Unholy Death Knight DPS Guide — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

Note: Blizzard is releasing the Pre-Patch without a set of changes that have already been communicated. The below sections reference the Midnight Beta state of the Unholy Death Knight that will become reality shortly after Pre-Patch launches. The key differences are the following:

• Pestilence has been reworked, now becoming available after you press Dark Transformation and dealing 150% of reamining DoT damage.
• Putrefy now summons a Lesser Ghoul to sacrifice (no longer an effect of the Necromancer's Cunning talent).
• Soul Reaper consumes all charges of Putrefy, removing the need to press Putrefy in execute.
• Army of the Dead summons 8 ghouls for 15 seconds as well as a Magus of the Dead (when talented). Raise Abomination and Summon Gargoyle no longer Putrefy ghouls automatically.
• Rapid Variant has now been baked into Dread Plague by default.
• Scythe of Decay is a new talent that automatically casts Death and Decay when you use Festering Scythe.

Unholy Death Knight has received a significant rework in Midnight pre-patch. 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 diseases 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 then sacrifice ghouls.

The feel of the 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. In general, the rotation is simpler with fewer opportunities for skill expression.

The new Apex Talents and Hero Talents that are coming in Midnight are not available in the pre-patch. You will gain access to them as you level from 80 to 90 once the expansion is released.

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 do 25% more damage for 5 seconds when you cast Putrefy (multiple applications can overlap). This used to apply to two of your smaller ghouls. Moving it to the main ghoul does reduce some complexity as you do not need to track your active ghouls as much.
• Blightburst makes the explosion effect of Putrefy extend the duration of your plagues by 4 seconds and deals 35% 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 has a 100% chance to reanimate the ghoul you Putrefy as a Magus of the Dead. Also increases the damage of Magus by 25% - Major source of Magus summoning.
• Putrid Echoes gives you an additional charge of Putrefy and increases its damage by 20% - 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 2 Magus of the Dead during your Dark Transformation for some nice AoE burst.
• Harbinger of Doom reduces the Cooldown of Putrefy by 2.5 seconds 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, pretty nice.
• Pestilence gives a charge of Putrefy when used.

All these interactions make Putrefy an important spell to cast that has a big impact on your damage. Blizzard has iterated heavily on the ability since it was first introduced and it now feels good to press. Automatically summoning a ghoul to then explode makes the ability a lot nicer to deal with, removing any need for timing the presses for when your ghouls are just about to expire.

Festering Wounds are now completely gone from the Unholy Death Knight. Instead of applying a debuff to enemies, Festering Strike now applies a buff on you (2-3 stacks per Festering Strike, stacking up to 6 times). These stacks are consumed by Scourge Strike, summoning a lesser ghoul for 6 seconds. 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.

Midnight pre-patch has introduced the Dread Plague Plague, applied via our Outbreak, it deals damage to only a single enemy (can be talented to do damage to a second one at 50% 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 Diseases. 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 Pestilence talent that interacts with our Plagues, allowing you to consume them to deal 150% of the remaining damage. 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 on Infliction of Sorrow.

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!

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 feels quite bad to press, especially in Single Target. It feels like a bit of a lost ability that mainly has utility value with Grip of the Dead.

We are a lot more effective from range in the Midnight pre-patch. 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.

Our Hero Talents have received three new talents each that you will talent into as you level to 90. These talents are generally not very impactful, mirroring some tier set bonuses we have had in the past. Most interesting new talent is probably Desecrate which has a chance to collapse Death and Decay whenever it deals damage, dealing 300% of the remaining damage in one go. In conjunction with Blood-Soaked Ground, we have some minor Death and Decay interaction with San'layn.

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). Death Notes would have been very useful back in the day when Breath of Sindragosa drained Runic Power. It is still nice to get but not as impactful anymore. 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.

We hope this summary helped you prepare for the Midnight launch on March 2nd, or February 27th with Early Access. If you want to prepare for your leveling journey in Midnight, make sure to check out our recommended consumables and items that can help you reach max-level in Midnight faster!