to 15 stacks quick enough to not waste Blood, Unholy or Death runes on Plague Strike to add a stack and instead use them on Festering Strikes and Scourge Strikes.

 

 

3.  As Unholy, you want to use Blood runes with Frost runes in a pair for Festering Strike to convert them into Death runes for Scourge Strikes in single target and for Blood Boils in aoe.  Sure, things happen and you can't always, but you certainly should try to almost always.  Unholy definitely has micro management that comes with it.  You use Festering Strike and Blood Boil (with Blood Tap if you take it) to convert runes into Death runes while balancing that with Festering Strikes on Blood/Frost rune pairs to keep Necrotic Plague alive until your next Outbreak/Unholy Blight or both if you have them.

    Breath of Sindragosa is a different rotation and micromanagement needs for another conversation.  I think I know what I need to know to be good with it but it's difficult for me to execute very well often enough.

 

 

I hope this all makes sense and if anybody sees anything wrong or incorrect with what I've said then please correct me.  Maybe I can learn a thing or two as well.

Edited April 8, 2016 by arson94

[VaineS 0]

It helped me alot! thumbs up!

[Hald 0]

Nice guide! Keep up the good work :)

[Tegu 1]

Hello guys, keep in mind that this guide is for pre-patch only and everything can change at any time. Also gear list right now isn't accurate, i'd try to put a *BiS* these days. Special thanks once again to TheQ and Mini who plays in Midwinter.