| General Information
Weapon Enchants
Death Knight is in a unique position of being able to Runeforge our own weapons, rather than having to buy enchants. You always want to enchant Fallen Crusader on your weapon. Having around a 50% uptime of a 15% main stat buff is very beneficial.
Weapon Choice
When it comes to weapons, their item level will always outweigh perfect stats. 5 ilvls on a weapon with the “incorrect” stats will most likely be better than the one 5 item levels lower with the “perfect” stats.
Race Choice
Race choice doesn’t particularly matter for Unholy, but I know you probably want to know which is best anyway. For single target, Troll will be most beneficial due to the on-use Haste, however for AoE you will get slightly better benefit from the Blood Elf racials.
Consumables
The list of consumables is pretty straightforward, but here is a list of what you should be using:
Mech-Dowel’s “Big Mech” or Baked Port Tato
Battle-Scarred Augment Rune (if you can afford it)
War-Scroll of Battle Shout, if there are no warriors in your group
Portion of Unbridled Fury on Single Target or 2, Potion of Empowered Proximity on 3+
Raid Guide
Playing Unholy Death Knight
Unholy Death Knight has a fairly unique playstyle, because it combines pets, two types of resources, dots, and the unique Festering Wound mechanic.
The gameplay is pretty simple to explain, but it does require a good way of tracking short cooldowns and debuffs. The entire “rotation” comes down to 3 basic steps:
Keep all your 30+ second CD abilities on on cooldown
Keep your dot on the target
Build and spend Festering Wounds
Opener
Army of the Dead 2 seconds before pull
Potion 1 second before pull
Outbreak
Dark Transformation
*Death Coil if you get procs*
Unholy Frenzy
Festering Strike
Apocalypse if you have at least 4 Festering Wounds. If not, then wait until UF applies the 4th
Death Coil
Death and Decay or Defile only if you are NOT talented into Epidemic
Spell Priority and Gameplay
Rotations don’t exist anymore, rather there is a basic spell priority you should follow, which is outlined below.
Keep Virulent Plague on the target. Refresh as close to 0 as possible
Soul Reaper if below 2 charged runes
Dark Transformation
Apocalypse at 4 Festering Wounds
Death Coil if you have Sudden Doom or 80+ RP
Death and Decay or Defile if you are running Pestilence
Scourge Strike until you run out of Festering Wounds
Festering Strike
Death Coil
Multi Target
Outbreak to apply Virulent Plague to all intended targets
Epidemic if you have 80+ RP
Death and Decay or Defile
Scourge Strike if you are within Death and Decay
Festering Strike
Death Coil if you have Sudden Doom
Cooldown Usage
Army of the Dead super long cooldown, and resource intensive. I suggest using it just prior to pull mostly because this will give your runes a little time to recover, and since Lust/Hero gets used on pull they will also benefit from it. This is a weird cooldown, because we typically only get 2 uses on end bosses which tend to last a much longer time.
Apocalypse is a pretty basic 90 second offensive CD that requires a minimal amount of setup. You should aim to use this with 4 Festering Wounds whenever it is available, however you can delay it slightly if you want a burst of AOE damage for adds.
Dark Transformation use on cooldown. It is basically just a passive damage increase to your pet, however its interaction with Infected Claws can cause you to delay using it for cleave.
Unholy Frenzy should be used whenever available. It is basically a mini Lust/Hero with the added benefit of applying Festering Wounds. You want to make sure to stay within melee range during its duration to avoid missing out on Wound applications. Pretty nice cooldown on both single target and aoe.
Soul Reaper deserves a mention, because there is a little bit of min-maxing potential when it comes to this ability. Death Knight is only able to recharge 3 runes at a time, which means that if you use it when you only have 1 or 0 runes available you will get marginally more benefit from it. The potential for sniping the 10% haste is also nice if you have adds you can Soul Reaper that will die within its duration.
Raid Talents
Level 56: All Will Serve will be the go to talent in most single target, and even on limited time cleave encounters. An argument can be made for Clawing Shadows if there is a very large amount of movement that requires time out of melee range.
Level 57: This talent tier is mostly AOE choices, but Ebon Fever is simply numerically the best choice for priority damage, such as raid bosses.
Level 58: Purely utility choices that might vary on a per boss basis. In raids, only Grip of the Dead or Death’s Reach tend to see play, since other classes can provide a stun.
Level 60: Soul Reaper provides the highest damage gain with the current build, as long as it is used correctly. Using it when below 2 charged runes is important, because of the way the rune system works.
Level 75: Another utility/defensive tier, where Death Pact will probably see most use during progress, and Wraith Walk will become more prevalent during farm where damage mitigation is a lower priority. Spell Eater is useful in situations where you need a little extra absorb on AMS during certain encounters.
Level 90: All three talents in this row are useful in certain situations. For single-target you will choose between Pestilence or Defile. I recommend running a sim to find out which is better for your character, because there are a few factors which play a role in choosing. Epidemic becomes better on pretty much any encounters where adds spawn, because we use it on 2+ targets.
Level 100: Unholy Frenzy is the only viable choice at the moment, and provides a nice little haste boost and supplements our opener to ensure that we get 4 Festering Wounds for Apocalypse.
Gearing and Stat Optimization
I will never be able to tell you the exact stats you need without knowing what gear you have, but what I can do is give you a general idea which you should follow.
For Raiding I suggest using the following stat priority:
Critical Strike > Haste >> Mastery > Versatility
Once you reach higher item level, your secondary stat values will increase, and pass your primary stat value. This means that you will reach a point where it will be favorable to drop ilvl in favor of Haste or Critical Strike. I still suggest running a Stat Weight sim on www.raidbots.com to find your exact stat weight.
Enchanting & Gemming:
Rings:
Accord of Critical Strike
Gem:
1x Leviathan’s Eye of Strength
Deadly Lava Lazuli
Azerite Gear,Trinkets, and Essences
There are a few notable Azerite traits and trinkets for Unholy DK, but writing out a full list hierarchy is very difficult. Instead, I will just give you an idea of what items you should look for.
Traits:
Primary Traits
Festermight & Magus of the Dead are by far the best traits for single target. Festermight requires a slight modification of gameplay, which mainly involves pooling Festering Wounds prior to starting to spend them to slightly frontload the stacking buff.
Secondary Traits
Overwhelming Power is numerically the best trait, simply because it is slightly over budgeted compared to the other secondary traits.
Gutripper can be pretty beneficial for boss encounters that have an important execute phase, where damage becomes more relevant than the rest of the fight.
Trinkets:
Unholy is less reliant on having an on use trinket, so your choices will largely come down to the item level of the trinkets you have available.
Pocket-Sized Computation Device w/ Cyclotronic Blast Red Card
This trinket is currently overtuned, so it is by far the best single target choice. If this is the only on-use trinket you have, then pop it after Unholy Frenzy is over, and you are at 3 or less runes.
If you have 2 on use trinkets, use your other trinket with Unholy Frenzy and this one when the shared cooldown comes back up.
Ashvane’s Razor Coral
Probably the strongest on-use trinket we can get. Great synergy with CLF (Condensed-Life Force)
You should activate it on pull to start stacking, then reactivate it during your 2nd use of CLF
If you are not using CLF, activate it for crit on every other Unholy Frenzy
Dribbling Inkpod
Probably the best passive trinket we can use, gains increased value the longer the fight goes on for, and on fights with important execute phases.
The Inkpod stacks trigger at 29%, so if you are using CLF, Blood of the Enemy, or any Versatility modifiers, try to line it up with the pop to increase its damage
Font of Power
Strong on-use trinket, a little awkward to use since it is a 2 minute cooldown
First use should be ~6 seconds on pull timer which gives you time to prepot and cast Army of the Dead
Depending on kill time you can delay subsequent uses to line up with Unholy Frenzy, but make sure you never lose a use of the trinket
Azerite Essences:
Unholy DK has several essences that can be used based on the situation, below will be a quick rundown of the more prominent ones, and how they change your gameplay.
Majors
Condensed Life-Force (Rank 3) aka CLF
This essence becomes our BiS major essence when upgraded to Rank 3. When used, simply activate it before using Unholy Frenzy in the rotation. With this essence, every other use of Unholy Frenzy should be synced with this essence.
Essence of Focusing Iris (Rank 3)
In the opener, use it prior to pressing Unholy Frenzy. You should never channel it during Unholy Frenzy, because this will stop wounds from being applied.
This is by far our best essence on AoE
Minors
Ancient Flame (Rank 3)
Very good minor essence, especially good when already have a decent amount of haste, and not hitting any points where you are Rune starved.
Memory of Lucid Dreams (Rank 3)
This essence will improve your resource generation quite a bit, so it has a nice synergy with a number of our talents and traits.
For AoE this is our BiS minor essence.
Advanced Tips:
Festermight changes our playstyle slightly. It is worth playing around it, especially at 3x trait, where you get very high amount of strength. The main change is keeping an eye on where you are in a Festermight cycle. Always make sure you start a fresh cycle when you pop UHF/Apoc, because you want to be at high stacks for as long as possible. Outside of cooldowns, you will need to play a little more conservative with wounds. This means that instead of just spending them as soon as you get wounds, you will want to pool a few up along with some runes before each fresh cycle to make sure you ramp the first few stacks quickly at the start, to benefit from the increased strength for an extended duration.
Mythic+ Specific
M+ Talents
L56: Infected Claws is a pretty standard choice, since it synergizes well with Bursting Sores to amplify your damage.
L57: Bursting Sores becomes better on multi-target than Ebon Fever, because its damage scales much better with enemy count.
L58: Grip of the Dead is potentially the best utility spell here, unless you are running with a Blood DK, or are lacking a single target stun, in which case you should run Asphyxiate.
L60: Soul Reaper. Kind of boring choice, but it gives you some runes back to be able to spam more Scourge Strikes during your DnD.
L75: Death Pact can save you in some sticky situations if your healer is falling behind, or you get hit by an unexpected ability.
L90: Epidemic is going to be the default choice in most situations, however at a very high target count there is a case to be made for Pestilence to allow you to just spam SS during your DnD.
L100: Unholy Frenzy is currently the only choice for dungeons. You should pretty much just pop it as you run into packs whenever you have it available.
Azerite
Primary Traits:
Helchains damage is pretty overturned at the moment, so you should aim to get this trait on as many on your pieces as possible.
Festermight is a pretty insane trait on aoe, because you will pop more Festering Wounds per buff duration than on single target, due to Pestilence and Infected Claws (if you are running them).
Secondary Traits:
Overwhelming Power is best numerically when it comes to pure damage.
Blood Siphon is still pretty solid damage wise, but it also has the added defensive benefit of a small amount of Leech.
Thanks for reading the guide!
Thanks to all the people who support me through Patreon or Twitch, and encourage me to keep creating the content I love making.
Also, special thanks to resources such as www.bloodmallet.com, www.raidbots.com, and www.warcraftlogs.com for making it easier to access relevant information, which we use to improve our gameplay. Stay awesome!
Edited by Arthemius - 15/4/2021, 13:41 |
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Mastery: Starlight aumenta il danno di 
Starfall,
Starsurge, 
Moonfire, e 
Sunfire, e aumenta il bonus al danno fornito da 
Solar Empowerment e 
Lunar Empowerment.
