Unholy Death Knight DPS Stat Priority — Dragonflight 10.0.7

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

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

Notably, Summon Gargoyle introduces Haste breakpoints to aim for. Gaining an extra attack from this summon is a big dps increase, thus creating points where your haste becomes extra valuable. This happens every 9% haste, meaning 9%, 18%, 27% etc. The best way of targeting these is to simulate your character as the simulation engine accurately synthesises the behavior. This means that you will sometimes prioritse Haste more than any other stat.

For AoE, it changes slightly with Mastery and Critical Strike coming on top of Haste:

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!

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.