Unholy Death Knight PvP Talents and Builds (The War Within Pre-Patch)
Choosing the right PvP and PvE talents is a prerequisite to proper performance in PvP. This guide goes through the various talent choices available to you as an Unholy Death Knight and gives you the best combinations you can take.
This page is part of our Unholy Death Knight PvP Guide.
Talent Choices for Unholy Death Knights
PvP Talents for Unholy Death Knights
You can choose 3 of the following PvP talents. Each of them has its uses, but some are better for certain strategies than others. These talents are sorted into General PvP Talents that can be applied to almost any situation and Situational PvP Talents that require certain enemy compositions, brackets, or environments to excel in. Unholy has a great deal of viable PvP talents, so all the best use cases will be outlined here for you to choose the proper three for the type of content or composition you are playing.
General PvP Talents
Doomburst is a very synergistic talent as there are a lot of
current effects that happen when a wound is burst. Having another way to
burst wounds, especially at a range, can be extremely impactful. Furthermore,
if you are using it at range, you can apply a massive 90% slow to the enemy,
allowing you to stop them from kiting for a brief moment and
increase uptime. This is another pressure-oriented PvP talent, but it can
be very impactful.
Necrotic Wounds is a very powerful Mortal Wounds-type effect
that stacks with other effects of a similar nature. It is a somewhat tricky
talent to use, as when you burst a wound, you will start a 12-second timer.
Any additional wounds you burst in this period stacks this Mortal Wounds
effect higher, and it will cap out at 6. However, it will not reset the
duration of the effect. Therefore, you will want to burst as many wounds
at the beginning of each of these 12-second windows as you can, resulting
in you pooling your wounds near the end of the windows. If you can master
this cyclical pattern, you will be extremely disruptive toward enemy healers
who will struggle to heal through the 18% healing reduction at maximum stacks!
Necromancer's Bargain is an amazing damage pick. In addition to applying
Crypt Fever It can deal upwards of 20-30% of an enemy's health on a
30-second cooldown. This will be taken in nearly all match-ups.
Situational PvP Talents
Strangulate is a very impactful crowd control effect. It
costs no resources, has no cast time, and lasts 4 seconds on a short
1-minute cooldown. Because of this, you will tend to set up your own
CC chain with
Asphyxiate into
Strangulate. This
is going to be very difficult for a healer to deal with because
even if they use their trinket on one effect, they still have to
sit the other. You will want to use your burst cooldowns during
these windows to make sure the CC will result in a kill.
Life and Death is a PvP Talent that should only be used in
Rated Battlegrounds. It scales tremendously well with the number of players
on the enemy team, and RBGs have the most players available in them for rated
content. The more players getting dispelled and healed, the more impact it will
have, and it is practically a mandatory talent for that environment.
Dark Simulacrum is one of the more interesting spells in the game
currently. It is extremely powerful against spammable CC effects, such as
Polymorph, or
Cyclone, as well as powerful healing cooldowns
such as
Life Cocoon. It is a neat addition to Death Knight's toolkit
while having a high skill cap and awareness requirement.
Spellwarden is a remarkably powerful tool. This allows you to cast
AMS on your teammates. This can be used to prevent crowd control from landing
on your healer or to allow your teammate to stay aggressive into caster match-ups.
Bloodforged Armor is a new addition to the Death Knight's toolkit. This
ability provides a 20% physical damage reduction for 3 seconds after each death
strike. This should be used in any class with heavy physical damage, such as
Feral and Warrior.
Doomburst is a very synergistic talent as there are a lot of
current effects that happen when a wound is burst. Having another way to
burst wounds, especially at a range, can be extremely impactful. Furthermore,
if you are using it at range, you can apply a massive 90% slow to the enemy,
allowing you to stop them from kiting for a brief moment and
increase uptime. This is another pressure-oriented PvP talent, but it can
be very impactful.
Necrotic Aura is a very simple talent that will increase the magical
damage taken by any enemy within an 8-yard radius of you. All spellcasters are
primarily magic damage, but many melee, such as fellow Death Knights or Demon
Hunters will also do a fair amount of magic damage. Therefore, if your
composition could use just a little bit more "oomph" to land kills,
this talent is a very simple pick that will increase all your pressure in
every window.
Changelog
- 23 Jul. 2024: Reviewed for War Within Prepatch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Season 4.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.2.0.
- 01 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.5.
- 05 May 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.
- 21 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 30 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 22 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
- 31 Jul. 2022: Reviewed for Shadowlands Season 4.
- 31 May 2022: Reviewed for Patch 9.2.5.
- 02 Mar. 2022: Reviewed for Patch 9.2.0.
- 11 Dec. 2021: Updated for Patch 9.1.5.
- 04 Jul. 2021: Updated for Patch 9.1 of Shadowlands.
- 20 Mar. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.0.5.
- 20 Feb. 2021: Updated to highlight Necrotic Strike synergies.
- 05 Dec. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands Season 1.
- 26 Oct. 2020: Updated Talent Table.
- 14 Oct. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands pre-patch.
Other PvP Guides
Keator is a Rank 1 Death Knight and has been playing Death Knight since Wrath. After having raided in US Top 50 guilds for multiple expansions, he decided to dive into PvP where he found his passion. He also streams occasionally on Twitch.
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