Unholy Death Knight DPS Gear and Best in Slot — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.3

At this stage in the game, there are so many variables and so many layers of optimization that you can apply to your character, that there is no way for a guide or anything else to tell you exactly what gear you should wear. This is why we always recommend simulating your own character using Raidbots. The website can help you choose set bonuses, Azerite traits, trinkets and combinations thereof in a way that is tailored completely to your specific character. Learning to use this tool is essential to maximizing your potential, as there is simply no other way to take all the variables into account.

Patch 8.2 introduced a new type of gear themed around Nazjatar and the new raid (The Eternal Palace). You can obtain this gear through activities such as World Quests, Regular Quests, and they are even Bind on Account, meaning you can use them to gear up your alts. There is a shop where you can purchase these Bind on Account Benthic gear tokens for Prismatic Manapearls. This currency is also used to upgrade the base item from 385 all the way up to 425. These tokens have a chance to roll tertiary stats and even a socket, so you may want to hold off upgrading gear until you get a socket on the piece you want.

Of the Benthic gear that is available, these are the ones that are very powerful for the Eternal Palace and Nazjatar content: Zanj'ir Scaleguard Greatbelt (works on Orgozoa and Za'qul, Harbinger of Ny'alotha in the Eternal Palace), Vim's Scalecrusher Girdle, Waveblade Farseer's Armguards, and Akana's Reefstrider Boots.

Currently in Operation: Mechagon, the most notable items are the pair of rings Logic Loop of Division and Overclocking Bit Band or Shorting Bit Band. This set of rings together is very powerful since you are able to have 100% uptime on the buff as long as you can get behind the target. If you can obtain this set then it may perform better than some Heroic and Mythic Ny'alotha rings.

For information about what Azerite traits to choose and what the best items are, see our Azerite page.

With the changes in Battle for Azeroth your primary stat is going to be your best stat. Even though this is the case, a higher item level piece of gear does contain more secondary stats which usually makes it an upgrade. When you are looking for gear upgrades you will usually find them in a higher item level piece of gear.

Corruption is a new Patch 8.3 feature (see our guide on Corrupted Items). It replaces Warforging and Titanforging for all gear in the patch. It gives items a type of affix, as well as an amount of Corruption. Corruption is a stat that negatively impacts your character the more of it that you have, but the more Corruption you have, the more powerful the affixes will be. Some Affixes are a lot more powerful than others, and you can see a guideline ranking for them below.

• Death's Advance and Wraith Walk are very useful for dealing with Grasping Tendrils so saving these cooldowns for crucial moments where movement is important is very helpful.
• Anti-Magic Shell can be used to absorb some of the damage of the Eye of Corruption which can also act as a DPS gain seeing as you will gain Ruinic power when your Anti-Magic Shell absorbs magic damage.
• Asphyxiate can be used on the Thing from Beyond from Grand Delusions in order to get rid of it since it disappears when it is stunned.

• Sk'shuul Vaz has the Obsidian Skin effect which is a much better option for Blood Death Knights as opposed to Unholy. This weapon does not have a very good corruption to DPS ratio and may need to be cleansed.
• Devastation's Hour has the Twilight Devastation effect has a decent effect that can be very good in Mythic+ or other AoE situations. For single target and corruption to DPS ratio however this weapon is not very strong and may need to be cleansed. If you plan on cleansing one of the raid weapons then choose Devastation's Hour since it is from N'zoth and rolls a higher item level meaning more stats.

When identifying what gear you should be aiming after, we recommend using RaidBots' Droptimizer feature. It requires the SimulationCraft Addon. Once you have the addon installed, write "/simc" into the chat in-game, and copy-pasting the contents into the RaidBots Droptimizer.

Simply select the raid and difficulty you are interested in, and RaidBots will take a while to figure out where you should spend your bonus rolls, and more.

This does not include items that are found outside of the raid, so this may be altered based on items you have available from outside sources. Note that this also does not include trinkets as they are covered in the above chart:

Also note that this is not a guide on which bosses to bonus roll. Refer to the Droptimizer guide above to plan out your bonus rolls.

Slot	Item	Source
Helm	Greathelm of Phantasmic Reality	N'Zoth the Corruptor in Ny'alotha raid
Shoulder	Pauldrons of Infinite Darkness	Carapace of N'Zoth in Ny'alotha raid
Cloak	Ashjra'kamas, Shroud of Resolve	Legendary Cloak quest line
Chest	Breastplate of Twilight Decimation	Vexiona in Ny'alotha raid
Wrists	Bracers of Phantom Pains	Shad'har the Insatiable in Ny'alotha raid
Gloves	Mirage-Weaver's Gauntlets	Carapace of N'Zoth in Ny'alotha raid
Belt	Dark Crystalline Girdle	The Hivemind in Ny'alotha raid
Legs	Living Obsidian Legguards	Maut in Ny'alotha raid
Boots	Sabatons of Malevolent Intent	Il'gynoth, Corruption Reborn in Ny'alotha raid
Ring #1	Ring of Cosmic Potential	N'Zoth the Corruptor in Ny'alotha raid
Ring #2	Ring of Collective Consciousness	The Hivemind in Ny'alotha raid
Weapon	Devastation's Hour	N'Zoth the Corruptor in Ny'alotha raid