Unholy Death Knight DPS Easy Mode — 12.1

This is your go-to build in Raid encounters.

This is your go-to build in Delves or Mythic+.

Unholy Death Knight is a melee DPS specialization that provides strong single-target and AoE DPS.

Your main goal throughout a fight is applying the Lesser Ghoul stacks to yourself with Festering Strike (ensuring not to over-cap it by generating more than 8 of them) and then consuming these stacks with Scourge Strike / Vampiric Strike. Also use Festering Strike -> Festering Scythe to maintain the Scythe buff. Make sure to use Death Coil (Single Target) or Epidemic (AoE) to consume procs of Sudden Doom and spend Runic Power. Furthermore, you should aim to maintain uptime on your plagues Virulent Plague and Dread Plague by using Outbreak. Finally, make sure to use Putrefy as much as possible during your Dark Transformation window.

Our Season 2 tier set empowers our Magus of the Dead and Lord of the Dead pets. The 2-set makes them cast more powerful Necrotic Bolt and Withering Grasp abilities. The 4-set increases the damage of these new abilities by 130% against enemies below 35% health, improving our execute power.

1. Cast Soul Reaper when the target is below 35% health or you get a free use from Dark Transformation.
2. Cast Outbreak to maintain your Virulent Plague & Dread Plague on the target.
3. Use Festering Scythe to maintain the buff on yourself.
4. Use Putrefy during your Dark Transformation.
5. Use Death Coil when you have a Sudden Doom proc or Forbidden Knowledge is active. Use Epidemic when fighting 3+ enemies (4+ during Forbidden Knowledge).
6. Use Festering Strike to apply Lesser Ghoul stacks if you have 0.
7. Use Scourge Strike when you have any Lesser Ghoul stacks.
8. Use Death Coil. Use Epidemic when fighting 3+ enemies.

1. Use Outbreak
2. Use Festering Strike 2 times.
3. Use Army of the Dead + Dark Transformation + Potion + Trinket + Racial
4. Use Putrefy
5. Use Necrotic Coil 2 times.
6. Use Putrefy
7. Use Soul Reaper

The only difference between Single Target and AoE is the use of Epidemic. Use this instead of Death Coil whenever you are fighting 3 or more targets. During Forbidden Knowledge, use at 4+ targets (transforms to the Graveyard ability).

Unholy Death Knight gets access to Forbidden Knowledge Apex Talents as you level up from 80 to 90 in Midnight. The first rank provides a 30 seconds buff once you cast Army of the Dead, transforming your Death Coil into Necrotic Coil and your Epidemic into Graveyard. These new abilities are powerful version of the baseline ones, notably adding an AoE component to Death Coil. The impact to the rotation is that Necrotic Coil is used at up to 3 targets in AoE, whereas Death Coil is only used at up to 2.

Rank 2 and 3 ( Forbidden Knowledge) gives Mastery when Putrefy is cast and adds a stack of Lesser Ghoul. Slightly less Festering Strike casts are needed in the rotation, but not much else.

Rank 4 ( Forbidden Knowledge) gives Dread Plague a 20% chance to trigger Putrefy at 100% effectiveness, significantly increasing the number of Putrefy triggered in the rotation overall.

Unholy Death Knights have access to three cooldowns.

• Army of the Dead should be used on cooldown. They are generally the first ability you use after you reach the boss. Make sure to line it up Dark Transformation every 1.5 minutes.
• Dark Transformation should be used on cooldown. Make sure to align it with Army of the Dead every 1.5 minutes.
• Death and Decay should only be used to help slow enemies with the Grip of the Dead talent or if you run Cycle of Death (at 3+ targets).

Currently, you will want to prioritize stats as follows. Do remember that item level will generally be best in most scenarios! For more information on what's presented on this page, check out our main Stat Priority page.

This can be different depending on your character's gear, so make sure you sim yourself, to find what your stat priority is. Generally, Mastery and Crit are a lot more valuable than Versatility and Haste and should be prioritised. However, do not drop a lot of item levels to chase these specific stats either!

Patch 11.1.7 in The War Within introduced the Combat Assistant functionality for all specs in the game. This comes in the form of two tools that you can use to assist your rotation. The Assisted Highlight feature will light up the spell that you are supposed to use next, helping you determine what button you need to press. The Single-Button Assistant will provide you with a single button that automatically pressed the appropriate spell. The Single-Button Assistant has a GCD penalty of 0.2 seconds every time you press it, artificially slowing down your rotation. This penalty means that you will always do less DPS when using the Single-Button Assistant compared to what you could have done with a perfectly executed rotation.

So how good is the rotation I can get from these assistants? If we assume that you handle your cooldown usage perfectly, the Assisted Highlight is roughly 5-10% less DPS. With the Single-Button Assistant, the number is about 15% Do bear in mind that this is compared to absolutely optimal play. A player with less experience with the rotation might see a significantly smaller loss, or even a gain when using the assistants.