Unholy Death Knight DPS Gear and Best in Slot — The War Within (11.1.7)

Welcome to our Gear and BiS Page for Unholy Death Knight for The War Within Season 2. Check this page to learn everything you need to know about gearing an Unholy Death Knight, including the BiS Gear from all sources, Raiding, and Mythic+, information on the best Trinkets, Tier Sets, and much more.

We have three BiS lists below, each detailing the best gear you can obtain from a specific source. We have the overall list, a raid-only one, and, finally, a mythic+-only list. They are all optimised to give you the highest single target DPS. The various builds we run have very similar stat and trinket priorities and will run the same set of gear.

2.

BiS Gear for Unholy Death Knight

Overall BiS List Mythic+ Gear BiS List Raid Gear BiS List

3.

Overall BiS List for Unholy Death Knight

Below, you will find the theoretical BiS set of gear for The War Within Season 2.

Slot	Item	Boss/ Dungeon/ Source
Helm	Cauldron Champion's Crown	One-Armed Bandit
Neck	Strapped Rescue-Keg	Cinderbrew Meadery
Shoulder	Cauldron Champion's Screamplate	Rik Reverb
Cloak	Consecrated Cloak (Haste Mastery) with Duskthread Lining	Tailoring
Chest	Cauldron Champion's Ribcage	Sprocketmonger Lockenstock
Bracers	Everforged Vambraces (Haste Mastery) with Duskthread Lining	Blacksmithing
Gloves	Cauldron Champion's Fistguards	Cauldron of Carnage
Belt	Durable Information Securing Container with Spark Burst	Delves
Legs	Galvanized Oxxein Legguards	Theater of Pain
Boots	Cauldron Champion's Greatboots	Catalyst
Ring #1	The Jastor Diamond	Chrome King Gallywix
Ring #2	Miniature Roulette Wheel	One-Armed Bandit
Trinket #1	House of Cards	One-Armed Bandit
Trinket #2	Eye of Kezan	Chrome King Gallywix
2H Weapon	Best-in-Slots	One-Armed Bandit

3.

Mythic+ Gear BiS List for Unholy Death Knight

This list contains the highest DPS setup, with farmable gear from Mythic+ Dungeons. This is a great place to start on a relatively new character, as you can infinitely grind out these items from Mythic+.

Slot	Item	Boss/ Dungeon/ Source
Helm	Waxsteel Greathelm	Darkflame Cleft
Neck	Strapped Rescue-Keg	Cinderbrew Meadery
Shoulder	Unyielding Combatant's Pauldrons	Theater of Pain
Cloak	Electrician's Siphoning Filter	Operation: Floodgate
Chest	Slashproof Business Plate	Cinderbrew Meadery
Bracers	Stonefury Vambraces	The MOTHERLODE!!
Gloves	Jumpstarter's Scaffold-Scrapers	Operation: Floodgate
Belt	Lightning-Conductor's Bands	The Rookery
Legs	Galvanized Oxxein Legguards	Theater of Pain
Boots	Sabatons of Rampaging Elements	The MOTHERLODE!!
Ring #1	Bloodoath Signet	Theater of Pain
Ring #2	Footbomb Championship Ring	The MOTHERLODE!!
Trinket #1	Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker	Operation: Floodgate
Trinket #2	Signet of the Priory	Priory of the Sacred Flame
2H Weapon	Electro-Arm Bludgeoner	The MOTHERLODE!!

3.

Raid Gear BiS List for Unholy Death Knight

This list contains the highest DPS setup, only using gear from the Liberation of Undermine Raid.

This list is mostly useful for informing your organized guild of what loot is optimal for you for loot distribution purposes.

Slot	Item	Boss/ Dungeon/ Source
Helm	Cauldron Champion's Crown	One-Armed Bandit
Neck	Semi-Charmed Amulet	Rik Reverb
Shoulder	Cauldron Champion's Screamplate	Rik Reverb
Cloak	Test Pilot's Go-Pack	Sprocketmonger Lockenstock
Chest	Cauldron Champion's Ribcage	Sprocketmonger Lockenstock
Bracers	Revved-Up Vambraces	Vexie and the Geargrinders
Gloves	Cauldron Champion's Fistguards	Cauldron of Carnage
Belt	Coin-Operated Girdle	One-Armed Bandit
Legs	Hired Muscle's Legguards	Mug'Zee
Boots	Cauldron Champion's Greatboots	Catalyst
Ring #1	The Jastor Diamond	Chrome King Gallywix
Ring #2	Miniature Roulette Wheel	One-Armed Bandit
Trinket #1	House of Cards	One-Armed Bandit
Trinket #2	Eye of Kezan	Chrome King Gallywix
2H Weapon	Best-in-Slots	One-Armed Bandit

Patch 11.1.7 introduced a new belt that can be obtained from delves, the Durable Information Securing Container. This is a powerful belt that can be upgraded over time to eventually reach 701 ilvl. Importantly, you can choose one of 9 powers to empower the belt with procs varying from damage, stats and healing. We want to use the Spark Burst for our belt! The belt is really powerful and you should equip it as soon as you get it. The best effect does depend on your current stats as the value of the secondary stat proc depends on your current stat weights. Make sure to sim yourself to see which one is best for you!

Patch 11.1.5 saw the return of targeted item acquisition via the Puzzling Cartel Chip currency. We will be able to use this currency to buy items from Liberation of Undermine and Mythic+! You will be able to buy three items in total, all available at Heroic ilvls by default. The Mythic versions of the items are only available from bosses that you have already killed on Mythic. For example, to be able to buy a Mythic The Jastor Diamond, you have to kill Chrome King Gallywix on Mythic difficulty first. For the dungeon gear, you need to complete all dungeons at +12 to gain access to the Mythic track items. Always make sure to simulate your own character to find the biggest upgrade based off what you have available to buy.

1. Best-in-Slots – Our best weapon with an added extra effect, making it 1% better than an equal ilvl alternative.
2. House of Cards – BiS on-use trinket.
3. Eye of Kezan – BiS Passive trinket.
4. The Jastor Diamond – BiS ring with added passive making it a great option to pick up.

The Cyrce's Circlet continues to be a solid choice in 11.1.7, only being barely beaten by rings at 680+ ilvl (depending on your Mastery level). As a general rule, you want to play the following:

• Windsinger's Runed Citrine, Stormbringer's Runed Citrine and Fathomdweller's Runed Citrine for both raid and Mythic+.

For more information on how to get the ring, as well as acquiring all of the different gems that you can possibly socket into it, check out our Cyrce's Circlet guide below!

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 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.

Our Season 2 Tier Set focuses heavily on increasing our Death Coil and Epidemic damage. It has strong synergy with San'Layn due to Frenzied Bloodthirst giving a 70% boost to Death Coil damage in our Dark Transformation window. This synergy helps San'Layn become the best Single Target option once we equip the 4-set.

The Season 2 Tier Set for Unholy is not an obvious upgrade when you receive it. For San'layn it is really powerful with the 4-set giving 12%. However, San'layn is behind Rider of the Apocalypse by 4% with the old tier set, so it needs to bridge that gap as well. As a general rule, for Single Target, you need about 10 ilvl upgrades on average for the new tier set to be worth. For fights with cleave, you can equip the new tier set and go San'layn regardless of ilvl.

You only need 4 pieces out of 5 to get both set bonuses. We recommend you get all items except for the Legs, due to their lack of Haste. Check out the BiS List for more information.

The War Within has a powerful upgrade system for your gear where you use Valorstones and Crests to upgrade your gear. These are obtainable from practically all forms of content in the game.

For more information on the new Gear Upgrades system, check out our dedicated page for it below.

There are three primary items to upgrade as an Unholy Death Knight:

1. Weapon
2. Trinket
3. Head/ Chest/ Legs

With how the upgrade system works with Crests being the limited currency, you want to upgrade the most powerful slots you can. For Unholy Death Knights, this will be your weapon (Attack Power scales with weapon ilvl). After you have upgraded your weapon, move on to trinkets and high-stat slot items like Legs, Helm, Chest, etc.

Unholy wants to run double Duskthread Lining on crafted Consecrated Cloak (Haste Mastery) and Everforged Vambraces (Haste Mastery). We pick these two slots since they have the lowest stat value of all pieces, minimising the loss due to the ilvl difference from max ilvl. There are multiple embellishments which are really close here, including Dawnthread Lining and Elemental Focusing Lens. What ends up best depends on your current stat distribution, as both Duskthread and Dawnthread gain value if you have little Versatility and Critical Strike respectively. Keep in mind that an early weapon craft might be a good idea for progression, using Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension on it as well as Writhing Armor Banding on your other crafted piece.

Your crafting strategy heavily depends on when you are looking to peak in terms of DPS. Crafting a 2H weapon can be by far the largest upgrade early in the season, even if you will replace it eventually with a Mythic Best-in-Slots. You might take a little bit longer to reach your BiS setup, but at that point it is unlikely to matter anymore.

When it comes to your other crafted slots, we are only wearing two crafted items in our BiS setup (due to the ilvl loss). Use crafting as a way of "filling in the gaps" in your gear, trying to find the best value upgrade in a slot where you already do not have a good piece. Sim yourself to find the best option for you!

Unholy aims to use one on-use Trinket as well as one passive one. In The War Within Season 2, our best on-use is House of Cards followed by Funhouse Lens. Funhouse Lens here is a drop from Delves and can be obtained at max 671 ilvl. For our passive trinket, Eye of Kezan is our best option, at least on reasonably long fights due to its scaling nature. For alternatives, Mechano-Core Amplifier, Zee's Thug Hotline and Suspicious Energy Drink are all great ones.

You will notice a significant amount of Delve trinkets high up in this list. They can be obtained at 671 ilvl via vault drops and perform very well compared to higher ilvl options.

Many people overthink the distribution of their secondary stats. An important thing to remember is that a higher quantity of stats is usually 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 information on stats, please refer to our dedicated page.

For Unholy specifically, aim to have Haste as our top stat by raw amount, followed by Mastery. For a closer look at stats, please see the below article.

For neck and ring pieces, you can generally 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. It can be useful to wear crafted jewelry due to how you can control the stats; just remember that you cannot craft the maximum ilvl possible!