Unholy Death Knight DPS Stat Priority — Dragonflight 10.2

The most common stat priority you will find in your sims for Unholy Death Knights is as follows:

1. Mastery
2. Haste
3. Critical Strike
4. Versatility

The exact amount of raw stat you have do have quite a large impact. We use Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows as our on-use trinket, which provides a secondary stat boost of our top stat by raw amount. If you have 5.5k Mastery, 5k Haste, 3k Crit and 1k Vers, the trinket would proc Mastery. Now, we really do want the trinket to proc Mastery, which is why Mastery is our top stat. However, we also value Haste greatly and ideally want it to be just below our Mastery by raw amount. The ideal scenario is, therefore, to have Mastery as top by raw amount (not %), and then have Haste just below it. Something like 5.5k Mastery and 5.4k Haste!

Pay close attention to various other trinkets and procs that provide raw stat amount. Bloodlust, Empower Rune Weapon, Power Infusion etc, all provide % values and do not influence your raw amount. However, trinkets like Accelerating Sandglass, Pip's Emerald Friendship Badge and Gore-Crusted Butcher's Block provide raw rating and can influence your Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows proc!

For AoE, it changes slightly with Haste dropping lower in the priority:

1. Mastery
2. Critical Strike
3. Haste
4. Versatility

Usually, a higher item level piece of gear will be a bigger upgrade than a lower item level piece of gear, even with better stats. We highly recommend you sim your character to find the stat weights that work best for you.

These statistics have been obtained by combining common sense, in-game testing, and simulations using SimulationCraft.

Strength is your primary statistic. You should look for it in all of your upgrades. It provides you with Attack Power, which determines the damage your abilities do.

Mastery, through Mastery: Dreadblade, increases your Shadow and minion damage. Shadow and minion damage makes up a majority of your total damage. The first strict diminishing return starts at 68.4% Mastery.

Haste will increase your attack speed and Rune regeneration rate. It also reduces your Global Cooldown.

Critical Strike increases your chance to critically hit with all spells and abilities.

Versatility increases all your damage and healing done, and decreases all damage taken.

For Unholy, your pets and minions inherit your stats. Increasing your Haste will make them hit faster and regenerate Energy faster. Critical strike will increase their Critical Strike chance, etc. Stats are dynamically updated for the pets, meaning a new buff you receive will then also be applied to any pets you currently have. This means that you do not need to worry about applying buffs before summoning any minions! However, it is important to recognize the fact that this inheritance is not instantaneous! It takes anywhere between 0 and 5 seconds for the pets to actually inherit the stats from us (both when we gain and lose the stats). This is the reason why you see recommendations like using Berserking 15 seconds before the end of Summon Gargoyle, instead of 12 seconds that you might assume be optimal given the duration.

The gems, enchants, and consumables that you choose are directly affected by your stat priority. To find the best mix of these, we do recommend that you simulate yourself using a program like Raidbots or Simulationcraft, however, we have a page linked below that will give you advice on this topic.