Unholy Death Knight DPS Guide — 12.0.7

Patch 12.0.7 has released, and with it came a lot of new content. It brought with it a new Raid, a new player power feature, as well as a variety of engaging content from the new Darkspear Dash, to the Showdown Areas. For more information on what's new in Patch 12.0.7, head over to our dedicated Patch hub!

New Patch Content

Patch 12.0.7 Overview

Check out our 12.0.7 Patch Hub for all the information you may need on new content, new gameplay systems, and more!

Midnight Patch 12.0.7 Guide

Unholy Death Knight saw no changes in the 12.0.7 patch. However, we did get new gear from the new one-boss raid in the form of Sporefused Gear as well as the new Omnium Folio power system. This does change our BiS list slighty but otherwise have little impact elsewhere. Make sure to check out new gear and system below!

Combat Information

Omnium Folio and Sporefused Gear

Check out how the Omnium Folio system and Sporefused Gear from the Rotmire raid affect Unholy in Patch 12.0.7 on our Builds and Gear pages!

Builds and TalentsGear

Click for Previous Season 1 Hotfixes

2.3.

Midnight Season 1 Release Changes

Midnight Season 1 was released, and with it came a lot of new content. It brought with it three new Raids, alongside heralding the start of Season 1 for both Mythic+ and PvP. With all the new things available, we've provided some dedicated hubs covering everything available!

Season 1 Raids Season 1 Mythic+ Season 1 PvP

2.4.

Patch 12.0.5 Changes

The Unholy Death Knight received multiple changes in the 12.0.5 patch including a slight spec talent rework and a few spell and talent changes (important ones mentioned):

• New talent Cycle of Death - Putrefy reduces the cooldown of Death and Decay by 1 second and Death and Decay reduces the cooldown of Putrefy by 0.3 seconds for each enemy it damages, up to 3 seconds.
• Scourge Strike additionally applies Virulent Plague to the target if unaffected.
• Raise Abomination no longer causes enemies to take increased damage from minions, deals Plague damage to them instead.
• Putrid Echoes adds two extra charges of Putrefy and causes Putrefy to consume up to two charges when used.
• Pestilence now overrides Dark Transformation instead of Outbreak and has a new name in the form of Blightfall.
• Blightfall, March of Madness and Scythe of Decay have all been removed.
• The Rider of the Apocalypse Unholy Armaments additionally increases your Ghoul and skeletal archer damage by 10%, and Lesser Ghoul damage by 20%.
• Frenzied Bloodthirst now increases the damage of Death Coil by 3% per stack and Epidemic by 5% per stack.

Overall, the changes do not have a significant impact on the Unholy Death Knight. We will run similar builds with similar gameplay fundamentals. We see a bit less flexibility in the spec tree as we are now required to route through double Unholy Aura to get to Reanimation. Raise Abomination being nerfed does provide options, as it's so weak it is changed to other talents like Summon Gargoyle. The change to Scourge Strike now also applying Virulent Plague has little effect as we want to be moving Dread Plague around regardless. Finally, we get a bit more flexibility around Putrefy. Three total charges with Putrid Echoes and both Putrefy and Soul Reaper consuming up to two charges when used. This means that we can "bank" charges more effectively and concentrate their uses in our Dark Transformation windows more effectively. Cycle of Death is a new interesting ability that makes Death and Decay worthwhile to use at 3+ enemies when specced into.

The buff to Unholy Armaments was a significant buff to Rider of the Apocalypse making it stronger than San'layn in most situations.

In addition to this, a variety of open world content releases worth checking out!

• The Voidforge Unlocks!
  The Voidforge is Midnight's take on Bonus Rolls and Turbo Boost, allowing you to target specific big ticket items through a new bonus roll system. You can also further empower trinkets and weapons, and we have recommendations on our Gear page.
• Void Assaults are Unleashed
  Eversong Woods and Zul'Aman are under siege from the forces of the Void. Thwarting their attacks provide a new way to acquire gear all the way up to Hero level, and you can check out more on our Void Assault hub.
• Disrupt Ritual Sites
  Sharing a similar reward structure to Void Assaults, Ritual Sites are instanced content similar to Delves. You can find out all about them on our Ritual Sites page.

2.5.

March 17th Class Tuning

Unholy received a significant tuning pass on the 17th of March, reducing all damage by 20%, while buffing Epidemic by 10% and Virulent Plague by 15%. This was effectively a 20% nerf (slightly less in AoE) bringing Unholy to the bottom of the pack in Raid DPS.

The initial nerf was followed by a significant ~20% buff on the 18th of March, essentially reversing the initial nerf. Unholy now sits in a much better place in the raid.

Midnight Class Tuning

When it comes to tuning adjustments, our next planned pass is expected to arrive with the Midnight Season 1 launch on March 17. Our next pass will follow immediately afterwards utilizing data gathered during the week Heroic difficulties are available; these changes will go live with the launch of Mythic raid difficulty and Mythic+ on March 24.

Beyond these dates, we will look to perform more tuning passes based on data gathered during the starting weeks of Mythic difficulty for Season 1 and the March on Quel’Danas available the week of March 31. For these two passes we err on the side of caution with the amount of tuning we do until their respective Mythic end-bosses die to avoid being overly disruptive to progression. After these key dates we will have several check-in passes planned roughly a month apart. Once players obtain higher item level and better optimized gear sets, the throughput of several specs will shift up or down relative to others and we feel it’s important to be diligent in looking at the current state of class balance as time goes on.

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 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 (now Blightfall) 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 two 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.
• Blightfall 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 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 Blightfall 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.