Unholy Death Knight DPS Gear and Best in Slot — Dragonflight 10.2.6

Welcome to our Gear and BiS Page for Unholy Death Knight for Dragonflight 10.2. Check this page learn everything you need to know about gearing a Unholy Death Knight, including the BiS Gear from all sources, Raiding, and Mythic+, information on the best Trinkets, Tier Sets, and much more.

2.

BiS Gear for Unholy Death Knight

Overall BiS List Mythic+ Gear BiS List Raid Gear BiS List

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BiS List for Unholy Death Knight

Below you will find the theoretical BiS set of gear for Season 3.

Slot	Item	Boss/ Dungeon/ Source
Helm	Piercing Gaze of the Risen Nightmare	Tindral Sageswift
Neck	Eye of the Rising Flame	Tindral Sageswift
Shoulder	Skewers of the Risen Nightmare	Smolderon
Cloak	Vibrant Wildercloth Shawl with Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch (Haste Mastery)	Tailoring
Chest	Unceasing Footman's Breastplate	Dawn of the Infinite: Murozond's Rise
Bracers	Allied Wristguard of Companionship	Blacksmithing
Gloves	Thorns of the Risen Nightmare	Igira the Cruel
Belt	Unwinding Eon Girdle	Dawn of the Infinite: Galakrond's Fall
Legs	Greaves of the Risen Nightmare	Larodar, Keeper of the Flame
Boots	Fused Obsidian Sabatons	Smolderon
Ring #1	Arch-Druid's Tainted Seal	Darkheart Thicket
Ring #2	Seal of the Regal Loa	Atal'Dazar
Trinket #1	Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows	Dawn of the Infinite: Murozond's Rise
Trinket #2	Cataclysmic Signet Brand	Smolderon
Weapon	Fyr'alath the Dreamrender ( Incandescent Soulcleaver as an alternative)	Fyrakk, the Blazing (Smolderon)

3.

Mythic+ Gear BiS List for Unholy Death Knight

This list contains the highest DPS setup, with farmable gear from Mythic+ Dungeons. It answers the question of: "If I can only get gear from Mythic+, what is the best setup to maximise by Single Target DPS?". This is a great place to start on a relatively new character, as you can infinitely grind out these items from Mythic+.

Slot	Item	Boss/ Dungeon/ Source
Helm	Piercing Gaze of the Risen Nightmare	Revival Catalyst
Neck	Chain of the Green Flight	Darkheart Thicket
Shoulder	Skewers of the Risen Nightmare	Revival Catalyst
Cloak	Vibrant Wildercloth Shawl with Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch (Haste Mastery)	Tailoring
Chest	Unceasing Footman's Breastplate	Dawn of the Infinite: Murozond's Rise
Bracers	Allied Wristguard of Companionship	Blacksmithing
Gloves	Thorns of the Risen Nightmare	Revival Catalyst
Belt	Unwinding Eon Girdle	Dawn of the Infinite: Galakrond's Fall
Legs	Greaves of the Risen Nightmare	Revival Catalyst
Boots	Goldsteel Sabatons	Everbloom
Ring #1	Arch-Druid's Tainted Seal	Darkheart Thicket
Ring #2	Seal of the Regal Loa	Atal'Dazar
Trinket #1	Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows	Dawn of the Infinite: Murozond's Rise
Trinket #2	Rezan's Gleaming Eye	Atal'Dazar
Weapon	Gorehowl, Might of the Warchief	Dawn of the Infinite: Murozond's Rise

3.

Raid Gear BiS List for Unholy Death Knight

This list contains the highest DPS setup, only using gear from the Aberrus Raid. It answers the question of: "If I can only get gear from Raid, what's my best setup for optimising my Single Target damage?".

This list is mostly useful for informing your organized guild of what loot is optimal for you for loot distribution purposes.

Slot	Item	Boss/ Dungeon/ Source
Helm	Piercing Gaze of the Risen Nightmare	Tindral Sageswift
Neck	Eye of the Rising Flame	Tindral Sageswift
Shoulder	Skewers of the Risen Nightmare	Smolderon
Cloak	Vibrant Wildercloth Shawl with Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch (Haste Mastery)	Tailoring
Chest	Carapace of the Unbending Flame	Fyrakk, the Blazing
Bracers	Allied Wristguard of Companionship	Blacksmithing
Gloves	Thorns of the Risen Nightmare	Igira the Cruel
Belt	Smoldering Chevalier's Greatbelt	Tindral Sageswift
Legs	Greaves of the Risen Nightmare	Larodar, Keeper of the Flame
Boots	Fused Obsidian Sabatons	Smolderon
Ring #1	Band of Burning Thorns	Larodar, Keeper of the Flame
Ring #2	Signet of the Last Elder	Igira the Cruel
Trinket #1	Ashes of the Embersoul	Smolderon
Trinket #2	Cataclysmic Signet Brand	Smolderon
Weapon	Fyr'alath the Dreamrender ( Incandescent Soulcleaver as an alternative)	Fyrakk, the Blazing (Smolderon)

If you have a new piece of gear for which you need gems and enchant advice, you can find everything on our dedicated page below.

While gearing up, item level will be your primary target. Strength is our best stat, and you shouldn't focus too much on your secondaries at first. Once you start to receive gear pieces with the same ilvl but different stats, that is when you want to start optimizing your stat distribution. Generally, Unholy Death Knights want to prioritize Haste and then Mastery! We recommend simming your character to determine what upgrade is best for you! For a more detailed explanation, you can read the Simulations page.

Simming your character is far and beyond the best way to determine if a piece of gear is, in fact, an upgrade. The trick is knowing how to do it in a way that produces reliable results. If you follow the Simulations guide page, you can use this to have a more practical gearing guide than simply following a BiS list.

Season 3 has a powerful upgrade system for your gear where you use Flightstones and Shadowflame Crests to upgrade your gear. These are obtainable from practically all forms of content in the game. They can be used to upgrade some gear up to Item Level 489, which is maximum Mythic ilvl!

For more information on the new Gear Upgrades system, check out our dedicated page for it below.

There are three primary items to upgrade as an Unholy Death Knight:

1. Weapon
2. Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows/ Cataclysmic Signet Brand/ Other passive trinket
3. Head/ Chest/ Legs

With how the upgrade system works with Crests being the limited currency, you want to upgrade the most powerful slots you can. This means your weapon is generally by far the largest priority, followed by trinkets and high stat slot items like Legs, Helm, Chest, etc.

You can make an argument for upgrading your embellishments as a high priority as well. Once at their max ilvl, you will simply never replace them, reducing the risk of wasting crests down to 0. However, since we get free Enchanted Wyrm's Dreaming Crest , you will reach 476 ilvl already (10 ilvls lower than max). The 60 crests that it takes to craft to 486 therefore only give you 10 more ilvls. Even if these items are embellishments that will scale with ilvl, the DPS per crest is generally much less than what you could get elsewhere (2-7x more DPS by upgrading other pieces). It is up to you how much you value a guaranteed gain vs a gain that you might replace shortly in the future!

Unholy wants one one-use stat trinket and one passive trinket. Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows is the best on-use trinket, tightly followed by Might of the Ocean and Ashes of the Embersoul. Importantly, Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows is only BiS if you can make it proc Mastery, so do check your stats when you sim this trinket for an upgrade! For passive trinkets, Cataclysmic Signet Brand is best due to its raw damage output. However, it does come with some self-damage as a drawback and takes a while to ramp up (5 minutes or so). Other alternatives (and better options in sub-5-minute encounters) are Rezan's Gleaming Eye, Pip's Emerald Friendship Badge, Ember of Nullification and Accelerating Sandglass.

For Mythic+, our priority changes slightly. Might of the Ocean becomes a bit better due to strong synergy with our 1.5min AoE burst windows. Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows is still really good due to helping our otherwise lacking Single Target. For the passive trinket, Accelerating Sandglass, Pip's Emerald Friendship Badge, Ember of Nullification and Porcelain Crab work best due to providing secondary stats. Raw damage trinket are generally devalued in AoE scenarios.

I have listed the best active and passive trinkets below!

1. Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows
2. Ashes of the Embersoul
3. Might of the Ocean
4. Spores of Alacrity

1. Cataclysmic Signet Brand
2. Rezan's Gleaming Eye
3. Ember of Nullification
4. Accelerating Sandglass
5. Pip's Emerald Friendship Badge
6. Porcelain Crab
7. Gore-Crusted Butcher's Block

Many people overthink the distribution of their secondary stats. An important thing to remember is that a higher quantity of stats is nearly always better than a better quality of stats. Because of this, wearing higher item-level gear with worse stats tends to be better than lower item-level gear with great stats. Keep this in mind when considering gear. For more stats information, please refer to our dedicated page.

For Unholy specifically, aim to have Mastery as your top secondary by raw amount, tightly followed by Haste. This optimises the value of Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows!

For neck and ring pieces, you can afford to drop 5-10 ilevels in most cases to get our preferred stats: Haste and Mastery. That said, you should always sim yourself to see what is better as the secondary stat diminishing returns can still change your ideal setup. It can be useful to wear crafted jewelry due to how you can control the stats, just remember that you cannot craft the max ilvl possible!

For Season 2, our best weapon is the legendary by far. Until you get it though, getting whatever weapon is the highest ilvl is the best choice. The crafted weapons are great potential early pick-ups to get a large upgrade!

With Season 2, we have an Unholy Death Knight Tier set bonus that buffs how we play.

• 2-piece set bonus: Death Knight Unholy 10.2 Class Set 2pc
• 4-piece set bonus: Death Knight Unholy 10.2 Class Set 4pc

The ideal 4 items to use here are Head, Shoulder, Legs, and Hands

The only impact this set has on gameplay comes in the AoE rotation. Since Magus of the Dead now cleaves, Apocalypse and Army of the Dead becomes useful in AoE. We want to use these Cooldowns early in our opener against packs in Mythic+! For a full rotation breakdown, please see the rotation page:

You want to obtain 4 pieces of the T31 set before you swap away from your old set! This is a general rule, and if the ilvl upgrade is big enough, it might be worth to go 2p2p.

Unholy wants to run Vibrant Wildercloth Shawl with Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch and Allied Wristguard of Companionship as its embellishments in Raid. These slots are low on stats (meaning a smaller penalty from missing out on the 3-ilvls at max craft level), and the passive effects are relatively strong. Blue Silken Lining is a potential alternative to Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch but you need to reach around 40% uptime on the Mastery buff to be worthwhile (primarily in your burst windows). You put it on Vibrant Wildercloth Shawl for bosses with low damage output or during farm kills. Furthermore, it is significantly stronger for Mythic+ since you will be at max HP the majority of the time, always run it in dungeons!

Fore Mythic+, Blue Silken Lining becomes a lot stronger due to significantly higher uptime. We recommend running a cloak with Blue Silken Lining and the Allied Wristguard of Companionship for the M+ embellishments.

When it comes to your other crafted slots, we are not wearing nearly as many crafted items compared to Season 2. This is due to crafted items maxing out at ilvl 486 compared to 489 on Mythic items. We will use crafted item as a way of "filling the gaps", generally crafting things in slots where we currently have a low ilvl piece. Having said that, crafting a weapon is generally a good idea if you haven't been able to obtain a strong one yet (such as the Legendary).