2.1.
Midnight Season 1 Release Changes
Midnight Season 1 has released, and with it came a lot of new content.
It brought with it three new Raids, alongside heralding the start of Season
1 for both Mythic+ and PvP. With all the new things available, we've provided
some dedicated hubs covering everything available!
2.2.
Patch 12.0.5 Changes
The Unholy Death Knight received multiple in the 12.0.5 patch including a slight
spec talent rework and a few spell and talent changes (important ones mentioned):
- New talent
Cycle of Death - 
Putrefy reduces the cooldown of
Death and Decay by 1 second and Death and Decay reduces the cooldown
of Putrefy by 0.3 seconds for each enemy it damages, up to 3 seconds.
Scourge Strike additionally applies 
Virulent Plague to the target
if unaffected.
Raise Abomination no longer causes enemies to take increased damage from minions,
deals Plague damage to them instead.
Putrid Echoes adds two extra charges of Putrefy and causes Putrefy to consume up to two charges
when used.
Pestilence now overrides 
Dark Transformation instead of 
Outbreak
and has a new name in the form of 
Blightfall.- Blightfall,
March of Madness and Scythe of Decay have all been removed.
- The
Rider of the Apocalypse 
Unholy Armaments additionally increases your Ghoul and
skeletal archer damage by 10%, and 
Lesser Ghoul damage by 20%.
Frenzied Bloodthirst now increases the damage of 
Death Coil by 3% per
stack and 
Epidemic by 5% per stack.
Overall, the changes do not have a significant impact on the Unholy Death Knight. We will run similar
builds with similar gameplay fundamentals. We see a bit less flexibility in the spec tree as we are now
required to route through double 
Unholy Aura to get to 
Reanimation. Raise Abomination
being nerfed does provide options, as it's so weak it is changed to other talents like 
Summon Gargoyle. The change
to Scourge Strike now also applying Virulent Plague has little effect as we want to be moving
Dread Plague around regardless. Finally, we get a bit more flexibility around Putrefy. Three total charges
with Putrid Echoes and both Putrefy and 
Soul Reaper consuming up to two charges when used. This means
that we can "bank" charges more effectively and concentrate their uses in our Dark Transformation windows more effectively.
Cycle of Death is a new interesting ability that makes Death and Decay worthwhile to use at 3+ enemies when specced into.
The buff to Unholy Armaments was a significant buff to Rider of the Apocalypse making it stronger
than 
San'layn in most situations.
In addition to this, a variety of open world content releases worth checking out!
The Voidforge Unlocks!
The Voidforge is Midnight's take on Bonus Rolls and Turbo Boost, allowing you to
target specific big ticket items through a new bonus roll system. You can also
further empower trinkets and weapons, and we have recommendations on our
Gear page.
Void Assaults are Unleashed
Eversong Woods and Zul'Aman are under siege from the forces of the Void. Thwarting
their attacks provide a new way to acquire gear all the way up to Hero level, and
you can check out more on our Void Assault hub.
Disrupt Ritual Sites
Sharing a similar reward structure to Void Assaults, Ritual Sites are instanced
content similar to Delves. You can find out all about them on our Ritual Sites page.
Click for Previous Season 1 Hotfixes
Unholy received a significant tuning pass on the 17th of March, reducing all damage
by 20%, while buffing Epidemic by 10% and Virulent Plague by 15%.
This was effectively a 20% nerf (slightly less in AoE) bringing Unholy to the bottom
of the pack in Raid DPS.
The initial nerf was followed by a significant ~20% buff on the 18th of March,
essentially reversing the initial nerf. Unholy now sits in a much better place
in the raid.
When it comes to tuning adjustments, our next planned pass is expected to arrive
with the Midnight Season 1 launch on March 17. Our next pass will follow immediately
afterwards utilizing data gathered during the week Heroic difficulties are available;
these changes will go live with the launch of Mythic raid difficulty and Mythic+ on
March 24.
Beyond these dates, we will look to perform more tuning passes based on data gathered
during the starting weeks of Mythic difficulty for Season 1 and the March on Quel’Danas
available the week of March 31. For these two passes we err on the side of caution with
the amount of tuning we do until their respective Mythic end-bosses die to avoid being
overly disruptive to progression. After these key dates we will have several check-in passes
planned roughly a month apart. Once players obtain higher item level and better optimized gear
sets, the throughput of several specs will shift up or down relative to others and we feel
it’s important to be diligent in looking at the current state of class balance as time goes on.
2.3.
Midnight Changes for Unholy Death Knight
Unholy Death Knight has received a significant rework in
Midnight. The 
Festering Wounds, that have been a core aspect of
the spec since Legion, are now gone, replaced with a minion-summoning gameplay loop
at its core. More emphasis has been put on our plagues with both a
new pure single-target disease called Dread Plague as well as more disease
interaction within our talents. Our AoE is now decoupled from Death and Decay
and we instead passively cleave via standard Scourge Strikes.
Finally, we have a new core rotational ability called
Putrefy which we use to summon and sacrifice ghouls.
The feel of Unholy Death Knight is similar in some cases to previous expansions.
We maintain our core rotation of 
Festering Strike, Scourge Strike
and Death Coil, but now also press Putrefy every so often. Our
AoE rotation has seen the most change as it is now very similar to our single-target.
Pestilence (now Blightfall) has been introduced which creates this huge burst button
that scales off our plague durations. In general, the rotation is simpler with
fewer opportunities for skill expression.
2.4.
New Apex Talents
We have received three new talents in our spec tree that we can talent into as we
level from 80 to 90. These are generally really powerful, buffing 
Army of the Dead
significantly and sending automatic Putrefys as your Dread Plague ticks.
2.4.1.
Putrefy
Putrefy summons a lesser ghoul to leap at your target, dealing direct damage and
then exploding for AoE damage. We have several new talents that
boost this interaction in various ways:
Unholy Devotion makes your permanent ghoul temporarily do more damage when
you cast Putrefy (multiple applications can overlap).
Blightburst makes the explosion effect of Putrefy extend the duration
of your plagues and deals a portion of the damage the diseases would do in that
duration instantly. Also applies our plagues to unaffected targets - nice synergy with our plagues
and a source of plague duration extension and application. This ability heavily reduces the number of Outbreaks
we use in general.- Reanimation reanimates the ghoul you Putrefy as a
Magus of the Dead.
Also increases the damage of our Magi
- Major source of Magus summoning and damage increase.
- Putrid Echoes gives you an additional charge of Putrefy and increases
its damage - provides some nice flexibility with the additional charge
and enables you to both use the ability more efficiently, as well as spending
the charges in a more burst-like manner. For example, with Reanimation you
can summon two Magus of the Dead during your Dark Transformation for some nice AoE
burst.
Harbinger of Doom reduces the Cooldown of Putrefy
whenever you summon a ghoul with Scourge Strike.- Soul Reaper automatically consumes all stacks of Putrefy
and uses them. This effectively removes the need to Putrefy when in execute.
- Blightfall gives a charge of Putrefy when used.
All these interactions make Putrefy an important spell to leverage that has
a big impact on your damage.
2.4.2.
Festering Wound Removal
Festering Wounds are now completely gone from Unholy Death Knight.
Instead of applying a debuff to enemies, Festering Strike now applies a buff
on you Lesser Ghoul (2-3 stacks per Festering Strike, stacking up to 8 times). These stacks
are consumed by Scourge Strike, summoning a lesser ghoul.
This helps significantly in target swapping and setup as the stacks on yourself
stay as you change targets. Furthermore, we get more of a necromancer fantasy feel as
we summon significant numbers of undead minions. With the removal of wounds, we also
lost some iconic abilities like 
Unholy Assault and 
Apocalypse.
2.4.3.
Plagues
Midnight has introduced the Dread Plague Plague, applied via
our Outbreak or Putrefy with Blightburst,
it deals damage to only a single enemy (can be talented to do
damage to a second one at reduced effectiveness with 
Superstrain) and is our new source
of Sudden Doom procs. It also has an interesting interaction when the target it's on dies,
triggering an explosion and spreading the Plague to a new target. This makes the Plague easy to keep
up in AoE and presents some fun scenarios where you get a chain-reaction effect
where lots of enemies die after each other.
The talent tree also presents a lot more talents that interact with Plagues. Death Coil
and Epidemic now extend the duration of Virulent Plague and Dread Plague
by default. Scourge Strike deals extra damage based on your plagues, 
Festering Scythe
now increases plague tick-rate, and the new Blightburst talent extends the duration
and deals damage based off your plague damage. We have a new Blightfall
talent that interacts with our Plagues, allowing you to consume them to deal
100% of the remaining damages as a big burst. When we press Dark Transformation,
your next Outbreak turns into this Pestilence ability. You get this gameplay loop
where you cast Dark Transformation, try to increase your Plague durations as much as possible
and then consume them for big burst damage. Especially San'layn can do this effectively
due to the Plague duration increase with 
Infliction of Sorrow.
2.4.4.
AoE Rework
Midnight sees the rework of the 
Clawing Shadows talent, no longer granting range ( Scourge Strike
is now 30 yards by default), but instead being our AoE enabler. Every time we use Scourge Strike,
we simply cleave to one additional target, up to 4 (6 with 
Scourging) extra targets. This does not require
Death and Decay at all. No more annoyance as tanks move out of your ground AoE,
you can just follow along and keep doing lots of damage. The drawback is that we get a natural
ramping nature in AoE, and you ideally want to chain-pull to maintain the stacks (they only last for
12 seconds). This is not an issue with San'layn which immediately gets max stacks via the
Inevitable talent.
We also gain access to the new 
Outnumber ability which grants our lesser
ghouls the Claw AoE ability during Dark Transformation. This is a nice additional
AoE component to our pets which used to be exclusive to our Magi and our main pet.
It makes Army of the Dead a stronger AoE cooldown due to the lesser ghoul summons and gives
Rune of the Apocalypse more AoE value!
Death and Decay is in a weird spot in AoE with few interactions left in our kit. It deals okay
damage in really big pulls and have some synergy left with San'layn (through 
Desecrate
and 
Blood-Soaked Ground). Furthermore, we now have a talent
with Scythe of Decay that casts it automatically when you use Festering Scythe. In general
however, it simply is not worthwhile to press, regardless of talent choices.
It now mainly has utility value with 
Grip of the Dead.
2.4.5.
Ranged Effectiveness
We are a lot more effective from range in the Midnight. Scourge Strike is 30 yards by default, and
we have lost a lot of talents that would previously benefit from us staying in melee range.
Sudden Doom now procs off Dread Plague hits instead of melee attacks and Unholy Aura
now works off your minion summons. We just need to get in melee to hit
Festering Strike and can then run around for several seconds while losing minimal damage. We do
lose melee swings (2% of our damage) and our pets need to run a bit further when they are summoned.
Otherwise, we can pretend that we are ranged for significant portions of any fight.
2.5.
Hero Talents
Our Hero Talents have received three new talents each
These talents are generally not very impactful, mirroring some tier set bonuses
we have had in the past.
2.6.
Class Tree Changes
The Death Knight class tree has also seen some minor changes. 
Blood Bond, 
Death Defiance
and 
Death Notes have all been added. Some nice defensives and a hook to talent into 
Death Pact
(which is very much needed, we never pick this talent otherwise). Soul Reaper has moved to
the spec tree and has been reworked to buff our minions and plagues and 
Sacrificial Pact has been removed altogether.
We have also had some movement of nodes around the tree. 
Death's Reach is in a much better spot as a choice node
with 
Asphyxiate. 
Wraith Walk has moved further up the tree and is now a choice with 
March of Darkness.
Unholy Momentum is now a 2-point talent as well. Overall we get a bit more access to certain talents and some more options
in the tree. 
Death Strike and 
Unholy Endurance were nerfed a bit so we also lost some defensive power but not that
much in the grand scheme of things.
Rider of the Apocalypse
San'layn
Click for Previous Season 1 Hotfixes
