Unholy Death Knight DPS Guide — The War Within Pre-Patch

The Unholy specialization currently provides high single-target burst as well as good AoE scaling. We are also one of the tankiest classes in the game, something that is very useful in all PvE content!

Strengths

• High single-target and AoE burst potential.
• Great add control with Death Grip.
• Knockback prevention with Death's Advance.
• Anti-Magic Zone as a magic damage raid cooldown.
• Effective at range.
• One of the tankiest specs.

Weaknesses

• Limited mobility.
• Limited mythic+ utility.

The Unholy Death Knight has received a rework in The War Within Pre-Patch. Our talents have changed significantly, which brings new builds and gameplay. Overall, the class has gotten simpler with a stronger focus on proc-based gameplay. The Festermight and Rotten Touch minigame is mostly gone and Sudden Doom is now a significantly stronger proc. For AoE, we now play both Disease and Wound build at the same time since we can pick up both Ebon Fever and Bursting Sores. Finally, several of our resource-generating abilities have been nerfed, making the gameplay slightly more starved as a general rule.

Unholy's Talent Tree has been reworked. New talents, removed talents, changed talents and moved talents have quite a large impact on our talent builds and gameplay.

• New Talent: Foul Infections — Your diseases deal 10% more damage and have a 5% increased chance to critically strike.
• New Talent: Festering Scythe — Every 20 Festering Wound you burst empowers your next Festering Strike to become Festering Scythe for 12 sec. Festering Scythe sweep through all enemies within 15 yds in fron of you, dealing Shadow damage and infecting them with 2-3 Festering Wounds.
• New Talent: Menacing Magus — Your Magus of the Dead Shadow Bolt now fires a volley of Shadow Bolts at up to 4 nearby enemies.
• New Talent: Doomed Bidding — Consuming Sudden Doom calls upon a Magus of the Dead to assist you for 8 sec.
• New Talent: Raise Abomination — Replaces Army of the Dead. Raises an Abomination for 30 sec which wanders and attacks enemies, applying Festering Wound when it melees targets, and affecting all those nearby with Virulent Plague.
• New Talent: Decomposition — Virulent Plague has a chance to abruptly flare up, dealing 50% of the damage it dealt to target in the last 4 sec. When this effect triggers, the duration of your active minions are increased by 1 sec, up to 3 sec.
• The following talents have been removed:
  • Replenishing Wounds
  • Army of the Damned
  • Unholy Command
  • Feasting Strikes
• The following talents have been changed:
  • Army of the Dead cooldown is now 3 minutes (was 8 minutes with cooldown reduction baked into Army of the Damned talent)
  • Apocalypse cooldown is now 45 seconds.
  • Dark Transformation cooldown is now 45 seconds.
  • Vile Contagion cooldown is now 45 seconds.
  • Apocalypse now summons 4 ghouls regardless of Festering Wounds burst.
  • Improved Death Coil and Ghoulish Frenzy are now 1-point talents with the original 1-point value left unchanged.
  • Ebon Fever now also affects Frost Fever and Blood Plague is Superstrain is talented.
  • Defile damage increased by 200% and no longer increases Mastery when dealing damage to enemies.
  • Unholy Blight is now passive, activating around your pet when your press Dark Transformation.
  • Epidemic and Outbreak are now learned at level 18 and 13 by default.
  • Sudden Doom has been reworked. It procs more often based off a bad-luck-protection system (each unsuccesful proc increased the probability of the next auto proccing). It now only reduces the cost of Death Coil and Epidemic by 10 Runic Power (previously made them free) as well as making them a guaranteed critical strike. Finally, Death Coil consumes a Festering Wound when empowered by Sudden Doom.
  • Festermight stacks now function like Ironfur where each stacks has its own individual 20-second duration.

The War Within also brings Hero Trees to the Unholy Death Knight. However, they will first become available after launch as you level up to the new max level of 80!

If you want to level an Unholy Death Knight, you can check out our leveling guide for tips and tricks for your journey.

Once you reach max level, a great way to customize your game to fit the way you want to play, but also to help you play better, is with add-ons. We recommend using some of the basic add-ons that are on our add-ons page (linked below) while you are leveling to not only get used to add-ons, but also to help speed up your leveling. Since Unholy is a fairly complicated spec to play, it is heavily recommended that you use add-ons to clean up your screen and make your rotation easier.

Unholy Death Knight is a spec that is all about managing your resources and maximizing your burst potential with correct cooldown management.

If you are new to Unholy Death Knight and would like to learn the basics of the class, I recommend looking at the Spell Summary, as well as the Easy Mode page that is linked below.

We also have a guide for the Unholy Death Knight talents and rotations below.

Gear, enchants, consumables, and gems also play a big part in increasing your character's DPS. Linked below is a page to show you which enchants, consumables, and gems to use, as well as a stats page, where you can find more information on each stat and how they interact with your character.

The Unholy Death Knight is 100% viable in The War Within Pre-Patch. We have great burst, good cleave and AoE potential as well as being incredibly tanky!

The end-game of an Unholy Death Knight is very exciting since your burst is incredibly high, and your AoE potential is also very high. Linked below are our Mythic+ and PvP guides!

If, after reading all these guides, you still find your performance lackluster, then check out the pages linked below for some tips and tricks that may answer any question you have. This is fairly common with Unholy Death Knight, as it is a clunky spec.