Unholy Death Knight DPS Mythic+ Tips — Dragonflight 10.2

Unholy Death Knight brings solid damage to any Mythic+ dungeon! We have insane scaling for certain spells and a very satisfying rotation when we pull it off!

The guide will also touch on Unholy Death Knights and their damage mitigation tools, all the useful utilities provided by spec, and their ability to self-sustain in a critical situation, as well as some of the disadvantages of having an Unholy Death Knight in your M+ group.

If you are unfamiliar with Mythic+ and its associated general mechanics, you can read more about it on our dedicated Mythic+ page below.

The build below is already a really good, versatile build. The class portion of the tree picks up a ton of defensives that make us pretty much the tankiest class in the game. However, you can go even further. By sacrificing one point in Unholy Bond for a 1-2% DPS downgrade, you can also pick up Will of the Necropolis. This is a situationally very powerful defensive ability that will effectively increase your HP by 16%. Great if you feel like you're dying a bit too much in keys!

• Defensive Version: BwPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAiQSicgISEkIRIIJJRCAAAAAAAAAKkEhIJpBAQiUEJJJSSA

Mythic+ sees two primary builds being competitive, with the above one focusing mainly on our Diseases. It is versatile, with both great AoE and solid single target. You can simply pick this up and run it in every dungeon.

There is an alternative with the Wound build. This picks up Bursting Sores to deal extremely high quadratic scaling AoE damage. It is important to understand that this build is a significant loss in single target and is only worthwhile with really large pulls. Even then, it is not strictly better.

• Defensive Version: BwPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAiQSicg0iEQiEhgkkEJAAAAAAAAAoQSOQkIJpAAQi0EJJJSC

The single-target and multi-target rotations do not change in Mythic+ content. For more information about the Unholy Death Knight rotation, refer to the link below.

Unholy's Disease AoE rotation is all about high Plaguebringer uptime and lots and lots of Epidemic spamming. The idea is to ensure your DoTs are doing as much damage as possible and generating as much Runic Power as possible to spend on Epidemic.

As we approach a given pack, we execute essentially the same opener every single time, just skipping parts of it if we do not have the cooldowns ready. This is what it looks like:

1. Defile as we run towards the pack.
2. Scourge Strike as we reach the pack and stand in our Defile.
3. Unholy Blight to apply Virulent Plague. Outbreak if Blight is not ready.
4. Dark Transformation.
5. Unholy Assault or Festering Strike to build some wounds on a target.
6. Abomination Limb.
7. Apocalypse.
8. Epidemic until Plaguebringer needs to be refreshed.
9. Defile.
10. Scourge Strike.
11. Epidemic until low RP.
12. Refresh your Virulent Plague when it is about to expire.
13. Scourge Strike.
14. Epidemic until low RP.

The idea is to get your disease up and Plaguebringer quickly. We also make sure to use Defile early to get the mastery buff. We then use all our cooldowns and dump our Runic Power. Apocalypse is used early here to make sure we get good value from our Death Knight Unholy 10.2 Class Set 2pc and Death Knight Unholy 10.2 Class Set 4pc. As Plaguebringer is about to run out, we use Defile again and Scourge Strike to refresh it. At this point, your pet has applied a ton of Festering Wounds on the pack, meaning we get lots of Runic Power every time we cleave with Scourge Strike. We use this to funnel our damage into Epidemic!

You might notice the lack of Festering Strike in this rotation! As a general rule, we almost never press it in our Mythic+ rotation. It is only ever if we need to set up a Festering Wound for Apocalypse or if Defile is not currently active. Since Defile uptime is so high, we just end up spamming Scourge Strike the majority of the time (ignoring the fact that there sometimes are no Festering Wounds active in the pack). Still, in a long pack, after our Defile sequence is finished (after 40 seconds or so), we will revert back to building and bursting Festering Wounds, spending the Runic Power on Epidemic! Without Deadliest Coil, we do Epidemic at 3 targets. With it, we use Epidemic at 4+ targets.

Unholy's Wound AoE rotation revolves heavily around the application and bursting of large quantities of Festering Wounds with the Bursting Sores talent. We use cooldowns ( Unholy Assault, Vile Contagion and Dark Transformation with Infected Claws) to apply the majority of our wounds, relying on Defile with Pestilence to do the rest. We then burst the wounds by spamming Scourge Strike/ Clawing Shadows in our Defile.

Outside our Defile windows, we pretty much play our normal single target rotation, swapping out Death Coil for Epidemic as our Runic Power Spender. We do this at 3+ targets if we haven't picked up Deadliest Coil, otherwise we do it at 4+.

To make it hopefully easy to understand, this is a simplified version of what your multiple target opener should look like.

1. Defile.
2. Scourge Strike.
3. Use Outbreak or Unholy Blight to apply Virulent Plague on all targets.
4. Use Dark Transformation.
5. Use Festering Strike.
6. Use Apocalypse.
7. Use Festering Strike.
8. Use Unholy Assault.
9. Use Vile Contagion (on the target that now has 6 Festering Wounds).
10. Spam Scourge Strike/ Clawing Shadows until your first Defile runs out.
11. Spam Epidemic until your Defile mastery buff is about to drop.
12. Use Defile.
13. Spam Scourge Strike/ Clawing Shadows
14. Use Epidemic if the pack has no Festering Wounds or if you have no Runes for Scourge Strike
15. Refresh your Virulent Plague when it is about to expire.
16. After you run out of Death and Decays/ Defiles to use, go to single-target rotation with Epidemic instead of Death Coil.

If any cooldown listed above is not available, simply skip that part of the opener and proceed to the next step. If you are not running Vile Contagion, do not Festering Strike after your Apocalypse!

If the pack lives for up to 40 seconds, your priority will change slightly. When you have your Unholy Assault and Vile Contagion combination, you want to delay your Dark Transformation until after you have used Scourge Strike/ Clawing Shadows 2-3 times inside your Defile window. This will prevent any overcapping on Festering Wounds, as well as set up for your secondary Defile windows (with Death's Echo). After you have finished with your first window, dump your Runic Power with Epidemic and then move straight into your next window, making sure to refresh the Defile Mastery buff! We want to ideally dump our Runic Power in the short period before Defile windows since Scourge Strike/ Clawing Shadows has much lower value here (they do not cleave)

• Blinding Sleet is a 1-minute cooldown AoE stop interrupt that also slows the enemies when they are broken from its blind. Very useful to interrupt casts and help your tank to kite.
• Death Grip is an iconic Death Knight spell that pulls an enemy that you are targeting to you. Use this to stack enemies that are spread out to maximize cleave damage. This can also be used as an extra interrupt or to interrupt casts that cannot be interrupted by Mind Freeze. Another great application of this ability is to pull mobs out of Sanguine.
• Mind Freeze is a Death Knight's interrupt ability. This should be used to interrupt near the end of the target's cast time, as they do not attack while casting a spell, so it will minimize damage to the tanks. It is recommended you communicate your interrupts with the rest of your group so you do not end up wasting interrupts.
• Anti-Magic Shell is your magic-soaking ability. This ability can be used to generate Runic Power by soaking magic damage. If you cast Anti-Magic Shell before a magical debuff would be applied to you, such as bursting, the Anti-Magic Shell will prevent the application of the debuff.
• Wraith Walk is a movement talent that increases your movement speed by 70% for 4 seconds and removes all root effects. This talent should be taken if you are expecting to be slowed or rooted multiple times in a short time.
• Dark Succor is a proc that occurs whenever you kill an enemy, granting you a free cast of Death Strike and increasing the healing by an additional 10% of your maximum health. This can be very useful if your group is taking high amounts of AoE damage.
• Death Pact is a utility talent that provides you with a heal for 50% of your maximum health. This is incredibly useful in Grievous or Bursting, where sometimes the damage your group is taking can overwhelm your healer.
• Anti-Magic Zone is one of our most useful utility cooldowns. It is very powerful against heavy group magic damage.
• Gnaw is an ability that your pet has. Gnaw is off the global cooldown and stuns the target for 2 seconds. It is recommended that you keybind this ability so you have control over when your pet casts it.
• Asphyxiate is an optional 4 single-target stun that lasts for 4 seconds and it has a 45-second cooldown. If your group composition lacks stuns, you might want to consider using that talent. In addition, it has a 20-yard range, which makes it great against targets that run out of melee.
• Death Knight is one of the few classes that can resurrect an ally while in combat with Raise Ally. In addition, they are the only class that has an instant BR (battle-res), which makes it extremely valuable for any Mythic+ group.
• Lichborne is an extremely useful ability that provides you with 10% Leech and immunity toward Charm, Fear, and Sleep effects for 10 seconds. The extra Leech allows you to have better self-sustain without relying on Death Strike once you drop critically low. The immunity toward the crowd-control effects can be useful in some of the dungeon boss fights. When Lichborne is active, you can heal by casting Death Coil on yourself. Importantly, this can be used to remove stacks of Grievous Wound from Grievous since the Death Coils count as direct heals. It also turns into a solid defensive ability via the Unholy Endurance talent.
• Death's Advance is another extremely useful utility of the Death Knights, which increases your movement speed by 35% and gives you an immunity toward forced movement effects and knockbacks for 10 seconds. You can use it for effectively dodging mechanics or to neutralize an incoming knockback. Keep in mind any second that you do not spend in melee will decrease your overall damage output, which can sometimes result in depleting the keystone. Make use of all of your utilities to get an edge over any dungeon.
• Control Undead gives you the option to control an undead creature for 5 minutes. While it is a useful ability, it is unlikely that you will ever use it as an Unholy Death Knight because it disables your Ghoul, which is where a large part of your damage comes from. To conclude, do NOT ever use it unless necessary to prevent the party from a certain wipe.
• Icebound Fortitude is a powerful defensive ability that decreases any incoming damage by 30% for 8 seconds. Moreover, during that 8-second window, the ability provides you with stun immunity, which can be useful for several dungeon boss fights.
• Dark Command is a single-target taunt ability that instantly generates threat on the targeted enemy unit. Useful in very niche situations where you need to soak a tank mechanic from a particularly difficult boss! Make sure to use a defensive beforehand so you do not die.
• Sacrificial Pact can be used both offensively and defensively, although it is not recommended to use it as a source of damage but rather as a last resort for self-sustainability. Sacrificial Pact sacrifices your Ghoul to heal you for 25% of your maximum health. You should only use it if it is a critical situation to prevent certain Death. Be conservative about this ability since most of your damage comes from your pet, so sacrificing it will result in a major damage loss.
• Chains of Ice is a powerful single-target slow that reduces the movement speed on the target by 70%. It has a 30-yard range and can also be applied to multiple enemies.