Unholy Death Knight DPS Guide — Midnight (12.0.1)

Unholy Death Knight has received a significant rework in Midnight. 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 plagues 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 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. Pestilence has been introduced which creates this huge burst button that scales off our plague durations. In general, the rotation is simpler with fewer opportunities for skill expression.

We have received three new talents in our spec tree that we can talent into as we level from 80 to 90. These are generally really powerful, buffing Army of the Dead significantly and sending automatic Putrefys as your Dread Plague ticks.

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 temporarily do more damage when you cast Putrefy (multiple applications can overlap).
• Blightburst makes the explosion effect of Putrefy extend the duration of your plagues and deals a portion 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 reanimates the ghoul you Putrefy as a Magus of the Dead. Also increases the damage of our Magi - Major source of Magus summoning and damage increase.
• Putrid Echoes gives you an additional charge of Putrefy and increases its damage - 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 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.
• Pestilence gives a charge of Putrefy when used.

All these interactions make Putrefy an important spell to leverage that has a big impact on your damage.

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 Lesser Ghoul (2-3 stacks per Festering Strike, stacking up to 8 times). These stacks are consumed by Scourge Strike, summoning a lesser ghoul. 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 has introduced the Dread Plague Plague, applied via our Outbreak or Putrefy with Blightburst, it deals damage to only a single enemy (can be talented to do damage to a second one at reduced 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 Plagues. 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 100% of the remaining damages as a big burst. 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 with 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 and gives Rune of the Apocalypse more AoE value!

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 simply is not worthwhile to press, regardless of talent choices. It now mainly has utility value with Grip of the Dead.

We are a lot more effective from range in the Midnight. 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 These talents are generally not very impactful, mirroring some tier set bonuses we have had in the past.

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). 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.