Unholy Death Knight DPS Gear and Best in Slot — The War Within (11.2)

Welcome to our Gear and BiS Page for Unholy Death Knight for The War Within Season 3. Check this page to learn everything you need to know about gearing an Unholy Death Knight, including the BiS Gear from all sources, Raiding, and Mythic+, information on the best Trinkets, Tier Sets, and much more.

We have three BiS lists below, each detailing the best gear you can obtain from a specific source. We have the overall list, a raid-only one, and, finally, a mythic+-only list. They are all optimised to give you the highest single target DPS. The various builds we run have very similar stat and trinket priorities and will run the same set of gear.

2.

BiS Gear for Unholy Death Knight

Overall BiS Mythic+ Raid

3.

Overall BiS List for Unholy Death Knight

Below, you will find the theoretical BiS set of gear for The War Within Season 3.

Slot	Item	Boss/ Dungeon/ Source
Helm	Hollow Sentinel's Stonemask	Forgeweaver Araz
Neck	Salhadaar's Folly	Nexus King Salhadaar
Shoulder	Hollow Sentinel's Perches	The Soul Hunters
Cloak	Reshii Wraps	Quest
Chest	Hollow Sentinel's Breastplate	Fractillus
Bracers	Everforged Vambraces (Crit Mastery) with Dawnthread Lining	Blacksmithing
Gloves	Breached Containment Guards	Forgeweaver Araz
Belt	Everforged Greatbelt (Crit Mastery) with Dawnthread Lining	Blacksmithing
Legs	Hollow Sentinel's Stonekilt	Loom’ithar
Boots	Interloper's Plated Sabatons	The Soul Hunters
Ring #1	Ring of the Panoply	Tazavesh: Streets of Wonder
Ring #2	Whispers of K'aresh	Eco-Dome Al'dani
Trinket #1	Araz's Ritual Forge	Forgeweaver Araz
Trinket #2	Astral Antenna	Loom’ithar
2H Weapon	Fatebound Crusader	Eco-Dome Al'dani

3.

Mythic+ Gear BiS List for Unholy Death Knight

This list contains the highest DPS setup, with farmable gear from Mythic+ Dungeons. 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	Wing Commander's Helmet	Halls of Atonement
Neck	Sin Stained Pendant	Halls of Atonement
Shoulder	Stoneflesh Spaulders	Tazavesh: So'Leah's Gambit
Cloak	Reshii Wraps	Quest
Chest	Breastplate of Otherworldly Influence	Halls of Atonement
Bracers	Vambraces of Verification	Tazavesh: Streets of Wonder
Gloves	Devourer's Gauntlets	Ara-Kara, City of Echoes
Belt	Girdle of Somber Ploys	The Dawnbreaker
Legs	Quantum Leapers	Tazavesh: Streets of Wonder
Boots	Implacable Weatherproof Treads	Tazavesh: Streets of Wonder
Ring #1	Ring of the Panoply	Tazavesh: Streets of Wonder
Ring #2	Whispers of K'aresh	Eco-Dome Al'dani
Trinket #1	Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker	Operation: Floodgate
Trinket #2	Signet of the Priory	Priory of the Sacred Flame
2H Weapon	Fatebound Crusader	Eco-Dome Al'dani

3.

Raid Gear BiS List for Unholy Death Knight

This list contains the highest DPS setup, only using gear from the Manaforge Omega Raid.

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	Hollow Sentinel's Stonemask	Forgeweaver Araz
Neck	Salhadaar's Folly	Nexus King Salhadaar
Shoulder	Hollow Sentinel's Perches	The Soul Hunters
Cloak	Reshii Wraps	Quest
Chest	Hollow Sentinel's Breastplate	Fractillus
Bracers	Discarded Nutrient Shackles	Loom’ithar
Gloves	Breached Containment Guards	Forgeweaver Araz
Belt	Fresh Ethereal Fetters	Soulbinder Naazindhri
Legs	Hollow Sentinel's Stonekilt	Loom’ithar
Boots	Interloper's Plated Sabatons	The Soul Hunters
Ring #1	Logic Gate: Omega	Forgeweaver Araz
Ring #2	Band of the Shattered Soul	Dimensius The All Devouring
Trinket #1	Araz's Ritual Forge	Forgeweaver Araz
Trinket #2	Astral Antenna	Loom’ithar
2H Weapon	Supermassive Starcrusher	Dimensius The All Devouring

Patch 11.2 introduced a new cloak that can be obtained and upgraded via a questline. This will be our BiS cloak for Season 3! We can customise it to some degree, adding a single secondary stat to the cloak. We want to add Haste via the Pure Chronomantic Fiber item. Furthermore, we can combine the cloak with a pair of boots that interact with it: Interloper's Plated Sabatons. These boots are also part of our BiS list! As always, sim yourself for upgrades but the cloak and boots are likely to be better than what you have!

Patch 11.1.7 introduced a new belt that can be obtained from delves, the Durable Information Securing Container. This is a powerful belt that can be upgraded over time to eventually reach 701 ilvl. Importantly, you can choose one of 9 powers to empower the belt with procs varying from damage, stats and healing. We want to use the Spark Burst for our belt! The belt is really powerful and you should equip it as soon as you get it. The best effect does depend on your current stats as the value of the secondary stat proc depends on your current stat weights. Make sure to sim yourself to see which one is best for you!

We will replace this belt in Season 3, make sure to sim your character when you receive a higher ilvl belt. As a guideline, a crafted 704 belt will generally be about the same value!.

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, Mastery and Crit! We recommend simming your character to determine what upgrade is best for you! For a more detailed explanation, you can read the Simulations page.

Our Season 3 Tier Set is now specific to the Hero-Talents we run, with unique effects for both Rider of the Apocalypse and San'layn. The sets are strong with the following raw cumulative values:

• Rider 2-set: 3.7%
• Rider 4-set: 14.7%
• San'Layn 2-set: 13.5%
• San'Layn 4-set: 25.2%.

You only need 4 pieces out of 5 to get both set bonuses. We recommend you get all items except for the Gloves, due to their Versatility stat. Check out the BiS List for more information.

The 2-set summons Whitemane for 10 seconds when you cast Apocalypse. His Undead spells deals 20% increased damage and infects 1 additional target when it spreads, and her Death Coil deals 35% increased damage. Completely passive tier set that adds value to our Apocalypse talent, making it a lot more valuable to pick up.

The 4-set makes Whiteman cast her Death Coil and Epidemic when you use these abilities. Furthermore, Death Coil deals 40% increased damage to targets affected by Undead. A higher value to Death Coil and Epidemic when Whitemane is out, as well as a big increase to Death Coil. This affects our Death Coil vs Epidemic priority in AoE, making it even more complicated.

The 2-set makes Infliction of Sorrow extend your disease by an additional 4 seconds (7 seconds total) on your main target. Furthermore, Essence of the Blood Queen additionally increases your Mastery by 0.5% per stack. A super strong 2-set that makes the ramping nature of our Gift of the San'layn windows even stronger.

The 4-set makes Infliction of Sorrow deal 35% increased damage and Vampiric Strike increases the damage of your ghoul by 20% for 8 seconds with multiple applications overlapping. Another buff to our Gift of the San'layn with even higher Infliction damage and a big buff to our pet as we spam Vampiric Strike.

The War Within has a powerful upgrade system for your gear where you use Valorstones and Crests to upgrade your gear. These are obtainable from practically all forms of content in the game.

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. 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. For Unholy Death Knights, this will be your weapon (Attack Power scales with weapon ilvl). After you have upgraded your weapon, move on to trinkets and high-stat slot items like Legs, Helm, Chest, etc.

Unholy wants to run a Everforged Greatbelt (Crit Mastery ) with Dawnthread Lining and Everforged Vambraces (Crit Mastery) with Dawnthread Lining. For the BiS setup. This is a great combo that also works really well in Mythic+, so you don't need to change your crafted gear significantly. Importantly, a crafted Charged Claymore with Ascendance and the wrists with Writhing Armor Banding is only 0.3% behind the BiS setup. This means that you are really likely to start by crafting a weapon and then swapping to the BiS setup later in the tier.

When it comes to your other crafted slots, we are only wearing two crafted items in our BiS setup (due to the ilvl loss). Use crafting as a way of "filling in the gaps" in your gear, trying to find the best value upgrade in a slot where you already do not have a good piece. Sim yourself to find the best option for you!

Unholy aims to use one on-use Trinket as well as one passive one. In The War Within Season 3, our best on-use is Araz's Ritual Forge followed by Signet of the Priory (-1%). For passive trinkets, Astral Antenna is best followed by Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker (-1%). The exact values do change slightly depending on your current stats so always sim yourself when deciding what trinkets to run!

Both our best on-use trinkets are 2-minute Cooldown unfortunately. This means that we cannot easily time them with our major 1.5min Cooldowns as a rule. Instead, we need to consider the total fight duration and plan ahead based off this. The usage looks like the following (always make sure to use the final use to get the full value before the fight ends. 30 seconds for Araz, 20 seconds for Signet). The first range is the fight duration span, the second list is when to use the trinket. You should ideally get at least 50% uptime in your major CDs for it to be worth to hold over a full Apocalypse overlap.

• 00:00-02:30 -> 00:00, 02:00
• 02:30-03:15 -> 00:00, 02:15
• 03:15-04:45 -> 00:00, 03:00
• 04:45-06:15 -> 00:00, 02:15, 04:30
• 06:15-09:15-> 00:00, 03:00, 05:15, 07:30

9.

Best Trinkets for Unholy Death Knight in The War Within Season 3

Raiding Trinket Tier List Mythic+ Trinket Tier List

10.

Raiding Trinket Tier List for Unholy Death Knight

This Trinket Tier List is single-target biased, as this tends to be the most important aspect of Raiding. Other aspects of the trinkets are also baked into the rankings, such as their ease of use.

9.1.

S-Tier

• Araz's Ritual Forge - Best on-use even with a 2-minute Cooldown.
• Astral Antenna - BiS passive trinket that provides a really good amount of Crit.

9.2.

A-Tier

• Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker - Great passive that does lose some power if we do not strictly follow our Cooldown cycle.
• Signet of the Priory - Second-best on-use, also at the 2-minute Cooldown.
• Cursed Stone Idol - Powerful 1.5 min Cooldown trinket.
• Unyielding Netherprism - Accumulated raw stat that can be used with great effect with a late Bloodlust or overlapped with a Araz's Ritual Forge use.

9.3.

B-Tier

• Ara-Kara Sacbrood - Nice passive trinket that does not scale too well in AoE.
• Unyielding Netherprism - Accumulated raw stat that can be used with great effect with a late Bloodlust or overlapped with a Araz's Ritual Forge use.
• Eradicating Arcanocore - Solid raw damage trinket.
• Void Pactstone - Solid raw damage + stat trinket.
• So'leah's Secret Technique - Pure passive trinket that allows you to pick the secondary stat you want, a nice benefit as you are optimising your stat distribution.
• Incorporeal Essence-Gorger - Powerful raw damage trinket from delves that also provides a nice stat boost with the on-use.

9.4.

C-Tier

• Void-Touched Fragment
• Incorporeal Warpclaw
• Depleted K'areshi Battery
• Soulbreaker's Sigil
• Soulbinder's Embrace
• Ticking Sack of Terror
• Screams of a Forgotten Sky
• Azhiccaran Parapodia

10.

Mythic+ Trinket Tier List for Unholy Death Knight

Void-Touched Fragment - Stat trinket that gains significant value in Mythic+ due to lots of enemies dying near us.

This Trinket Tier List is more AoE focused as Mythic+ values AoE damage significantly more. We still look for a good balance between Single Target and AoE though! You can either choose to run one active and one passive or run double active to have a trinket up for every Dark Transformation window.

9.5.

S-Tier

• Araz's Ritual Forge - Best on-use even with a 2-minute Cooldown.
• Astral Antenna - BiS passive trinket that provides a really good amount of Crit.

9.6.

A-Tier

• Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker - Great passive that does lose some power if we do not strictly follow our Cooldown cycle.
• Signet of the Priory - Second-best on-use, also at the 2-minute Cooldown.
• Cursed Stone Idol - Powerful 1.5 min Cooldown trinket.
• Unyielding Netherprism - Accumulated raw stat that can be used with great effect with a late Bloodlust or overlapped with a Araz's Ritual Forge use.

9.7.

B-Tier

• Ara-Kara Sacbrood - Nice passive trinket that does not scale too well in AoE.
• Eradicating Arcanocore - Solid raw damage trinket.
• Void Pactstone - Solid raw damage + stat trinket.
• So'leah's Secret Technique - Pure passive trinket that allows you to pick the secondary stat you want, a nice benefit as you are optimising your stat distribution.
• Incorporeal Essence-Gorger - Powerful raw damage trinket from delves that also provides a nice stat boost with the on-use.

9.8.

C-Tier

• Void-Touched Fragment
• Incorporeal Warpclaw
• Depleted K'areshi Battery
• Soulbreaker's Sigil
• Soulbinder's Embrace
• Ticking Sack of Terror
• Screams of a Forgotten Sky
• Azhiccaran Parapodia

Many people overthink the distribution of their secondary stats. An important thing to remember is that a higher quantity of stats is usually 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 information on stats, please refer to our dedicated page.

For neck and ring pieces, you can generally 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 maximum ilvl possible!