Unholy Death Knight DPS Guide — The War Within (11.2)

Unholy received a rework in Patch 11.2 with multiple new, removed and changed talents. Furthermore, we have received new tier sets that are now Hero-Talent specific. This means that instead of having one tier set for each spec, we now have one tier set for Rider of the Apocalypse and one for San'layn.

The guide has been updated with the new talent tree as well as new talent builds. Furthermore, the rotation has been updated to accomodate for the new playstyle with the rework. Finally, the gear page has been updated to contain our new bis gear as well as the new gear pieces. This includes the new Reshii Wraps cloak!

The Unholy playstyle has not changed significantly in Season 3. We see the removal of the iconic Abomination Limb but also gain cool talents like Legion of Souls. Dark Transformation is now baked into Apocalypse when both is talented and we see a greater focus on pets in AoE.

Below is a summary of the important changes for the patch as well as their impact.

• The following talents have been removed:
  • Abomination Limb - A loss of utility for a spell that saw some nice uses where we needed to grip multiple mobs in a short space of time.
  • Unholy Ground - A talent that incentivised Death and Decay usage in Single Target and made boss movement feel even worse.
  • Pestilence - Passive Festering Wound generation via Death and Decay. Not the most impactful talent but did provide a nice source of wounds in AoE.
  • Runic Mastery - Runic Power increase as well as a Runic Corruption buff. Very costly talent that was rarely ever picked up.
  • Ruptured Viscera - Weak and almost never picked talent that had an annoying delay in how it dealt its burst AoE damage.
  • Vile Contagion - A significant Festering Wound generator in AoE that saw less play due to significant setup required for it.
• The following talents have been added:
  • Plague Mastery - A choice node with the new Grave Mastery, this represents a build choice of pets vs diseases. Adding critical strike damage is done to help our previously rather bad crit scaling.
  • Grave Mastery - A choice node with the new Plague Mastery, this represents a build choice of pets vs diseases. Adding critical strike damage is done to help our previously rather bad crit scaling.
  • Desecrate - A choice node with Defile that allows you to recast Death and Decay when used, gaining Cleaving Strikes for the full remaining duration. Also either builds or bursts Festering Wounds, increases damage of Death and Decay by 100% and reduces its Cooldown by 10 seconds. Great talent for when your tank moves out of your Death and Decay but also quite GCD-heavy for what it does.
  • Legion of Souls - AoE Cooldown that applies Festering Wounds in AoE and gives your Cleaving Strikes. Big AoE Cooldown that simplifies a lot of your AoE setup when it is available. Also scales with minion-buffing talents!
  • Unholy Momentum - Replaces the old Unholy Ground simply providing the effective Haste buff (lower value) without the Death and Decay requirement.
• The following talents have been updated:
  • Blood Beast now triggers when you activate Dark Transformation - Fully removing the randomness of Blood Beast, we now get a natural boost to our Cooldowns that scale nicely in AoE as well!
  • Anti-Magic Zone lasts for two seconds less, absorbs 15% instead of 20% magic damage and has a 4 minute Cooldown up from 2 minutes. The amount it can absorb is uncapped however. Assimilation brings the Cooldown down to 3 minutes and duration up to 8 seconds. - Overall a nerf in most scenarios since we did not hit the absorb cap very often.
  • Apocalypse now replaces Dark Transformation when talented (while still having the Dark Transformation effect) - This removes a button in our opener but also removes some minmax gameplay when one wanted to desync the two abilities slightly.
  • All Will Serve now fires additional arrows when you consume Sudden Doom, choosing between Single Target and AoE with Death Coil and Epidemic respectively.
  • Reaping now makes your Soul Reaper's execute effect buff your minions by 10% for 8 seconds - Significant buff to Soul Reaper which will increase our priority when pressing the spell in Single Target (still not worth it during Dark Transformation with San'layn however).
  • Decomposition has been buffed by 100% - still not strong enough to be worthwhile picking.
  • Clawing Shadows and Ebon Fever is no longer a choice node - Really nice to be able to pick up a hybrid disease build with the addition of Clawing Shadows!
  • Plague Mastery now also increases the critical strike damage of your minions and diseases - Another helping hand for our critical strike scaling!
  • Bursting Sores damage is now hard-capped at 7 targets - a removal of our most classic "infinite" quadratic scaling that overall does not impact us that much. The base damage was also buffed so we gained value at more realistic target counts. Furthermore, Scourge Strike crits also increase the damage of the burst Festering Wound by 20%, gaining some nice crit scaling for us.
  • Defile now has a 30 seconds Cooldown - A major nerf to a talent that was picked up in large due to its shorter Cooldown. Death and Decay damage was also increased by 100% making the damage increase aspect of the talent worse as well.
  • Death Grip now has a 15 seconds cooldown - Same as Blood Death Knights thus removing a utility disadvantage against them.

The Unholy Death Knight did not receive any specific changes for the 11.1.7 patch. However, all specs now have a built-in Combat Assistant that helps you execute your rotation. You can read more about it by following the link below!

The guide as a whole has been reviewed, updating outdated information and simplifying the structure of the rotation guide. Furthermore, the new belt ( Durable Information Securing Container) has been added to the gear page.

The Unholy Death Knight received two nerfs of Blood Beast during the 11.1.5 patch. First its damage was reduced by 20%, and then by an additional 50%, translating into a roughly 5% damage loss in Mythic+. Even if the impact to the ability itself is huge, it does not impact talent choices nor gameplay. We also received some compensation buffs to keep up our Single Target.