WotLK Classic Unholy Death Knight Spec, Builds, Talents, and Glyphs
On this page, you will find out the best PvE talent choices and builds for your Unholy Death Knight in WotLK Classic, as well as advised glyphs.
Talent Builds for Unholy Death Knight
Unholy Death Knight talents focus on strengthening your pets and increasing not only your personal damage but members of your group through powerful debuffs; some talents also increase your survivability.
Leveling Builds
If you were looking for a leveling-oriented build, please refer to our Death Knight leveling guide.
Talent Build
The talent build listed above is the standard dual-wield Unholy build. Two-handed Unholy is certainly viable but even after considerable changes to the way snapshotting works with the Summon Gargoyle ability Dual-wield continues to do considerably more damage and it is not recommended at this time but will likely become stronger later in Wrath as powerful weapons become more available.
Scourge Strike Sub-spec
In later phases due to the strength of sigils, such as Sigil of Virulence and
Sigil of the Hanged Man which were added
in the Trial of the Grand Crusader and Icecrown Citadel releases, we will be using a slightly different spec. You'll remove a point
from
Black Ice and put it into
Scourge Strike. The rotational change is a relatively minor as we will now be using
Scourge Strike as our primary spender of Unholy runs instead of
Plague Strike, unless you're applying diseases.
Important Unholy Death Knight Talents
Unholy Tree
Ravenous Dead causes your ghoul to scale with your stats in a meaningful
way, greatly increasing the damage it deals.
Necrosis adds a Shadow damage portion to your auto attacks causing
them to scale even better with other talents that increase your Shadow damage.
Night of the Dead greatly reduces the amount of damage your ghoul will
take from AoE attacks, allowing it to survive most encounters without having to
worry about keeping it alive.
Impurity causes your spells to be 20% more powerful based on your
Attack Power.
Master of Ghouls allows you to control your Ghoul as a pet as opposed
to the guardian it naturally is, granting it unlimited duration and access to the
pet bar.
Desolation greatly increases the benefit of your
Blood Strike
ability by giving you a considerable buff that you should try to keep active as much
as possible.
Bone Shield acts as a powerful defensive cooldown but also increases
the damage you deal while it is active. Make sure you are actively trying to avoid
instances of incoming damage so you can maximize your damage output.
Crypt Fever drastically increases the damage dealt by your diseases.
Ebon Plaguebringer greatly increases the Magic damage taken by the
target from all sources.
Rage of Rivendare greatly increases the damage dealt by your abilities
to targets afflicted with
Blood Plague and gives a considerable amount of
Expertise.
Summon Gargoyle summons an extremely powerful pet that deals a
considerable amount of damage, scaling with your stats and buffs at the time
it is summoned.
Frost Tree
Black Ice is helpful since a considerable amount of damage
you deal is either Shadow or Frost, making this talent a massive damage increase.
Endless Winter increases your Strength, but more importantly removes the
Runic Power cost of
Mind Freeze, allowing you to spend your Runic Power
freely.
Icy Talons greatly increases your attack speed when a target is afflicted
with
Frost Fever.
Glyphs
Major Glyphs
Glyph of the Ghoul greatly strengthens your ghoul by causing it to scale
with your Strength and Stamina. The Ghoul is a massive part of your DPS as Unholy,
so any additional scaling will make any item you receive even more valuable.
Glyph of Death and Decay Death and Decay will be one of the primary parts of
your rotation and a spender of a considerable amount of your runes. This shines
especially in situations where you are hitting multiple targets.
Glyph of Icy Touch is used as Unholy since your diseases have quite a
few multipliers, so the added damage from this glyph causes it to benefit even
more from these.
Minor Glyphs
Glyph of Raise Dead removes the reagent cost of summoning a ghoul
Glyph of Pestilence increases the radius of your
Pestilence
ability by 5 yards.
Glyph of Blood Tap removes the self damage portion of
Blood Tap.
Changelog
- 17 Jan. 2023: Updated for Phase 2.
- 23 Aug. 2022: Page added.
This guide has been written by Sellin, a former top 10 US raider and several time Gladiator, long time WoW Player and passionate about all things Warcraft and Theorycrafting. You can follow him on Twitter and watch him on Twitch.
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