Unholy Death Knight Best Legendaries in Shadowlands — Shadowlands 9.2
Legendary Powers are targetable, unique effects that you can imbue certain base items with through the Runecarving system. In Shadowlands, these enable you to customize your Unholy Death Knight, drastically improving your performance, and are arguably the most important aspect of your gear.
The purpose of this page is to help you pick the right legendary powers (and item slots for them) for your character, depending on the content you are interested in.
Introduction: Legendaries in Shadowlands
One of the features of Shadowlands is the ability to craft Legendaries through Runecarving. Runecarving becomes available to you as you progress through Torghast. You gain Legendary Powers through different gameplay sources, and once you obtain them you can craft your own Legendary. Each of these Legendaries will boost the power of your character in a specific way, however you can only wear 1 Legendary item at a time. This guide will go over the best Legendary effects to help you make the choice a lot easier.
Best Legendary Powers for Unholy Death Knight
Focus | Legendary | Best Slot | Source | Stats |
---|---|---|---|---|
Raiding | ![]() |
Back | Sire Denathrius (Castle Nathria) | Haste and Mastery |
Mythic+ | ![]() |
Legs | World Boss: Nurgash Muckformed | Critical Strike and Mastery |
Torghast | ![]() |
Legs | Torghast (Layer 6+) | Critical Strike and Mastery |
Best Raiding Legendary
When choosing your Legendary for Raiding, you generally have two options:
either Deadliest Coil or
Frenzied Monstrosity depending on situation.
Deadliest Coil is your go-to Legendary, both creating value from the
increased duration of
Dark Transformation as well as the lower cost of
Death Coil. The low cost allows you to cast more, leveraging our
Army of the Damned talent more.
Frenzied Monstrosity becomes our
pick whenever there is good cleave, or when we cannot leverage the extra cooldown
reduction from Deadliest Coil. For instance, if we have lots of downtime,
or if the boss dies so quickly we cannot get two Armies anyway.
We must also mention Death's Certainty. This Legendary is part of a
viable build using Night Fae with
Rampant Transference and
Defile. Due to the very short effective cooldown of Defile, you can
keep up your
Death's Due Strength buff at max stacks indefinitely. This
is 20% Strength, constantly. The main negative aspect of this build is that its
throughput is comparable to other options, with its versatility being much lower.
Any downtime or heavy movement will break your buff, losing value. We still
feel like it is good enough to be discussed as an alternative though!
Best Mythic+ Legendary
For Mythic+, we pick either Frenzied Monstrosity or
Reanimated Shambler.
Frenzied Monstrosity brings solid single-target and AoE, making it the
versatile choice which fits all scenarios.
Reanimated Shambler synergises
heavily with the
Infected Claws and
Bursting Sores build, helping
to build wounds for that big burst window. The choice depends on dungeon, group,
and personal preference since you do sacrifice some single-target with Shambler.
Covenant Legendaries for Unholy Death Knight
Due to the Unity Legendary power introduced in Patch 9.2,
Unholy Death Knight has the option of using one Legendary from its current
Covenant.
- Kyrian —
Final Sentence — This is mainly an AoE Legendary. It does provide some value in single-target, 4% for 15 seconds, but this is overall really weak. It does well in AoE but the lack of single target makes it an overall mediocre Legendary.
- Necrolord —
Abomination's Frenzy — One of the best Legendaries available to use. 20% damage increase every 2 minutes feeds well into our burst with
Army of the Dead whenever we can combine these cooldowns. The extra duration is also nice, especially when you combine it with the
Brutal Grasp Conduit.
Abomination Limb really becomes a powerful cooldown! This Legendary is a large reason why we recommend you to run Necrolord for Raiding in Patch 9.2.
- Night Fae —
Rampant Transference — This is a great Legendary for any AoE. The Strength buff stacks up to 20% very quickly, requiring only 1
Scourge Strike/
Clawing Shadows at 4 targets! This Legendary is a major reason why Night Fae is the recommended Mythic+ Covenant in 9.2.
- Venthyr —
Insatiable Hunger — Mainly an AoE Segendary, this makes our
Swarming Mist windows even more potent. Unfortunately, it only really shines in AoE, making it a mediocre Legendary overall.
Changelog
- 20 Feb. 2022: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.2.
- 01 Nov. 2021: Added Reanimated Shambler as viable M+ alternative for Patch 9.1.5.
- 17 Jul. 2021: Added more verbose explanations; updated Frenzied Monstrosity to have Critical Strike and Mastery missives.
- 29 Jun. 2021: Guide reviewed and updated for Patch 9.1.
- 09 Mar. 2021: Added a section with the BiS Legendary for each major form of content.
- 19 Jan. 2021: Guide reviewed and completely updated.
- 26 Nov. 2020: Fixed an issue with the legendary power/per week breakdown (impossible to get a legendary on the first week).
- 21 Nov. 2020: Page added.
More Death Knight Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Bicepspump, a semi-hardcore player raiding with Wicked Vigilantes on Kazzak. He is heavily involved in the DK DPS theorycrafting community, testing hyoptheses and investigating the correct priority to use. He is also a useful-minion in the Acherus discord, frequently answering questions and discussing optimisations (do not hesitate to reach out). He produces guide-content on YouTube and frequently streams on Twitch.
- Free Character Moves from Firemaw
- Shadowlands 9.2 Season 3 Mythic+ DPS Log Rankings, Weeks 10 and 11
- Eyes of the Wolf Calia Menethil Quest in Patch 9.2.5
- Everything We Know About the Shrouded Affix in Shadowlands Season 4
- New Oribos Portals in Patch 9.2.5
- Patch 9.2.5 Build 43741: Achievement Changes
- Patch 9.2 and Burning Crusade Classic Hotfixes: May 17th
- Patch 9.2.5 PTR Development Notes: May 17th