Unholy Death Knight DPS Gear and Best in Slot — Dragonflight 10.0.7

Patch 10.0.7 introduces a new set of gems called Primordial Stone Gems. These can be slotted into Primordial Sockets in the Onyx Annulet ring. A total of three gems can be allocated here. Unfortunately, due to the lack of secondary stats, equipping the new ring with Primordial Stone Gems will be a downgrade compared to any (415+) ring.

We do not recommend using this new ring at all.

For more information regarding the Onyx Annulet, the Primordial Gemstones, and how to obtain them, check out our dedicated guide for it below.

Welcome to our Gearing Page for Unholy Death Knight. This section will cover everything you need to know about equipping your character correctly.

If you have a new piece of gear for which you need gems and enchant advice, you can find everything on our dedicated page below.

While gearing up, item level will be your primary target. Strength is our best stat, and you shouldn't focus too much on your secondaries at first. Once you start to receive gear pieces with the same ilvl but different stats, that is when you want to start optimizing your stat distribution. Generally, Unholy Death Knights want to prioritize Haste and then Mastery! We recommend simming your character to determine what upgrade is best for you! For a more detailed explanation, you can read the Simulations page.

Simming your character is far and beyond the best way to determine if a piece of gear is, in fact, an upgrade. The trick is knowing how to do it in a way that produces reliable results. If you follow the Simulations guide page, you can use this to have a more practical gearing guide than simply following a BiS list.

In Dragonflight, you can upgrade gear obtained after the patch with Valor points. You can learn more about this system on the dedicated Valor page.

It is recommended to run one passive trinket and one active one as an Unholy Death Knight. Below, I have listed these two types of trinkets in separate lists! Passive trinkets can also have on-use damage effects that don't synergize with your cooldowns. These can safely be used outside your CDs and essentially become passive!

1. Algeth'ar Puzzle Box
2. Blazebinder's Hoof
3. Bonemaw's Big Toe
4. Horn of Valor

1. Whispering Incarnate Icon
2. Hunger of the Pack
3. Manic Grieftorch
4. Gift of Radiance

Many people overthink the distribution of their secondary stats. An important thing to remember is that a higher quantity of stats is nearly always better than a better quality of stats. Because of this, wearing higher item-level gear with worse stats tends to be better than lower item-level gear with great stats. Keep this in mind when considering gear. For more stats information, please refer to our dedicated page.

For neck and ring pieces, you can afford to drop 5-10 ilevels in most cases to get our preferred stats: Haste and Mastery. That said, you should always sim yourself to see what is better as the secondary stat diminishing returns can still change your ideal setup. For Neck, we want to run Elemental Lariat due to its additional socket effect! The best rings are Seal of Diurna's Chosen and Seal of Filial Duty. Both of these are procced using your Unstable Frostfire Belt

Note with the Elemental Lariat this does consume 1 of your 2 embellished crafted gear. There is no reason to equip different kinds of gems in the lariat. The buffs could previously trigger independently making different gems the go-to play. This is no longer the case.

For Season 1, our weapon choice is primarily guided by ilvl. Higher ilvl means higher weapon DPS which scales our DPS a ton! Incarnate Sky-Splitter is, therefore, our BiS weapon! Other good alternatives include:

With Season 1, we have an Unholy Death Knight Tier set bonus that buffs how we play.

• 2-piece set bonus: Unholy Death Knight 2pc
• 4-piece set bonus: Unholy Death Knight 4pc

The ideal 4 items to use here are Head, Shoulder, Chest, and Hands

Generally speaking, this set does not change how you play. However, you can minmax by optimizing the uptime of the 2p. You will get good uptime by just playing your rotation, but you can increase it by weaving your spells more than usual!

You should look out for two items in terms of crafted gear. Elemental Lariat and Unstable Frostfire Belt. Both of these have special effects that make them BiS in their respective slots! For Mythic+ I would pick up Frostfire Legguards of Preparation instead of the belt.

Instead of providing a separate table of gear with the highest theoretical damage throughput, I'll provide recommendations when gearing. We have already discussed the absolute majority of items you will equip. Crafted items, tier set, trinkets, and your weapon. Outside of this, you are better off simulating your character to determine which item is the largest upgrade. Generally, you'll focus heavily on Haste and Mastery. Still, there are cases when your other stats will become more important (especially if you already have meager amounts on them).