Unholy Death Knight DPS Spell List and Glossary — The War Within Pre-Patch

If you are new to Unholy, this is a great place to start to get an understanding of how the spec works. On this page we will discuss what abilities you have, what they are used for within the specialization, how they interact with each other and also with important cooldowns. If you already have experience with Unholy and are comfortable with it in the current expansion, it is recommended you skip this section and move on to the rest of the guide.

Runic Power and Runes are your two primary resources. We have 6 Runes in total that passively generate over time, taking 10 seconds to recharge (decreased by haste). Runes are the most common resource we use for our abilities, which include Festering Strike, Scourge Strike and Army of the Dead. Spending Runes generates 10 Runic Power per Rune used. We use Runic Power as our spender on abilities such as Death Coil and Epidemic

Spells and passive abilities are unlocked as you level up and spend talent points. This page will simply list every single ability you can obtain, not recommending any specific talent setups or rotations to use. If you want to understand which abilities are best to pick up when leveling, please follow the below link.

These are the abilities that you obtain without selecting anything in the talent trees.

Ability	Abbreviation	Description/Effect
Death Coil	DC	Costs 30 Runic Power to cast, dealing Shadow damage to the target. It can be cast on an Undead ally (including yourself) to heal it.
Epidemic	Epi	Costs 30 Runic Power, dealing damage to any target that currently has Virulent Plague on them. Also, splashes to nearby enemies, dealing damage to up to 8 targets.
Death and Decay	DnD	Costs 1 Rune and places a damaging area at the target location, which persists for 10 seconds. If you have selected Cleaving Strikes, also makes your Scourge Strike/ Clawing Shadows cleave 7 additional targets.
Death's Advance	DA	Death's Advance when activated, increases your movement speed by 35% and prevents you from being slowed below 100% of your movement speed for 10 seconds. It also grants you immunity from knockbacks. It has a passive ability that prevents your movement speed from being reduced below 70%.
Rune Strike	-	Costs 1 Rune and deals moderate damage. Is replaced once we choose a specialisation ( Festering Strike for Unholy).
Outbreak	OB	Costs 1 Rune and applies Virulent Plague to all enemies near your target.
Virulent Plague	VP	A Shadow damage DoT that erupts when the target dies, dealing damage divided among all enemies. It is applied using Outbreak, Raise Abomination or Dark Transformation (with Unholy Blight).
Runic Corruption	RC	A passive that gives you a 1.6% chance per Runic Power spent to increase your Rune recharge rate by 100% for 3 seconds. The duration scales inversely with Haste, always granting you the same total amount of 0.9 Runes whenever it procs. Runic Power abilities that get a "free" proc, such as Dark Succor still proc this passive as if they consumed the Runic Power.
Dark Succor	-	A passive that grants you a free Death Strike whenever you kill an enemy that grants honor or experience. Also increases the healing of the Death Strike by 10%. Importantly, you need to land the killing blow to retrieve the buff, meaning you will not get that many procs in Raids and Mythic+.
On a Pale Horse	-	A passive that grants 20% mounted movement speed.
Anti-Magic Shell	AMS	Absorbs up to 30% of your maximum health in magic damage over 5 seconds, generating Runic Power based on the damage absorbed (up to 30 Runic Power maximum). This should be used to mitigate magic damage throughout the fight while the added Runic Power will help increase your DPS. It also prevents any magical debuffs from being applied to you. This can be very useful to dodge mechanics!
Death Grip	-	Pulls your target towards you. It also has a shorter GCD compared to normal spells at 0.5 seconds. This means that you can quickly use another ability after gripping something.
Raise Ally	-	Costs 30 Runic Power and battle resses a targeted dead ally, bringing them back to life (even in combat).
Lichborne	-	Turns you undead for 10 seconds. This makes you immune to charm, fear, and sleep, and grants you 10% leech. You can also activate this ability to break any of these CCs, making it a useful tool if you are accidentally hit a mechanic that applies such a CC.
Dark Command	-	Taunts the targeted enemy, forcing them to attack you.
Runeforging	-	Allows you to apply a powerful Runeforge to your weapon, acting as a (usually) better enchant. You do this in the Acherus Hold at the Runeforges.
Death Gate	-	Summons a gate that will teleport you to Acherus. Here you can Runeforge your weapon, practice your rotation on target dummies, and change the appearance of your Summon Gargoyle to a Valkyr. Using the Death Gate again will bring you back to your original location.
Chains of Ice	Chains	Costs 1 Rune and slows your target by 70% for 8 seconds. This is generally your primary way of slowing any given target. Great for when you need to kite dangerous mobs in the open-world or kill a fleeing enemy.
Path of Frost	-	Costs 1 Rune and grants everyone in your group the ability to walk on water. Breaks on any damage taken.
Mastery: Dreadblade	-	Our Mastery, increasing our Shadow and Minion damage.

Ability	Abbreviation	Description/Effect
Death Strike	DS	Costs 45 Runic Power and constitutes our primary mean of healing ourselves. The amount of healing increases with the damage we've taken in the last 5 seconds, making it excellent to use after you have taken a big hit. It heals for 25% of the damage taken with a minimum of 7% max hp healed every time.
Raise Dead	-	Summons a ghoul to fight with us for 1 minute. You spend talent points in the Unholy spec tree to make this ghoul permanent, as well as significantly improving its overall power and impact. The ghoul can charge as well as stun, in addition to dealing damage.
Mind Freeze	-	Interrupts your target. It has a 15 yards range, a benefit over other melee interrupts that often require melee range.
Blinding Sleet	Sleet	Blinds all targets in a cone in front of you for 5 seconds. When the enemies are broken out of sleep via damage or if the duration finishes, they are slowed by 50% for 6 seconds. Great ability to stop a group of enemies from casting, as well as controlling them efficiently. Your tank will love this ability whenever they need to kite.
Sacrificial Pact	SacPact	Costs 30 Runic Power and sacrifices your primary ghoul, dealing AoE damage (linearly to 8 targets, square root afterward) and healing you for 25% of your maximum hp. Primarily used as an energy heal as the damage component is not worth the hassle of resummoning the ghoul.
Control Undead	-	Costs 1 Rune and controls the targeted Undead enemy for 2 minutes. This requires that the enemy is sufficiently low-level (it does not work on bosses and certain mobs in dungeons). Furthermore, it prevents you from having your primary ghoul active. You can use the abilities of the dominated undead at reduced effectiveness. Overall, this should only be used as a CC tool since the damage loss of not having our primary ghoul active is too great.
Icebound Fortitude	IBF	Provides a 30% damage reduction for 8 seconds, additionally making you immune to stuns. It can be used when stunned as well to break out of the CC. Primary defensive cooldown for us with the added benefit of the stun break!
Anti-Magic Zone	AMZ	Places a zone on the ground that reduces magic damage taken by 20% for 10 seconds for everyone standing in it. The maximum amount that can be absorbed is equal to 1.5 times your Maximum Health, increased by your Versatility.
Asphyxiate	Asphyx	Stuns your target for 5 seconds. Simple single-target stun with a range of 20-yard range.
Death Pact	-	Heals you for 50% of your maximum health, as well as putting a healing absorption heal for 30% of your maximum health. A panic-button heal with a downside. The effective healing is only 20%, but you still find a lot of instances where this provides the required breathing room for your healers or you need to bring you back to health.
Wraith Walk	WW	Provides 70% movement speed for 4 seconds. Any ability used during the channel will break the effect. Useful as a movement speed increase in instances when you need to move between A and B without doing anything else.
Abomination Limb	Limb/AL	Grows an extra arm for you for 12 seconds, dealing AoE damage around you, as well as pulling a random enemy toward you every second. The enemy must be outside melee range to be liable to grip. Great utility tool that will help your party group up any pack of mobs. It also provides three procs of Runic Corruption across its duration.
Soul Reaper	SR	Costs 1 Rune, deals low damage, and applies a debuff to your enemy. After 5 seconds, if the target is below 35% health, this debuff explodes, dealing heavy ShadowFrost damage. If the target dies while under the effect of Soul Reaper, you gain Runic Corruption.

Ability	Abbreviation	Description/Effect
Festering Strike	FS	Costs 2 Runes, dealing Physical damage to the target and infect them with 2-3 stacks of Festering Wound. Festering Wounds can be burst using Scourge Strike, dealing damage to the target.
Scourge Strike	SS	Costs 1 Rune and deals Physical and Shadow damage to the target, also bursting 1 Festering Wound stack.
Raise Dead	-	Converts your baseline Raise Dead into a 30 seconds cooldown, now summoning a permanent pet to fight for you. This permanent pet has controllable abilities that charge, silence, root, and stun your enemies.
Dark Transformation	DT	Has a 1-minute cooldown (can be talented into 45 seconds CD) and transforms your ghoul into a more powerful version of itself for 15 seconds while also granting them 100% Energy. The empowered ghoul that deals AoE damage has a longer stun and can interrupt by charging to a target.
Defile	-	Replaces your Death and Decay. This new ability still allows you to cleave with your Scourge Strike/ Clawing Shadows with the Cleaving Strikes talent. In addition, every time a tick of Defile damages an enemy, its size and damage grow.
Apocalypse	Apoc	Bursts up to 4 Festering Wounds on your target, summoning 4 members of the Army of the Dead. The minions last for 15 seconds. It also generates 2 Runes on use.
Vile Contagion	VC	Costs 30 Runic Power and spreads all Festering Wounds from your primary target to up to 7 additional targets. This is a big AoE cooldown that works really well with Unholy Assault, generating up to 48 Festering Wounds in just 3 GCDs.
Army of the Dead	AotDead	Costs 1 Rune and summons several ghouls to fight at your side for 30 seconds. The ghouls spawn over 4 seconds and are stunned for an additional 4 seconds before starting to fight.
Raise Abomination	Abomination	Summons an Abomination for 30 seconds that melees your target. It applies one Festering Wound with each Melee, and applies Virulent Plague to all targets around it. This cooldown replaces Army of the Dead.
Summon Gargoyle	Garg/Gary	Summons a gargoyle to attack your enemy for 25 seconds. Every 1 Runic Power used increases the damage of the gargoyle by 1%.
Unholy Assault	UA	Strikes the target and infects them with 4 Festering Wounds, while also increasing your Haste by 20% for 20 seconds.

Ability	Abbreviation	Description/Effect
Runic Attenuation	RA	Gives your auto attacks a chance to grant you 3 Runic Power. This provides around 30 Runic Power per minute, adding a good amount of resources to our rotation.
Improved Death Strike	-	Increases the healing of Death Strike by 60% and lowers its cost by 10 Runic Power. Effectively makes Death Strike a 35 Runic Power ability that heals for a minimum of 11% max health, or 40% of damage taken in the last 5 seconds, whichever is greatest.
Cleaving Strikes	-	Makes your Scourge Strike/ Clawing Shadows cleave to 7 additional targets when standing in your Death and Decay, hitting 8 total. Important to note that the cleave is based on you yourself standing in the Death and Decay, not your enemy. This means that we can cleave from range by dropping Death and Decay on our feet and then using Clawing Shadows on enemies up to 30 yards away. This would cleave 8 yards around the primary target. The cleave buff persists for 4 seconds after you leave your Death and Decay (making the total max duration 14 seconds).
Anti-Magic Barrier	-	Lowers the cooldown of Anti-Magic Shell to 40 seconds and increases the amount absorbed by 40%. Useful for any situation with heavy magic damage or frequent magic debuff applications (that you can then ignore).
March of Darkness	-	Grants you an extra 25% movement speed during the first 3 seconds of activating Death's Advance.
Unholy Ground	-	Provides a 5% Haste buff whenever you stand in your Death and Decay. It does not make the ability worthwhile to use in pure Single Target but does present a nice boost to our AoE burst window.
Enfeeble	-	Gives your primary ghoul a chance to apply a debuff to its target, reducing its movement speed by 30% and making it deal 15% less damage to you.
Coldthirst	-	Grants you 10 Runic power and reduces the cooldown of Mind Freeze whenever you successfully interrupt using the ability. A nice additional to our resource generation, as well as providing overall more interrupt opportunities in any situation.
Proliferating Chill	PC	Increases the number of targets hit by your Chains of Ice from 1 to 2. It only affects additional enemies in close proximity of your primary target.
Permafrost	-	Provides a shield on yourself based on 40% of your auto attack damage. Provides a good deal of tankiness, both from passive healing but also as prevention to one-shot mechanics.
Veteran of the Third War	VoTW/ Veteran	Increases your stamina by 20%, making you significantly tankier overall.
Brittle	-	Grants your diseases a chance to apply a debuff to your enemy, increasing the damage you do against them by 6% for 5 seconds.
Death's Reach	-	Increases the range of Death Grip by 10 yards and resets its cooldown whenever you kill an enemy granting experience or honor. Useful in any situation where you need to grip adds as the extra range both helps with the distance, you can move them, as well as lowering how far you need to run yourself. The cooldown reset is mostly useful during leveling, as you need to land the killing blow to gain the effect.
Icy Talons	IT	Provides a 6% increase in attack speed for 6 seconds every time we spend Runic Power, stacking up to 3 times. Provides a nice increase in our Sudden Doom proc rate.
Unholy Bond	-	Increases the effectiveness of our Runeforges by 20%. This includes every aspect of the Runeforge, making Rune of the Fallen Crusader both increase its healing and strength gain, for instance.
Ice Prison	-	Chains of Ice now also roots enemies for 4 sec but its cooldown is increased to 12 sec.
Gloom Ward	GW	Increases the effectiveness of all absorbs on you by 15%. Big survivability increases both from empowering our abilities, such as Anti-Magic Shell and Anti-Magic Zone, as well as any healing coming in the form of absorbs. Especially good with Disc Priests!
Assimilation	-	Increases the amount absorbed by Anti-Magic Zone by 10% and its cooldown is reduced by 30 seconds.
Grip of the Dead	-	Adds a 90% slow to your Death and Decay/ Defile, reducing by 10% for every second. A great tool to help your tank kite and manage any trash pack. It also helps to prevent targets from running away from you as you begin your AoE burst, something that can otherwise be very frustrating.
Suppression	-	Passively increases your Avoidance by 3%. This is increased to 9% for 6 seconds when you suffer a loss of control effect.
Blood Scent	-	Passively increases your Leech by 3%.
Unholy Endurance	-	Converts your Lichborne into a proper defensive cooldown, granting it 2 extra seconds of duration as well as a 15% damage reduction for you. Adds to our already extensive kit of defensives!
Osmosis	-	Your Anti-Magic Shell also increases healing received by 15%.
Insidious Chill	-	Applies a stacking debuff with your auto attacks, reducing the enemy's attack speed by 5% per stack up to 20% at 4 stacks. Helps your tanks survive in a scenario (or yourself when doing open-world content). Stacks with similar effects such as Curse of Weakness.
Runic Protection	-	Reduces your chance to be critically struck by 3% and increases your armor by 6%. Small defensive boost.
Blood Draw	BD	Heals you for a moderate amount if you drop below 30% health. It can only occur once every 2 minutes. Also reduces damage taken by 10% and Runic Power cost of Death Strike by 10 for 8 seconds after it triggers.
Rune Mastery	-	Makes spending Runes give a chance to increase our strength by 3/6% for 8 seconds.
Subduing Grasp	-	When you pull an enemy (with Death Grip or Abomination Limb), they deal 6% less damage to you for 6 seconds. Makes Death Grip a small defensive Cooldown against bosses.
Will of the Necropolis	WotN	Reduces the damage you take below 30% by 20/35%. Big boost to our survivability since the damage we take below 30% is by far the most useful to mitigate. Effectively increases max HP by 16% against one-shots.
Null Magic	-	Reduces magic damage taken by 10% and harmful debuff duration by 35%. A really nice defensive boost against magic damage.
Unyielding Will	-	Increase the cooldown of Anti-Magic Shell by 20 seconds but makes it remove all negative debuffs on you when used. Can be incredibly powerful when dealing with various raid mechanics.
Death's Echo	DE	Provides an extra charge to Death's Advance, Death and Decay and Death Grip. Nice increase in utility with the the extra mobility and the additional grip. Also, a solid buff in AoE since we have more freedom to enter multiple Death and Decay burst windows in any given pull.
Vestigial Shell	-	Anti-Magic Shell also applies two shields to nearby allies. These shields absorb some Magic Damage (10% of your own AMS) and reduces the duration of Magic effects by 50%. Nice defensive boost to your party, especially in Mythic+.

Ability	Abbreviation	Description/Effect
Festering Wound	FW	A debuff applied by Festering Strike primarily. It can stack up to 6 on any given target. The Festering Wounds can be burst using Scourge Strike/ Clawing Shadows, dealing shadow damage to the target. Can be talented in dealing AoE damage as well with Bursting Sores. The wounds also burst on death.
Sudden Doom	SD	Grants your auto-attacks a chance to make your next Death Coil or Epidemic to cost 10 less Runic Power and critically strike. Furthermore, Death Coil bursts a Festering Wound when consuming a proc of Sudden Doom. The proc is based off a bad-luck-protection system where each auto attack that doesn't generate a proc, linearly increases the probability of the next to proc.
Foul Infections	-	Increases your Disease damage by 10% and their chance to critically strike by 5%.
Improved Festering Strike	-	Increases the damage of both our Festering Strike as well as our Festering Wounds. Only increases the primary portion of our Festering Wound damage, not the potential AoE portion we get from Bursting Sores.
Rune Mastery	-	Increases our maximum Runic Power by 10/20.
Eternal Agony	EA	Increases the duration of Dark Transformation by 1 second every time you cast Death Coil or Epidemic. Significantly increases the uptime of Dark Transformation and heightens the priority of spending Runic Power when the buff is active.
Unholy Blight	UB/Blight	Applies Virulent Plague and Unholy Blight to targets near your main pet each second over 6 seconds when your press Dark Transformation. Unholy Blight lasts for 14 seconds and stacks up to 4 times, dealing increased damage with each stack. This makes Dark Transformation an even better Cooldown, conveniently applying DoTs to all targets around our pet when we press DT!
Festering Scythe	Scythe	Every 20 Festering Wounds you burst empowers your next Festering Strike to become Festering Scythe for 12 seconds. Scythe deals Shadow damage to targets in front of you and infects each one with 2-3 Festering Wounds. It's very much like an AoE Festering Strike that generates a significant amount of Wounds on your targets.
Plaguebringer	PB	Makes Scourge Strike increase the rate at which our diseases deal damage by 100% for 5 seconds. This acts as a buff on us, meaning all targets currently affected by disease will take more damage, regardless of whether or not we hit them with the Scourge Strike.
Clawing Shadows	CS	Replaces your Scourge Strike, increasing its range by 30 yards and making it deal shadow damage. It can be leveraged with Death and Decay to cleave from range (since the cleave hits everything around your target, not your character).
Reaping	-	Increases the damage of Scourge Strike, Clawing Shadows, Soul Reaper, Festering Strike and Death Coil by 30% on any target below 35% health. An extra execute mechanic that brings a significant amount of useful damage. Being good at execute is pretty much always a good thing, since the last 35% of any boss fight is the most important!
All Will Serve	AWS	Summons an archer with your Raise Dead ability. This small minion attacks your enemies at range with a cleave attack. Dealing 100% damage to its primary target and 50% damage to everything else in an 8-yard radius.
Ebon Fever	EF	Reduces the duration of Virulent Plague by half, makes it tick twice as fast and deal 12% more damage. This is an overall 124% increase in the raw DPS from the DoT but with lots more Runes being spent to keep it up.
Bursting Sores	BS	Makes your Festering Wounds deal AoE damage when burst. This is a large portion of our damage in Mythic+, as the ability scales quadratically with the number of enemies. Any target that dies with Festering Wounds will also explode, dealing the splash damage from every wound.
Ghoulish Frenzy	GF	Provides a 6% attack speed and damage boost to you and your primary pet whenever you use Dark Transformation. The duration of this buff lasts for as long as Dark Transformation is up, synergizing well with Eternal Agony. Only the damage that originates from you and your main pet is buffed, not that from any of your other minions.
Magus of the Dead	Magus	Spawns a skeletal mage whenever you use Apocalypse and Army of the Dead. This minion casts Shadowbolts and Frostbolts at your target for 20 seconds. The Frostbolts slow the target.
Improved Death Coil	-	Increases the damage of Death Coil by 15% and makes it cleave to one additional target. Significantly buffs our cleave potential at 2 targets. It does not count as two Death Coils for buffing Summon Gargoyle, but does apply multiple debuffs with Death Rot, Coil of Devastation and Rotten Touch.
Harbinger of Doom	Harbinger	Makes your Sudden Doom trigger 30% more often and adds the ability to accumulate 2 charges. Also increases the damage of your Death Coil by 20% or Epidemic by 10% when they consume the proc. Good synergy with other talents such as Doomed Bidding that work off SD procs.
Unholy Pact	Pact	Makes our Dark Transformation form a chain between you and your primary ghoul for 15 seconds. This deals shadow damage to everyone nearby. The chain only lasts for 15 seconds, regardless of your actual Dark Transformation duration. The AoE of the chain is very forgiving, hitting everything 8 yards around you, your pet, as well as any point on the chain between you two.
Pestilence	-	Gives your Death and Decay a 10% chance to generate a Festering Wound every time it ticks. Gives your 1.1 Wounds per target per use on average.
Infected Claws	IC	Gives our primary ghoul's Claws attack a 30% chance of applying a Festering Wound. This also works on the Dark Transformation empowered version Sweeping Claws, which is an AoE ability. Each target hit will have an individual chance of receiving a Festering Wound. This is a major source of Festering Wound application in AoE scenarios.
Menacing Magus	-	Your Magus of the Dead now cleaves on a total of 4 targest. Really good cleave talent!
Coil of Devastation	-	Adds a DoT to any target hit with your Death Coil, dealing an additional 30% of its original damage. This DoT functions similarly to Mastery: Ignite where overlapping the DoT does not in any way decrease the total damage you gain from it. This is not something you need to track.
Rotten Touch	RT	Increases the damage of your Scourge Strike/ Clawing Shadows by 50% against your target when you consume a proc of Sudden Doom with Death Coil. Good synergy with Harbinger of Doom which leads to 90%+ uptime on the debuff.
Ruptured Viscera	-	Makes your minions from Apocalypse and Army of the Dead explode when they expire, dealing damage to nearby enemies. Generally, a difficult talent to leverage since you need to time its damage 15-30 seconds in advance.
Death Rot	-	Applies a debuff to any target hit by Death Coil and Epidemic, increasing the shadow damage you do against them by 1% for 10 seconds, stacking up to 10 times. Stacks twice if a proc of Sudden Doom is consumed. Relatively easy to keep up and a significant boost to our damage. Makes Epidemic is very useful in AoE scenarios since the debuff can be applied easily to all targets.
Doomed Bidding	-	Consuming Sudden Doom summons a Magus of the Dead for 8 seconds. Adds even more value to Sudden Doom and gives a really good feeling when consuming the procs.
Morbidity	Morb	Increases the damage your enemies take from you by 1/2% for every disease you have active on them. Synergizes well with Unholy Blight and Superstrain that will provide an overall 4/8% damage buff whenever they are all active.
Festermight	FM	Increases your strength by 1% for 20 seconds every time you consume a Festering Wound, stacking up to 20 times. Each individual stack you generate will have its own 20 seconds duration. Really powerful in AoE with large numbers of Festering Wounds being generated and popped. Also brings value to Apocalypse to buff other Cooldowns.
Decomposition	-	Virulent Plague sometimes flares up, dealing 50% of the damage it dealt to the target over the last 4 seconds. This effect also increases the duration of your active minions by 1 second, up to 3 seconds. Good synergy with our diseases but unfortunately in a spot in the tree that makes it hard to pick up.
Unholy Aura	-	Increases the damage your nearby enemies take from your minions by 10/20%. Works in an 8-yard radius around you. Important to track on bosses as some of them have hitboxes that doesn't work well with this talent. You sometimes need to stand much closer to the boss than you might think for this to work.
Superstrain	-	Makes Outbreak and Unholy Blight also apply Frost Fever and Blood Plague at 80% effectiveness. They deal 80% of their full damage, as well as granting 80% of the Runic Power and 80% of the healing effect.
Commander of the Dead	-	Increases your Apocalypse, Army of the Dead and Summon Gargoyle damage by 35% for 30 seconds when you use Dark Transformation. The minions do not need to be active when you use Dark Transformation and can gain the buff if summoned later.