Unholy Death Knight DPS Stat Priority — The War Within (11.2)

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

Unholy is looking for a good balance of Haste, Mastery and Critical Strike in The War Within. Season 3 saw a significant increase in the value for Crit as multiple effects were added that increases damage of Critical strikes. This was to counteract the negative effect that Sudden Doom has on the value of Critical Strike. Versatility is much worse than the other stats and the ideal setup runs 0 of it.

The priority remains the same in Mythic+!

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. Furthermore, it increases the Critical Strike damage of your Diseases and Minions. 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. Crits deal double damage by default, but several effects can increase your crit damage, and make crits even stronger.

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, which you might assume is optimal given the duration.

The main non-standard stat interaction for Unholy comes via our Sudden Doom proc. Since it guarantees a critical strike of Death Coil and Epidemic, it lowers the value of Crit for us. To counteract this, we have our Mastery: Dreadblade, Grave Mastery/ Plague Mastery and Scourge Strike Festering Wound burst interaction. The net effect here is that Critical Strike end up a valuable stat.

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.