Unholy Death Knight DPS Mythic+ Tips — Dragonflight 10.2
In this guide, you will find tips and advice to tackle Mythic+ dungeons with your Unholy Death Knight in World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.2.
Unholy Death Knight in Mythic+
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.
Unholy Death Knight Talents in Mythic+
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
Unholy Death Knight Mythic+ Rotation
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.
Opener and Rotation on Mythic+ Packs (Disease Build)
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:
Defile as we run towards the pack.
Scourge Strike as we reach the pack and stand in our
Defile.
Unholy Blight to apply
Virulent Plague.
Outbreak if Blight is not ready.
Dark Transformation.
Unholy Assault or
Festering Strike to build some wounds on a target.
Abomination Limb.
Apocalypse.
Epidemic until
Plaguebringer needs to be refreshed.
Defile.
Scourge Strike.
Epidemic until low RP.
- Refresh your
Virulent Plague when it is about to expire.
Scourge Strike.
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.
Opener and Rotation on Mythic+ Packs (Wound Build)
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.
Defile.
Scourge Strike.
- Use
Outbreak or
Unholy Blight to apply
Virulent Plague on all targets.
- Use
Dark Transformation.
- Use
Festering Strike.
- Use
Apocalypse.
- Use
Festering Strike.
- Use
Unholy Assault.
- Use
Vile Contagion (on the target that now has 6
Festering Wounds).
- Spam
Scourge Strike/
Clawing Shadows until your first
Defile runs out.
- Spam
Epidemic until your
Defile mastery buff is about to drop.
- Use
Defile.
- Spam
Scourge Strike/
Clawing Shadows
- Use
Epidemic if the pack has no
Festering Wounds or if you have no Runes for
Scourge Strike
- Refresh your
Virulent Plague when it is about to expire.
- 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)
Unholy Death Knight Utility
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.
Changelog
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.2.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
- 10 Jul. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.5.
- 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.
- 30 Apr. 2023: Reviewed and Updated for patch 10.1.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Updated talents for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Death Knight Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Bicepspump, a semi-hardcore player raiding with Pescorus on Kazzak. He is heavily involved in the DK DPS theorycrafting community, testing hyoptheses and investigating the correct priority to use. He is also a moderator in the Acherus Death Knight Discord, frequently answering questions and discussing optimisations (do not hesitate to reach out). He produces guide content on YouTube and frequently streams on Twitch.
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