Unholy Death Knight DPS Easy Mode — Midnight Season 1

This is your go-to build in Raid encounters.

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

1. Use Outbreak if running Rider of the Apocalypse
2. Use Festering Strike 2 times.
3. Use Army of the Dead + Dark Transformation + Potion + Trinket + Racial
4. Use Soul Reaper

1. Cast Soul Reaper if the target is below 35% or if you have a free use from Dark Transformation.
2. Cast Outbreak/ Putrefy with Blightburst to maintain your Virulent Plague & Dread Plague on the target.
3. Use Death Coil when you have 80+ Runic Power or a Sudden Doom proc. Use Epidemic when fighting 3+ enemies (5+ during Forbidden Knowledge).
4. Use Putrefy.
5. Use Festering Strike to apply Lesser Ghoul stacks. Do this if you have 3 or fewer stacks.
6. Use Scourge Strike when you have at least 4 stacks of Lesser Ghoul.
7. Use Death Coil. Use Epidemic when fighting 3+ enemies.

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 5+ targets (transforms to the Graveyard ability).

Unholy Death Knights have potentially 3 cooldowns; they should be used as follows:

• 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.

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 4 targets in AoE ( 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 Strikes are needed in the rotation but not much else.

Rank 4 ( Forbidden Knowledge) increases the damage of Necrotic Coil and Graveyard for each Magus of the Dead active, synergising well with Magus of the Dead and Reanimation. Furthermore, Dread Plague has a 20% chance to trigger Putrefy at 60% effectiveness, significantly increasing the number of Putrefy triggered in the rotation overall.

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.

One major aspect to consider here is the lack of major cooldowns in the Combat Assistant. The Assisted Highlight and Single-Button Assistant will not highlight/use your major offensive Cooldowns ( Army of the Dead). Instead it is on you to ensure that you use those appropriately.

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.