Unholy Death Knight DPS Easy Mode — The War Within Pre-Patch
On this page, we explain how to easily play Unholy Death Knight in World of Warcraft — The War Within Pre-Patch, using the simplest rotation, talent tree, stat priority, gear setup, etc., without sacrificing performance.
Foreword
This page is intended for players who are new to the game or class, have no intentions of raiding Mythic difficulty, or simply want a more straightforward way to play their specialization without being overwhelmed by the numerous subtleties and active abilities that need to be taken into consideration for optimal play.
The Basics of Unholy Death Knights
For those who are new to Unholy Death Knight and are not sure what each ability does or how they interact with the Unholy toolkit, we recommend checking out our Spell Summary guide is linked below.
Unholy Death Knight is a melee DPS specialization that provides strong single-target and AoE DPS. Its play style is somewhat complex (considering the large number of cooldowns). However, it is incredibly rewarding to master.
Your main goal throughout a fight is applying the Festering Wound
debuff with
Festering Strike (ensuring not to over-cap it) and then
consuming these stacks with
Scourge Strike while also making sure to
use
Death Coil or
Epidemic to consume procs of
Sudden Doom or not over-cap on Runic Power. Furthermore, you should
aim to maintain uptime on your disease
Virulent Plague by using
Outbreak or
Dark Transformation (with
Unholy Blight).
Talent Builds for Unholy Death Knight in Dragonflight
Talent Choice for Unholy Death Knights as a Beginner
The talents above are your go-to options that will be generically best in
the two situations presented. For raiding, remember to pick up
Mind Freeze on any encounter where you might need an interrupt! You can
give up
Blood Scent in these scenarios. For a more in-depth page,
please follow the link below.
Stat Choice for Unholy Death Knights
Currently, you will want to prioritize stats as follows.
- Mastery,
- Haste,
- Critical Strike,
- Versatility.
This can be different depending on your character's gear, so make sure you sim yourself, to find what your stat priority is. As a general rule, when looking at your raw stat amounts, they should follow the above order. 7000 Mastery, 6500 Haste, 4000 Crit and 3500 Versatility are BiS numbers.
Single-Target Opener for Unholy Death Knights
- Use
Raise Abomination.
- Use
Scourge Strike.
- Use
Fyr'alath the Dreamrender.
- Use
Abomination Limb.
- Use
Dark Transformation + Potion.
- Use
Unholy Assault + Trinket + Racial
- Use
Apocalypse.
Basic Rotation for Unholy Death Knights
- Cast
Soul Reaper if the target is below 35%.
- Cast
Outbreak to maintain your
Virulent Plague on the target. Try to maintain 100% uptime on the disease.
- Use
Death Coil when you have 80+ Runic Power or a
Sudden Doom proc.
- Use
Festering Strike to apply
Festering Wounds on the target. Do this if the target has 1 or fewer
Festering Wounds.
- Use
Scourge Strike when there are at least 4
Festering Wounds on the target.
- Use
Death Coil.
Multi-Target Rotation for Unholy Death Knight
Please find below a rotation on a dungeon trash pack.
Raise Abomination.
Defile to deal AoE damage and enable cleave.
Scourge Strike to initiate
Plaguebringer.
Dark Transformation (applies
Virulent Plague via
Unholy Blight.
Outbreak if neither
Raise Abomination or
Dark Transformation was used.
- Use
Abomination Limb.
- Use
Unholy Assault +
Festering Strike (2x
Festering Strike if you do not have
Unholy Assault ready).
- Use
Vile Contagion
- Use
Apocalypse.
- Spam
Scourge Strike to burst your
Festering Wounds.
- Use
Defile when your
Cleaving Strikes buff runs out.
- Use
Epidemic if you get a proc of
Sudden Doom, or if you cannot use more
Scourge Strike to burst Wounds.
- Continue with
Scourge Strike spam,
Epidemic spam, maintain
Cleaving Strikes with
Defile/
Death and Decay and maintain your DoTs with
Outbreak.
- After you run out of
Defile/
Death and Decays to use, go to single target rotation with
Epidemic at 2+ (without
Improved Death Coil, 4+ with) targets. This is the only time you use
Festering Strike outside the initial GCDs in the opener on the pack.
Make sure to stand in your Defile once you have used it.
The cleave from your
Scourge Strike/
Clawing Shadows depends on
you standing in the circle, not if the enemies do so.
For a more in-depth rotation, please consider checking out our rotation page linked below.
Cooldowns for Unholy Death Knights
Unholy Death Knights have potentially 10 cooldowns; they should be used as follows:
Abomination Limb should generally be used on cooldown. Hold it for add waves that need grouping up.
Unholy Assault should be used on cooldown. Especially strong in Mythic+ when paired with
Vile Contagion. Used in Single Target with your other CDs.
Vile Contagion should be used in AoE on a target that ideally has 6
Festering Wounds. This should then be followed by
Death and Decay and
Scourge Strike to pop all wounds.
Army of the Dead/
Raise Abomination should be used on cooldown. This is the first ability you press as you run toward the boss. Make sure to line it up with all your other Cooldowns every 3/1.5 minutes.
Apocalypse should ideally be used when you have 4 stacks of
Festering Wounds but it is fine to use on a target with at least 1 stack.
Dark Transformation should be used off cooldown and as an opener on packs of multiple mobs.
Sacrificial Pact should only be used to save yourself from death.
Summon Gargoyle should be used on cooldown. Once used, prioritize spending Runic Power via
Death Coil above everything else.
Defile should be used in AoE. Use it as much as possible to enable your
Scourge Strike/
Clawing Shadows and deal AoE damage.
Changelog
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Updated for Season 4, mainly changing the ideal stat distribution.
- 20 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 12 Dec. 2023: Clarified DT and Garg location in opener.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.2.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.5.
- 25 Jun. 2023: Minor opener update.
- 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.
- 29 Apr. 2023: Reviewed and Updated for Patch 10.1.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Death Knight Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Bicepspump, a semi-hardcore player raiding with Pescorus 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 moderator in the Acherus Death Knight Discord, frequently answering questions and discussing optimisations (do not hesitate to reach out). He produces guide content on YouTube and frequently streams on Twitch.
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