Unholy Death Knight DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — 12.0.5

Unholy Death Knight Explained

Unholy Death Knight relies on a dual-resource system with Runes and Runic Power. Runes passively recharge over time and are spent on abilities such as Festering Strike, Scourge Strike and Putrefy. Spending Runes generates Runic Power that we spend on abilities such as Death Coil and Epidemic. Furthermore, we maintain Plagues on our enemies via Outbreak and Putrefy (with Blightburst).

The rotation boils down to the following:

• Manage stacks of Lesser Ghoul that we build and consume via Festering Strike and Scourge Strike
• Manage your Festering Scythe buff by using Festering Strike -> Festering Scythe
• Manage your Plagues by re-applying them with Outbreak or Putrefy (with Blightburst)
• Manage your resources by spending Runic Power on Death Coil (Single Target) and Epidemic (AoE) to avoid going above 100.
• Use your higher-cd skills Putrefy and Soul Reaper as much as possible during Dark Transformation.
• Use your Putrefy during Dark Transformation.
• Send your Cooldowns as much as possible, always aligning them.

Multi-Target Rotation

The Multi-Target Rotation for Unholy Death Knights share a significant amount of priorities compared to Single Target. The main difference is that we use Epidemic instead of Death Coil when we fight 3+ targets (6+ during Forbidden Knowledge) and that we do not delay Soul Reaper for Blightfall in the opener (when Blightfall is talented).

1. Use Outbreak.
2. Use 2x Festering Strike.
3. Use Army of the Dead + Dark Transformation + Trinket + Racial + Potion
4. Use Soul Reaper.
5. Use Putrefy
6. Use Putrefy.

When it comes to timing your trinkets, you can just macro them with Army of the Dead in all your openers. If you are lucky enough for receive Power Infusion, ask for it when you cast Army of the Dead.

The below list represents your rotation priority excluding your actual Cooldowns. Cooldown usage is discussed separately but you can generally assume that you always want to press your Cooldowns as much as possible!

1. Use Putrefy when your Virulent Plague and Dread Plague fall off your target. Try to have a charge ready to use right when the plagues fall off. Use Outbreak if you have no Putrefy charges.
2. Use Outbreak to maintain your plagues on the target.
3. Use Festering Scythe if its buff has fallen off.
4. Use Death and Decay when fighting 3+ enemies.
5. Use Soul Reaper if any enemy is below 35% health and the Dark Transformation buff is active, or you have triggered the Reaping effect from Dark Transformation.
6. Use Epidemic when you have 80+ Runic Power or a Sudden Doom proc. Use Death Coil when fighting less than 3 targets (6 targets during Forbidden Knowledge).
7. Use Putrefy if your Dark Transformation is active.
8. Use Putrefy if all targets are above 35% health and Dark Transformation is active. If any target is below 35%, use Soul Reaper to trigger your Putrefy instead (still during Dark Transformation).
9. Use Festering Strike if you have less than 3 stacks of Lesser Ghoul.
10. Use Scourge Strike if you have at least 1 stack of Lesser Ghoul.
11. Use Epidemic. Use Death Coil when fighting less than 3 targets (6 targets during Forbidden Knowledge).

Now, we will take this priority list and put it into a wordier description!

• Maintain your Plagues on the target by leveraging Outbreak or Putrefy. Your plagues do not only do damage but are also the source of your important Sudden Doom procs so keeping them up is crucial. With Blightburst you want to ideally refresh the Plagues with Putrefy every time so you avoid wasting GCDs on Outbreak. If adds gets brought into the current pack mid-fight, your Scourge Strikes will automatically spread your Plagues to the new targets.
• Maintain your Plagues on the target by leveraging Outbreak. Your plagues do not only do damage but are also the source of your important Sudden Doom procs so keeping them up is crucial. If adds gets brought into the current pack mid-fight, your Scourge Strikes will automatically spread your Plagues to the new targets.
• Use Death and Decay when fighting 3+ enemies to maximise the number of Putrefy you use during your Dark Transformation. Either send as many as possible during the window to get as much Cooldown Reduction as possible, or use them slightly before if you are not already at 3 stacks of Putrefy.
• Cast Soul Reaper. Either when any target is below 35% health and the Dark Transformation buff is active, or you have received the free use from Dark Transformation with Reaping. It is a good idea to "snipe" low-health mobs to automatically send your Putrefys, reducing the number of GCD you need to spend on the ability.
• Use Epidemic to avoid capping Runic Power or to spend your procs of Sudden Doom. Sudden Doom is a powerful proc, and you do not want to waste any. If you have Harbinger of Doom talented, you can allow yourself to stack up two charges before you spend them. However, most of the time, you simply use them as soon as possible to avoid any potential waste. We also do not want to overcap Runic Power (generating Runic Power when we are at 100), so we use Epidemic to avoid this. We use Death Coil when fighting less than 3 targets (6 targets during Forbidden Knowledge) as it will deal more damge.
• Use Festering Strike to build up stacks of Lesser Ghoul on yourself. We want to aim for between 4 and 6 stacks at all times to give ourself some flexbility, either when we are forced out of melee range.
• Use Festering Strike to build up stacks of Lesser Ghoul on yourself. We want to aim for between 4 and 6 stacks at all times to give ourself some flexbility, either when we are forced out of melee range. We also use Festering Scythe as a high priority if its buff has fallen off. In general, you will have to actively track and reapply this buff!
• Use Scourge Strike to consume your stacks of Lesser Ghoul. This is used in sync with Festering Strike to keep your stack count at a healthy level. You go up to 4-6 and then use Scourge Strike to drop down to 3 again.
• Use Death Coil as your filler spell when you have nothing else to do! We use Death Coil over Epidemic when fighting less than 3 targets (6 targets during Forbidden Knowledge) as it will deal more damge.

Additional Concepts

This section digs slightly deeper in rotational aspects that you need to consider.

Rotation during Summon Gargoyle

When Summon Gargoyle cooldown is active, our priority changes. Any Runic Power we spend buffs the minion we summon, and the idea is to leverage this as much as possible. Using Death Coil, therefore, ends up being much higher on our priority list! Essentially, you use Death Coil as soon as you can, either by going above 30 Runic Power or getting a proc of Sudden Doom (and being above 15 Runic Power).

When playing with the San'layn Hero Talents, the maintenance of the Essence of the Blood Queen buff is an important aspect to master. We quickly stack this buff 7 times during our Dark Transformation windows (due to unlimited Vampiric Strikes) and then aim to extend it to our next Dark Transformation window (where we can easily maintain it again). Dark Transformation itself lasts around 20-35 seconds so we only really need to gain a single proc inbetween uses to bridge the 10-25 seconds gap! The importance here is to spend all your Runic power to maximise the chance of getting a proc if you are about to drop the buff!

Important to note here is that Death and Decay is not worth using in Single Target, even with Blood-Soaked Ground, Desecrate or Cycle of Death. The talent is not strong enough to justify pressing Death and Decay, even to get the extension.

For raids, we always combine our cooldowns as much as possible. This works out nicely as they all align on a 45-second cycle. A cooldown plan for a 4-minute boss fight would look like the following:

• 00:00 — Army of the Dead + Dark Transformation
• 00:45 — Dark Transformation
• 01:30 — Army of the Dead + Dark Transformation
• 02:15 — Dark Transformation
• 03:00 — Army of the Dead + Dark Transformation
• 03:45 — Dark Transformation

Due to everything aligning perfectly like this, it is crucial that you use your cooldowns as soon as they come up. Any delay means that your 1.5 -minute burst window will be delayed, potentially making you miss out on a ton of value.

In Mythic+, the name of the game is cooldown efficiency. It is so easy to lose out on a ton of value by holding your cooldowns "for that one big pack that comes soon." As a general rule, use your cooldowns as much as possible, Especially when you are using Dark Transformation on its own. It is by far the easiest way to improve your DPS in Mythic+!

Dark Transformation transforms your ghoul for 15 seconds, causing its Claw ability to cleave all enemies near your pet. If you talent into Reaping, you get a free cast of Soul Reaper regardless of the target's HP as well! Furthermore, Dark Transformation significantly buffs your minions via the Commander of the Dead talent!

You should use this ability on cooldown. Aligning it with Army of the Dead every second time. Furthermore, it is a good idea to enter your Dark Transformation window with high stacks of Lesser Ghoul (6-8) so that you can spend more time summoning pets for big burst, and less time building stacks with Festering Strike.

Putrefy summons and scarifies a Lesser Ghoul to strike the target and then explode with AoE damage. It gains additional effects through talents, mainly with Blightburst making it also apply your Plagues if they are not already up and the summoning of a Magus of the Dead with Reanimation.

Using Putrefy optimally is a relatively difficult game of optimisation. The primary aspect to consider here is the large buff to the ability that you get via Commander of the Dead. Due to this, we want to concentrate our uses within our Dark Transformation windows. What this means gameplay-wise, is that you want to aggressively use your charges during Dark Transformation. Do not use the charges (even at 3 stacks) in the window after your Dark Transformation ended, or before the next window. You will start each window with a Soul Reaper to consume two stacks, and then follow with manual presses to consume your stacks throughout the rest of the window.

TCWhy is my Putrefy damage so low?

This tends to be due to a low proc rate of your Forbidden Knowledge talent which is due to low Dread Plague and Festering Scythe uptime. Furthermore, if your pets are not on assist, the random procs you get won't actually function properly.

Blightfall is an interesting ability with strong synergy with your Plagues. Once you use Dark Transformation, your Outbreak turns into Blightfall. This new ability consumes all your plagues on your target and any target it around, dealing 100% of the remaining damage in one big burst.

The goal of Blightfall is relatively simple, stack up your DoTs to as high of a duration as possible and then consume them, while having as many buffs active as possible. In practice, this generally means that you use Blightfall just after Dark Transformation ends. In Single Target, you time it with a Soul Reaper used about 5 seconds before Dark Transformation ends to make sure you get the Plague damage debuff as well. You gain a charge of Putrefy from consuming your Plagues so simply follow up with Putrefy every time, reapplying your Plagues.

Death and Decay is generally not worth using for its damage. There is synergy with San'layn with both Blood-Soaked Ground and Desecrate but neither of these talents are strong enough to make Death and Decay worthwhile to press.

Cycle of Death does create a strong feedback loop of Putrefy and Death and Decay. When running this talent, it is worthwhile to use Death and Decay in AoE scenarios (3+ targets) for the Putrefy cooldown reduction. Otherwise you primarily use it for the slow in conjunction with Grip of the Dead. You can stack it on top of itself, meaning you will be using double Death and Decay after your Putrefy usage in the opener in Mythic+ to get lots of charges back-to-back.

With Cycle of Death, you use it in the following way: If you enter your cooldowns with 3 stacks of Putrefy, use Death and Decay after you have used all your charges of Putrefy. If you are approaching a cooldown window without max stacks of Putrefy, use Death and Decay ahead of the window to reach max stacks.

Desecrate increases its damage but only by an average of 40% when you do the math.

Army of the Dead summons several ghouls to fight at your side for 15 seconds. It also summons a Magus of the Dead when talented. Finally, it transforms Death Coil into Necrotic Coil and Epidemic into Graveyard for 30 seconds via the Forbidden Knowledge Apex Talent. It is a major cooldown that will end up being a significant part of our overall damage in any situation.

Raise Abomination additionally summon an Abomination for 30 seconds with this Cooldown. The Abomination has an AoE Disease cloud that increases the damage enemies take from your minions by 20%.

Summon Gargoyle additionally summons a Gargoyle for 25 seconds with this Cooldown. The Gargoyle attacks your target with an attack that ramps in damage based off the amount of Runic Power you have spent. Incentivises spending Runic Power as a priority when the pet is out.

Death Knights use a dual resource system of runes and Runic Power. While it is quite straightforward in how it works, we will explain it here for the sake of completion.

You have a total of 6 Runes, which are available by default. Some of your abilities have Rune costs, and whenever you use an ability that consumes one or more Runes, those Runes will immediately begin recharging. The exact amount of time it takes a Rune to recharge depends on how much Haste you have.

Whenever a Rune is consumed, you gain 10 Runic Power (more on that below).

At most, 3 of your runes can be charging up at the same time. It is therefore optimal to keep at least 3 runes on cooldown to maximise the recharge rate over the course of the fight.

Runic Power is a resource that resembles Rage, in the sense that it decays when out of combat, but does not decay during combat. As mentioned above, consuming Runes generates 10 Runic Power per Rune spent, and this is the primary means of generating Runic Power, although some abilities also help with this. You can have a maximum of 100 Runic Power.

Choosing whether or not you should prioritise Runes or Runic Power is a tricky decision as an Unholy Death Knight. We overcap on our resources and often need to pick one or the other. In general, you want to avoid overcapping on Runes (having more than 3) in Single Target and avoid overcapping Runic Power (going above 100) in AoE.

Since Death Knights have multiple resources that they need to track, it is very helpful to customize your UI to easily track your resources. Being able to easily focus on your rotation and resources can help you maximize your damage and positioning.

Unholy Death Knight gets access to Forbidden Knowledge Apex Talents as you level up from 80 to 90 in Midnight. The first rank provides a 30 seconds buff once you cast Army of the Dead, transforming your Death Coil into Necrotic Coil and your Epidemic into Graveyard. These new abilities are powerful version of the baseline ones, notably adding an AoE component to Death Coil. The impact to the rotation is that Necrotic Coil is used at up to 4 targets in AoE ( Death Coil is only used at up to 2).

Rank 2 and 3 ( Forbidden Knowledge) gives Mastery when Putrefy is cast and adds a stack of Lesser Ghoul. Slightly less Festering Strikes are needed in the rotation but not much else.

Rank 4 ( Forbidden Knowledge) increases the damage of Necrotic Coil and Graveyard for each Magus of the Dead active, synergising well with Magus of the Dead and Reanimation. Furthermore, Dread Plague has a 20% chance to trigger Putrefy at 60% effectiveness, significantly increasing the number of Putrefy triggered in the rotation overall.

It is crucial to maintain good Dread Plague and Festering Scythe uptime to get the most of this talent. Furthermore, your pets must be on assist for it to function properly.

Runic Corruption has a chance of proccing whenever we spend Runic Power. It can also proc when we consume Sudden Doom and Dark Succor. The proc will always return a total of 0.9 Runes, regardless of haste. The proc also stacks on itself, adding any new duration to the previous remaining one. All this means is that you do not need to pay attention to this process.

Virulent Plague is a Shadow damage DoT that is applied to targets using Outbreak or Putrefy with Blightburst. It is our AoE plague.

Dread Plague is a single-target only DoT (can only be applied to one target) that is applied in the same way as Virulent Plague. This is also the source of our Sudden Doom procs.

Anti-Magic Shell absorbs 100% of all magic damage taken, up to 30% of your maximum health, for 5 seconds and grants you Runic Power based on the amount of damage that it absorbs.

While this ability has amazing survivability benefits, allowing you to often taken practically no damage from various raid-damaging mechanics, it also has great benefits for your DPS.

Indeed, the amount of Runic Power you gain if you absorb a lot of magic damage is far from negligible. Therefore, you should always try to make use of Anti-Magic Shell to boost your Runic Power generation throughout the fight. The best way to do it is to know when a raid-damaging attack is coming, and to have Anti Magic Shell up for that time. Then, simply enjoy the extra Runic Power (and do not forget to spend it).

That said, for progression content, we fully recommend first and foremost saving Anti-Magic Shell to mitigate magic damage, before you consider how to use it to increase your DPS.

We have previously discussed the rotation during Summon Gargoyle, highlighting the high priority on spending Runic Power to buff the cooldown. Putting Death Coil at the top of the priority during the entire duration of Summon Gargoyle is not the optimal way to play, however!

The value of using a Death Coil is directly proportional to the number of Summon Gargoyle casts that will be buffed by said coil. The first couple of Death Coils are incredibly valuable since they buff all the casts of the CD. Compare that to the final Death Coil that might only buff a single cast. Furthermore, the buffing here is additive, meaning that each coil essentially just adds a flat amount.

The optimization that comes into play here is the priority of buffing the Gargoyle vs prioritising other spells. In general, the further you are in the Cooldown, the lower your Death Coil priority should be.