Unholy Death Knights Took a Hit in Today’s Hotfixes

Hotfixes

January 22, 2026

Characters

• The XP buff from the Warband Mentors: The War Within set of achievements should now be applying correctly on characters below level 80.
• Corrected an issue that incorrectly enabled legacy content scaling for characters who were leveling up in Dragonflight.

Classes

• Death Knight
  • Unholy
    • Developers’ notes: We’re looking into the throughput imbalance for Unholy Death Knight in the pre-expansion update. These changes will not impact 12.0.1, as Unholy received substantial updates between 12.0.0 and 12.0.1.
    • Rider of the Apocalypse Horsemen damage reduced by 50%.
    • Trollbane’s Icy Fury damage increased by 100%.
    • Lesser Ghoul Sweeping Claw main target damage reduced by 50%.
    • Lesser Ghoul melee damage reduced by 50%.
    • Pet Ghoul Sweeping Claw main target damage reduced by 50%.
    • Pet Ghoul melee damage reduced by 50%.
    • Death Coil damage reduced by 30%.
    • Scourge Strike damage reduced by 30%.
    • Infected Claws damage reduced by 50%.
    • Putrefy main target damage reduced by 30%.
    • Morbidity now increases the damage taken by 1% per disease on target (was 2%).
    • Raise Abomination Disease Cloud effect reduced to 10% (was 20%).
    • Epidemic damage increased by 25%.
    • Clawing Shadows chain damage penalty reduced to 15% (was 25%).
• Mage
  • Frostbolt is now located in the Frost Mage section of the Spellbook for easier access.

Delves

• Fixed a bug causing Brann’s experience bar to also mention Valeera.

Dungeons and Raids

• Fixed a bug preventing some encounters from progressing through their stages correctly (e.g. the Neltharion encounter in Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible).
• Resolved an issue causing some creatures in Nerub’ar Palace and Liberation of Undermine to have very low health.

Housing

• Elegant Elven Barrel can now be added as decor.
• Lightly Broken Fences found around the neighborhood can now be repaired.

Mage Tower

• Developers’ notes: With the Midnight pre-expansion update now live, we’re adjusting enemy health in several Mage Tower challenges to bring them back toward their intended pacing and difficulty.
• Closing the Eye
  • Enemy health increased by 20%.
• An Impossible Foe
  • Enemy health increased by 20%.
• The God-Queen’s Fury
  • Enemy health increased by 15%.
• Feltotem’s Fall
  • Enemy health increased by 20% for all specializations except Discipline Priest, for which there is no adjustment.
• Thwarting the Twins
  • Enemy health increased by 20%.
• The Highlord’s Return
  • Enemy health increased by 15%.

Player versus Player

• Adjusted the effectiveness of Training Grounds opponents.

Quests

• The Campaign header should now appear for War Within campaigns.
• Resolved issues with the quest “Distilled Darkness” causing the K’areshi Fragments to be uninteractible for some players.
  • Developers’ notes: If any issues are being encountered, please submit a bug report of what happened prior to the quest failing and identify which fragment is causing the issues (Northern, Southern, or both).

Transmogrification

• Addressed an issue causing Midnight Special Edition transmog sets to not be usable at lower levels.