Unholy Death Knight PvP Rotation and Playstyle — Midnight Season 1

The opener refers to your team's opening crowd control chain and damage done as soon as you get out of the gates. The main goal in the opener is to force your enemies to use their cooldowns and/or trinket. To do this, Unholy Death Knights will set up an AoE burst window for them and their partner with Death Grip.

This is the rotation you should use on your target in the opener if you are playing the Rider of the Apocalyse hero tree.

1. Make sure that you have at least two stacks of Putrefy but three is ideal.
2. Use Chains of Ice to keep your primary target slowed as you approach them.
3. Use Raise Abomination when you get to your target.
4. Use Dark Transformation to transform your pet.
5. Use Soul Reaper to pop your Putrefy.

This list serves as your sustained damage rotation priority.

1. Maintain Chains of Ice on all targets to hinder their movement.
2. Use Outbreak to maintain Virulent Plague on as many targets as possible and Dread Plague on your main target.
3. Use Putrefy if you are sitting at three stacks and won't have burst in the next 10-15 seconds.
4. Use Death Coil if you have a high amount of Runic Power or if you get a Sudden Doom proc.
5. Use Scourge Strike when you have 3+ stacks of Lesser Ghoul.
6. Use Festering Strike when you have less than 2 stacks of Lesser Ghoul.
7. Use Death Strike if you are about to cap on Runic Power and your healer is struggling.

Unholy has strong single-target burst windows that can also cleave and rot nearby enemies. Making good use of these windows both by having the enemy team in CC and also by making sure your setup globals (shown above) are active prior to this window is extremely important. This will allow you to focus your global cooldowns and your Runes on burst damage.

1. Make sure that you have at least two stacks of Putrefy but three is ideal.
2. Use Chains of Ice to keep your primary target slowed as you approach them.
3. Use Raise Abomination when you get to your target.
4. Use Dark Transformation to transform your pet.
5. Use Soul Reaper to pop your Putrefy.

In order to better explain the specific usage and benefits of the Unholy Death Knight kit, we have compiled a more detailed explanation on individual parts of your defensive and cooldown kit, so you can reach your full potential when playing Unholy Death Knight in PvP.

Anti-Magic Shell or AMS is your primary magic-based defensive. This is very strong against casters or any classes with magic-based damage such as Retribution Paladin. With a relatively short cooldown, use this if you are being focused and need to negate incoming spell damage.

If you are playing Spellwarden then you should look to use AMS on your healer right before they get crowd controlled. This can be on something such Freezing Trap or Polymorph.

Icebound Fortitude or IBF is another strong defensive. This will give you immunity to all stuns and reduce all damage to you. Use this when you are in a stun and being focused.

IBF can also be offensively if you are close to securing a kill as it will remove stuns on you. You do want to be careful with this strategy as if you do not win then you are giving up your only form of damage reduction

Death Strike is another primary defensive. If you are the primary target for the enemy team and have Runic Power, use Death Strike to heal yourself for a percentage of the damage that was dealt to you.

Timing is important with Death Strike. The idea behind Death Strike is that when incoming damage is high, you prioritize it over Death Coil so your healer has time to stabilize.