Unholy Death Knight Leveling Guide

Welcome to the Unholy Death Knight leveling guide for the World of Warcraft patch 11.0.5! In this guide, you find a small overview of good talents to pick, a simplified rotation as well as a shopping list to prepare you for your leveling journey!
If you are already level 80, don't hesitate to check out the Mythic+ or Raid guide instead!

Hero Talents

• Rider of the Apocalypse performs better than San'layn while leveling due to the fact that it has no ramp time and allows you access to Death Charge immediately, enabling you to pull more mobs considerably quicker.
• Your Runes have a chance to summon 1 of 4 Horsemen that all do good damage, helping you kill mobs faster.
• Apocalypse Now causes Raise Abomination to summon all 4 Horsemen allowing you to kill any elite mob extremely quickly.

Leveling Talent Points

Single-Target

• Put up diseases with Outbreak.
• Keep up Plaguebringer with Scourge Strike.
• Cast Death Coil if you get a Sudden Doom proc.
• Cast Festering Strike if your target has no Festering Wounds.
• Cast Death Coil if you are going to overcap on Runic Power.
• Cast Scourge Strike if there are Festering Wounds on your target.

AoE

• Put up diseases with Outbreak.
• Cast Death and Decay if it is not down while mobs are stacked.
• Keep up Plaguebringer with Scourge Strike.
• Cast Epidemic if you get a Sudden Doom proc.
• Cast Epidemic if you are going to overcap on Runic Power.
• Cast Scourge Strike if Death and Decay is down.

Using Cooldowns

• Dark Transformation
  • This can be used whenever you get to a pack of mobs as this can apply Festering Wounds to all targets hit with Sweeping Claws allowing Bursting Sores to do a lot of work.
• Apocalypse
  • Generally used on mobs that will live more than a couple seconds, notably on mobs that are 1 of's at the end of quests as they regularly have higher health than normal mobs.
• Raise Abomination
  • Used on Elite or high health mobs that scale up considerably with the amount of players hitting him.
• Unholy Assault
  • Can be used on AoE to put up 4 Festering Wounds and allow Bursting Sores to start up right away.

Pulling Mobs

• Putting Outbreak on a mouseover macro allows you to put your cursor on their nameplate and cast Outbreak without having to click on it. This allows you to quickly put up diseases on many targets with minimal clicks and is especially useful when you are tagging really low health mobs as not having to do that extra click can save you a good amount of time not waiting for respawns!

This macro casts Outbreak at your mouseover if it exists. If it does not, it instead casts it at your target.

/cast [@mouseover,exists,harm][@target,exists,harm] Outbreak

• Death Grip is not able to be casted on mobs that are already tagged by someone else. Once you hit the tagged mob or if it is not yet in combat, you can Death Grip it.
• Dark Command is an off global cooldown ability that is good to use if you are not able to cast Outbreak because of Runes or Death Grip because it has already been tagged.
• Death and Decay can be used to tag enemies in range as well if it is needed.

Credits

Written by: Miniaug

Reviewed by: Xerwo