Unholy Death Knight Raid Guide
Welcome to the Unholy Death Knight Raid guide for the World of Warcraft patch 11.0.5! This guide covers everything you need to know to understand your character! Are you starting out and leveling up from 70? Check out the leveling guide!
Overview
Hero Talents
- On pure Single-Target and Multi-Target, Rider of the Apocalypse is currently the best. While San'layn is close in damage, it lacks utility and complicates your gameplay to an extreme amount so from this point forward the guide assumes you are playing Rider of the Apocalypse.
Offensive Nodes
- Rider's Champion - Each Rune spent gives you a 10% chance to summon one of the following Four Horsemen:
- Mograine
- Puts up a Death and Decay that follows him.
- You gain the benefit of Mograine's Might and Unholy Ground if you are standing in this.
- Puts up a Death and Decay that follows him.
- Whitemane
- Undeath is a disease with a 24 second duration that spreads and gains 1 stack every time you use Scourge Strike on the infected target.
- Trollbane
- Repeatedly casts Chains of Ice over his duration that gets shattered by Scourge Strike with Trollbane's Icy Fury.
- Nazgrim
- Grants you 5% Strength, increasing by 1% for every Rune spent while Nazgrim is active.
- Mograine
- Apocalypse Now
- Summons all 4 Horsemen for 20 seconds after casting Raise Abomination. This lines up with every other use of Dark Transformation and Apocalypse making for extremely large burst windows especially when combined with on-use trinkets.
- If a Horsemen is already out, it extends the current duration by 20 seconds instead.
- Mograine does not recast his Death and Decay but all other Horsemen recast their abilities.
- If a Horsemen is already out, it extends the current duration by 20 seconds instead.
- Summons all 4 Horsemen for 20 seconds after casting Raise Abomination. This lines up with every other use of Dark Transformation and Apocalypse making for extremely large burst windows especially when combined with on-use trinkets.
- Fury of the Horsemen or A Feast of Souls
- Fury of the Horsemen increases the duration of your Horsemen when spending Runic Power which has incredible value for Unholy due to Mastery interactions with the Horsemen's abilities. A Feast of Souls enables larger Death Coils and Epidemics but is not strong enough on single target to make it worth it.
- Hungering Thirst
- Passively increases the damage of your diseases, Virulent Plague as well as Frost Fever and Blood Plague while playing Superstrain, and Death Coil damage.
- Mawsworn Menace
- Increases Scourge Strike and Clawing Shadows damage by 10% as well as reducing the cooldown of Death and Decay by 10 seconds allowing you to use 2 charges of Death and Decay during Dark Transformation in AoE without being punished.
- This reduces the cooldown of Defile by 5 seconds if you are playing it instead.
- Increases Scourge Strike and Clawing Shadows damage by 10% as well as reducing the cooldown of Death and Decay by 10 seconds allowing you to use 2 charges of Death and Decay during Dark Transformation in AoE without being punished.
Defensive Choice Nodes
- Death Charge or On a Paler Horse
- On a Paler Horse does not work at all in this raid so you always choose Death Charge which is not a bad thing as this greatly increases your mobility and allows you to break roots and slows.
- Horsemen's Aid or Pact of the Apocalypse
- Horsemen's Aid depends on the value of Anti-Magic Shell during the fight as this can be incredibly potent allowing you to pre-immune debuffs or randomly absorb high amounts of magic damage. On the other hand, Pact of the Apocalypse grants you a 5% damage reduction per Horsemen out or a 20% damage reduction during your cooldowns with Apocalypse Now. Due to the situational value of both of these, there is no auto pick for this as it just depends on the fight.
Offensive Nodes
- Vampiric Strike
- Death Coil, Epidemic, and Death Strike have a 10% chance to transform your next Scourge Strike in to Vampiric Strike.
- Vampiric Strike heals you for 1% of your max HP, triggers Infliction of Sorrow, and grants you 1 stack of Essence of the Blood Queen.
- Infliction of Sorrow
- Causes Vampiric Strike to add 3 seconds to the duration of Virulent Plague and deal 10% of its' remaining damage on the target.
- After Gift of the San'layn expires you get a buff causing the next Scourge Strike to consume Virulent Plague and deal its' remaining damage immediately.
- This damage is affected by Plaguebringer, Ebon Fever, Foul Infections, and other damage modifiers making them incredibly important talents while playing San'layn as this becomes a massive amount of burst every 1m30s.
- Gift of the San'layn
- Dark Transformation now grants you Gift of the San'layn which replaces Scourge Strike with Vampiric Strike for its' duration.
- Essence of the Blood Queen effectiveness is also increased by 100% during Dark Transformation.
- Blood-Soaked Ground
- While standing in your Death and Decay the proc chance of Vampiric Strike is increased to 15%.
- Frenzied Bloodthirst
- Allows Essence of the Blood Queen to stack up to 7 and increases your Death Coil damage by 3% per stack.
- Visceral Strength
- Consuming Sudden Doom procs grants you 6% strength for 8 seconds.
- Pact of the San'layn or Sanguine Scent
- Pact of the San'layn simply deals more damage overall as Sanguine Scent only increases the chance to gain Vampiric Strike in execute which you can already get the majority of the time.
Your damage is maximized by using Dark Transformation to gain Gift of the San'layn on cooldown to stack and maintain Essence of the Blood Queen as well as increasing the duration of Virulent Plague and taking advantage of Infliction of Sorrow during your cooldowns. This happens every 45 seconds, but is especially powerful every 90 seconds as this lines up with Raise Abomination, Unholy Assault, and your on-use trinkets.
Defensive Choice Nodes
- Vampiric Speed or Newly Turned
- Newly Turned has the potential to be nice but overall you are not normally the person combat rezzing while Vampiric Speed increases your movement speed and that of nearby allies slightly which is always good.
- Bloody Fortitude or Vampiric Aura
- In Raids, Bloody Fortitude increasing the potency of Icebound Fortitude is simply too good to give up as 2% Leech sometimes increasing to 4% even for 4 allies is just not good enough.
Talents
Rider of the Apocalypse
Rider of the Apocalypse
When to Use This Spec
This is the default loadout going into any pure Single-Target boss. Use the Single-Target with Adds build for any fight that has regular add spawns or multiple targets throughout the fight. You have to adjust the class talent tree based on the utility needed for the encounter and to make your life easier, boss-specific talent loadouts are available in the Nerub-ar Palace section for each boss.
Gameplay Altering Talents
Discover all talents that significantly alter your gameplay within the Spec and Class Talent trees. This section gives a concise overview of these talents and their applications but for a more detailed look check out the Rotation and Deep Dive sections below.
Spec Tree
- Clawing Shadows
- Converts Scourge Strike into pure Shadow damage allowing it to bypass armor and scale considerably more with Mastery.
- Unholy Blight
- Combined with Raise Abomination, this allows you to not manually refresh your diseases on pure Single-Target.
- Infected Claws
- A factor in why you don't constantly have to press Festering Strike as this gives roughly 8 Festering Wounds per minute.
- Every hit in multi-target situations from Sweeping Claws has a separate chance of applying a Festering Wound, meaning you don't have to constantly Festering Strike multiple targets.
- Apocalypse
- Bursts up to 4 Festering Wounds on the target, summoning 4 ghouls that deal damage for 15 seconds.
- Raise Abomination
- Replaces Army of the Dead, instead summoning an abomination that applies all diseases when it spawns in a small radius around it and applies a Festering Wound on each of its' auto attacks for 30 seconds.
- Unholy Assault
- Puts 4 Festering Wounds on your target and Increases your damage by 20% for 20 seconds.
Class Tree
- Soul Reaper
- Used rotationally when hitting enemies under 35% health.
- Cleaving Strikes
- Allows Clawing Shadows to hit up to 7 additional enemies while you are standing in Death and Decay or when you have the buff from recently standing in your Death and Decay.
- Abomination Limb
- Grips enemies to you for 12 seconds with a minimum range of 8 yards and a max range of 20 yards as well as dealing a decent amount of damage over the duration.
- Runic Attenuation
- A very nice source of passive Runic Power generation to help smooth your rotation out.
- Anti-Magic Zone and Assimilation
- Your raid cooldown that lasts for either 8 seconds or until 150% of your maximum health has been absorbed in total by everyone standing in the zone.
- Talenting into Assimilation makes this absorb 10% stronger, 165% of your maximum health, and have a 30 second reduced cooldown.
- Null Magic
- Reduces your magic damage taken by 8% and reduces the duration of harmful magic effects by 35%. While the reduced magic damage portion of Null Magic works against all magic damage, the reduced duration of harmful magic effects does not work on the vast majority of debuffs in the raid as that could simply break too many things.
- Vestigial Shell or Unyielding Will
- Unyielding Will increases Anti-Magic Shell's cooldown by 20 seconds but removes all harmful magic effects when cast. While this says all, it doesn't mean all as removing certain debuffs could potentially break encounters if some debuffs were removed early. Make sure to check the Nerub-ar Palace section in this guide to see what you can and can't remove on a fight by fight basis.
- Vestigial Shell puts a Lesser Anti-Magic Shell on 2 nearby allies that absorbs a small amount of damage and reduces the duration of some harmful magic effects. This does not have any immune capabilities and just acts as a shield on your allies that can reduce the duration of some harmful magic effects.
- Death's Echo
- Gives you 1 extra charge of Death and Decay, Death's Advance, and Death Grip.
- Gives you 2 charges of Defile if talented instead of Death and Decay.
- Gives you 1 extra charge of Death and Decay, Death's Advance, and Death Grip.
- Will of the Necropolis
- Reduces all damage taken by 35% when below 30% health, including the portion of the hit that takes you below 30%. For example, if you take a hit that takes you from 60% to 10%, the portion of the hit below 30% of your health is reduced by 35%
- Unholy Endurance
- Transforms Lichborne into a defensive cooldown and increases its' duration.
- Gloom Ward
- Increases all absorbs on you by 15%, this is incredibly powerful as it increases the absorb of spells like Anti-Magic Shell and Power Word: Shield and other similar abilities.
When to Use This Spec
This is the build to use whenever you go into a fight that is mostly Single-Target but also has adds spawning and it matters that they actually die.
Talent Adjustments
Listing all the changes within the Class and Spec tree compared to the default build.
- Added
- Morbidity
- Superstrain
- Ebon Fever
- Removed
- Unholy Aura
- Commander of the Dead
- Rotten Touch
Rotation
Tier Set
- 2-Set: Your minions deal 8% increased damage.
- 4-Set: When you summon a minion, your Haste is increased by 2%, up to 8% for 8 sec.
Single-Target
Opener
- Your goal in the opener is to get your high value casts out of the way so you can get your cooldowns started immediately as you want to get into your normal rotation and begin taking advantage of your cooldowns. Below, you see an example of how your opener looks like using the recommended Rider of the Apocalypse Single-Target build.
Make sure your Ghoul is summoned at least 5 seconds before combat.
- After this opener, there is a lot of Clawing Shadows and Death Coil spamming with some Festering Strikes sprinkled in.
Priority List
- Cast Dark Transformation and Apocalypse on 45 second cooldown windows, they should always be paired together. Raise Abomination and Unholy Assault should be used in combination with the others on 1m30s windows.
- Cast Soul Reaper if the enemy is below 35% health or will be when this expires.
- Cast Death and Decay if you are not standing in Mograine's Death and Decay and your cooldowns are active.
- Cast Death Coil when you have more than 80 Runic Power or when Sudden Doom is active.
- Cast Clawing Shadows when you have 1 or more Festering Wounds and Rotten Touch is on the target.
- Cast Festering Strike when you have 2 or less Festering Wounds.
- While Raise Abomination is active, you only cast Festering Strike when you are at 0 Festering Wounds
- Cast Death Coil if Death Rot is about to fall off.
- Cast Clawing Shadows when you have 4 or more Festering Wounds.
- Cast Death Coil.
- Cast Abomination Limb if you have nothing else.
Notes
- On Single-Target, you do not refresh Virulent Plague unless it is with Dark Transformation or Raise Abomination as there are only a couple seconds of downtime between Virulent Plague falling and casting Raise Abomination. If there is considerable downtime between your cooldowns, you end up needing to refresh as it is worth the cast at that point.
- Rotten Touch has >95% uptime on the target when you are able to consistently hit the boss so normally you spend down to 1 Festering Wound.
Multi-Target
In this Raid, but especially on Heroic and likely Mythic as well, there are no scenarios where you would realistically play a full AoE build so that will not be focused on in this guide. With that being the case, there are only a few fights you would press Epidemic for a short amount of time due to fight design. On these fights, you play a slightly different talent build that focuses more on diseases rather than Clawing Shadows so that is what this section will focus on.
Opener
- Your goal in the opener is to get your high value casts out of the way so you can get your cooldowns started immediately as you want to get into your normal rotation and begin taking advantage of your cooldowns. Below, you see an example of how your opener looks like using the recommended Rider of the Apocalypse Multi-Target build.
Make sure your Ghoul is summoned at least 5 seconds before combat.
- While this is a Single-Target opener, there are no fights in Nerub-ar Palace with immediate AoE on pull.
Single-Target Priority List
- Cast Dark Transformation and Apocalypse on 45 second cooldown windows, they should always be paired together. Raise Abomination and Unholy Assault should be used in combination with the others on 1m30s windows.
- Cooldowns can be held for AoE scenarios if they are up within a reasonable amount of time.
- Cast Outbreak to refresh your diseases if you are not about to cast Dark Transformation or Raise Abomination.
- Cast Soul Reaper if the enemy is below 35% health or will be when this expires.
- Cast Death Coil when you have more than 80 Runic Power or when Sudden Doom is active.
- Cast Scourge Strike when you have 1 or more Festering Wounds and Rotten Touch is on the target.
- Cast Festering Strike when you have 2 or less Festering Wounds.
- While Raise Abomination is active, you only cast Festering Strike when you are at 0 Festering Wounds.
- Cast Death Coil if Death Rot is about to fall off.
- Cast Scourge Strike when you have 4 or more Festering Wounds.
- Cast Death Coil.
Multi-Target Priority (When Adds are up)
- Cast Death and Decay if it is not already down.
- Cast Outbreak if any targets are missing diseases.
- Cast Epidemic when Sudden Doom is active.
- Cast Scourge Strike if any targets have Festering Wounds.
- Cast Epidemic if there are no no remaining Festering Wounds.
- Cast Scourge Strike.
Deep Dive
How to Use Your Cooldowns in Raid
As an Unholy Death Knight, your main strength is using your cooldowns together to extract the maximum potential from your most potent abilities. This section shows you how to properly use them together.
45s Window
1m30s Window
Your objective here is to not waste a global cooldown overcapping on Festering Wounds as Apocalypse summons 4 ghouls as long as there is at least 1 Festering Wound on your target, but popping more at once is always better.
Casting Death Coil vs Epidemic
- When you are in an AoE situation, you should switch to using Epidemic over Death Coil at 3 stacked targets. However, when you are talented into Improved Death Coil this changes to 4 stacked targets. This is not a common issue as you are not regularly talented into Improved Death Coil while being in situations where you want to press Epidemic constantly.
Pet Positioning
- When you empower your ghoul with Dark Transformation, it is essential to see and manage where your pet is at all times due to the interaction between Sweeping Claws and Infected Claws as this can put Festering Wounds on all targets hit by Sweeping Claws. This increases your power dramatically in any multi-target situation as you gain a ton of additional Festermight stacks from this interaction when you start bursting them with Death and Decay and Scourge Strike.
- Managing your pet positioning is also necessary while you are talented into Commander of the Dead as it only has a 100 yard application range to your summoned minions. While this is not ordinarily an issue, occasionally bosses like Volcoross end up existing and pets like to move to the back of the boss, putting them far out of the 100 yard application range.
Anti-Magic Shell Runic Power
- Anti-Magic Shell has the ability to grant you up to 40 Runic Power based on the amount it absorbs. This is incredibly powerful as these single target builds can get starved of Runic Power so you want to use this to your advantage as often as possible on bosses where Anti-Magic Shell isn't needed for purely defensive purposes.
Understanding Mechanics
Rotational min-maxing is just one aspect of mastering a specialization, but there are numerous other key mechanics that influence your performance. Use the following guides to improve them.
Nerub-ar Palace
← Scroll for more Bosses →
Boss Tips
- During Carnivorous Contest, use Death's Advance while soaking to prevent getting dragged to the boss.
- With Death's Advance active you can walk back to the boss to attack.
- Do not walk under the boss as Devour kills you almost instantly.
- With Death's Advance active you can walk back to the boss to attack.
- Clean up any undesired webs from Stalkers Webbing with Anti-Magic Shell and Icebound Fortitude.
Boss Tips
- Anti-Magic Shell prevents the application of Black Blood when walking over the "water".
- Utilize Abomination Limb, Chains of Ice, and Death Grip for the inside phase to grip and slow the small adds spawned from Manifest Horror together.
- If you have all cooldowns and are reasonably geared, around 620+, Anti-Magic Shell, Icebound Fortitude, Lichborne, and Anti-Magic Zone, you can stand in the circle and live Goresplatter.
Boss Tips
- Use Anti-Magic Shell right before Decimate goes off to immune the Cosmic Shards debuff.
- If you are playing Unyielding Will you can also do it afterwards if necessary.
- Phase Blades deal physical damage so use Icebound Fortitude or Lichborne when targeted.
Boss Tips
- Using Anti-Magic Shell allows you to immune stacks of Lingering Erosion from Erosive Spray.
- When soaking Web Reave use Death's Advance to prevent the pull.
Boss Tips
- Use Chains of Ice and Death Grip to help control the Blood Parasites that are close to your ranged.
- Grip of the Dead is also an incredibly powerful slow for the ones that spawn in melee if necessary.
- Interrupt the Voracious Worm that you are assigned to, ideally ones outside of melee since you have a kick with 15 yard range. Let the actual melee kicks do the ones under the boss.
- You can pre-immune the application of Sticky Web with Anti-Magic Shell preventing you from having to leave melee and get rooted. This is extremely important for your damage as they can overlap with egg breaks.
- If you end up getting rooted by Sticky Web, use Wraith Walk to clear the debuff.
Boss Tips
- Use Death's Advance to avoid the suck in from Nether Rift.
- You are extremely durable against all of the damage on this fight due to the passive defensives you have. Anti-Magic Shell can be used as an offensive cooldown to give you Runic Power during Breath of Sindragosa as you do not need it elsewhere. If you get Queensbane, use either Icebound Fortitude, Lichborne, or Anti-Magic Shell if it is up.
- If you get hit by an extra Regicide in the intermission, you can either pop a cooldown, Icebound Fortitude or Lichborne, or simply Death Strike back up if you feel unsafe.
- Unyielding Will or pre-using Anti-Magic Shell does not work on any debuffs on this fight, use it purely to absorb damage.
Boss Tips
- Right after Call of the Swarm use Death Grip on one Shattershell Scarab and stand right under it to bait the Fixate on you. You should not be able to die in this fight unless you get hit by avoidable damage so the damage taken increase does not really matter.
- During the first intermission, if you mess up dodging you can Death's Advance to immune the knockback and Anti-Magic Shell to prevent getting the debuff from getting hit.
Notes
- Unyielding Will does not remove Stinging Swarm.
- Death's Advance does not prevent the pull of Web Vortex.
- You are able to Icebound Fortitude out of Spike Storm's Impaled if you get hit.
There have been no Unholy Death Knights that have killed Mythic Queen Ansurek yet. Once that happens this guide will be updated with offensive cooldown timings for this boss.
Phase 1
Defensive Cooldowns
In this phase, you do not have access to a much needed Anti-Magic Shell as it is mandatory to avoid getting Silken Tombs. Use your Anti-Magic Zone where it is assigned.
Silken Tombs
If you end up using Anti-Magic Shell early between the second and third cast of Silken Tombs, don't worry as it still comes up for the fourth cast of Silken Tombs, just use Wraith Walk on the third set of Silken Tombs instead.
It is optimal to use Wraith Walk on the fourth Silken Tomb because you are not in Pillar of Frost there, but living is the most important thing on this fight so do what you have to do to survive.
Click on the accordions below to see more information for each phase!
Intermission
Phase 2
Phase 3
Stat Priority
Understand your secondary stat priority and the tertiary stats needed for optimal performance during Raid boss fights as an Unholy Death Knight. For more detailed information, visit the Stats and Attributes guide.
As a Rider of the Apocalypse Unholy Death Knight, your stats generally end up being this until the highest end of gearing due to Mastery overtaking Strength. Clawing Shadows and the Mastery interactions with your Horsemen's abilities makes this stat incredibly strong, while Haste remains consistently strong and necessary for a long time.
For an accurate representation of what item to equip you should use Simcraft!
A static "Stat Priority" is just a starting point and can easily shift depending on your current gear.
- All secondary stats are affected by diminishing returns. Click here to learn more!
Tertiary
- Avoidance - Great stat to reduce the damage intake of "Area of Effect" abilities.
- Leech - Provides additional healing through damage dealing. The damage of your pets does not heal you thus Leech is a great tertiary for you since most of your damage is coming from your own spells.
- Speed - Niche tertiary that can be very useful and has been proven useful in the past. Makes playing certain mechanics a lot easier.
Gear
Rider of the Apocalypse
| Slot | Item | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Head | Wrathbark Greathelm | The Great Vault |
| Neck | Sureki Zealot's Insignia | Sikran |
| Shoulder | Exhumed Centurion's Spikes | Tier/Catalyst |
| Cloak | Consecrated Cloak | Crafted |
| Chest | Exhumed Centurion's Breastplate | Tier/Catalyst |
| Wrist | Bracers of Umbral Mending | The Great Vault |
| Gloves | Exhumed Centurion's Gauntlets | Tier/Catalyst |
| Belt | Girdle of Somber Ploys | The Great Vault |
| Legs | Exhumed Centurion's Chausses | Tier/Catalyst |
| Boots | Boots of the Black Bulwark | The Bloodbound Horror |
| Ring 1 | Key to the Unseeming | The Bloodbound Horror |
| Ring 2 | Writhing Ringworm | Broodtwister Ovi'nax |
| Trinket 1 | Ovi'nax's Mercurial Egg | Ara-Kara, City of Echoes |
| Trinket 2 | Treacherous Transmitter | Nexus-Princess Ky'veza |
| Weapon | Charged Claymore | Crafted |
Below you are presented with a good list of farmable alternatives that are obtainable outside of WoW’s weekly lockout system. While replaced in time as you progress, these offer immediate character power.
| Slot | Item | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Head | Wrathbark Greathelm | Mists of Tirna Scithe |
| Neck | "Emergency Stop" Keychain | The Stonevault |
| Shoulder | Earthshape Pauldrons | Grim Batol |
| Cloak | Anvilhide Cape | The Stonevault |
| Chest | Experimental Goresilk Chestguard | Ara-Kara, City of Echoes |
| Wrist | Bracers of Umbral Mending | Grim Batol |
| Gloves | Fogweaver Gauntlets | Mists of Tirna Scithe |
| Belt | Girdle of Somber Ploys | The Dawnbreaker |
| Legs | Legplates of Duality | City of Threads |
| Boots | Ballast Sinkers | Siege of Boralus |
| Ring 1 | Circle of Bone | Grim Batol |
| Ring 2 | Umbriss Band | Grim Batol |
| Trinket 1 | Ara-Kara Sacbrood | Ara-Kara, City of Echoes |
| Trinket 2 | Mark of Khardros | Grim Batol |
| Weapon | Wild Hammer | Grim Batol |
Trinkets
Below you can find active and passive alternatives to our recommended trinkets. Do note that some trinkets are better than others depending on the raid boss.
Delve Trinkets are not listed here due to the low item level at endgame.
Active Trinket Alternatives
- Mark of Khardros
or
- Skarmorak Shard
- Both of these are basically the same trinket. Mark of Khardros has more on-use Mastery but Skarmorak Shard can be more useful over the course of a fight with adds involved. Either is a good alternative but both are approximately 2% worse than Treacherous Transmitter.
Unfortunately while playing double on-use trinkets for San'layn there are no true alternatives to Treacherous Transmitter. This means that if you do not have it or just do not want to play double on-use trinkets, you will need to play a passive trinket.
Passive Trinket Alternatives
- Ara-Kara Sacbrood
- This is the best passive trinket by a noticeable margin as it provides consistent passive Strength.
Embellishments
- Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension -- Weapon Only
- This is a strong embellishment that can only go on your weapon. This does mean taking an item level hit on your off-hand as you can only craft up to 636 item level but it is currently the best option.
and
- Writhing Armor Banding -- Armor Only
- This is a strong embellishment as it buffs your Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension effect by 100%.
Remaining Sparks
- Crafted items are 636 item level and regular items are 639 on max item level, therefore, it is not beneficial to equip crafted items outside of your 2x embellishments unless you don't have access to other high item level gear on that slot.
Simcraft
To find the best combination of gear available to you or identify the best possible upgrades, visit our Simcraft guide to learn how to utilize Simcraft easily and effectively.
Consumables
- Phials
- Flask of Alchemical Chaos -- Maximum DPS.
- Food
- Chippy Tea -- Maximum DPS
- Feast of the Divine Day -- Small loss
- Combat Potion
- Tempered Potion
- Health Potion
- Algari Healing Potion -- A big burst of healing
- Weapon Oil
- Algari Mana Oil
- Augment Rune
- Crystallized Augment Rune
- Sockets
- Culminating Blasphemite -- Unique
- Rider of the Apocalypse
- Quick Onyx
- San'layn
- Masterful Emerald
Enchantments
| Head | Nerubian Gemweaver |
| Neck | Magnificent Jeweler's Setting 2x |
| Cloak | Enchant Cloak - Chant of Winged Grace |
| Chest | Enchant Chest - Crystalline Radiance |
| Wrist | Enchant Bracer - Chant of Armored Avoidance Nerubian Gemweaver |
| Waist | Nerubian Gemweaver |
| Legs | Stormbound Armor Kit |
| Boots | Enchant Boots - Scout's March |
| Ring 1 | Enchant Ring - Cursed Haste Magnificent Jeweler's Setting 2x |
| Ring 2 | Enchant Ring - Cursed Haste Magnificent Jeweler's Setting 2x |
| Weapon | Rune of the Fallen Crusader |
You buy Nerubian Gemweaver from the Great Vault Vendor to add sockets to your Helm, Wrists & Waist.
Races
For min-maxing an Unholy Death Knight in raiding, different racial traits can provide a tremendous benefit to your character. If this is not your top goal, picking a race that fits your style works just as well.
- Berserking -- Troll
- The best racial for an Unholy Death Knight in The War Within as this lines up perfectly with your highest points of burst during Army of the Dead or every other use of Raise Abomination.
- Reduce the duration of movement-impairing effects by 20%. This was only useful once in the recent history of progression raiding but is still worth noting.
- Combat Analysis -- Mechagnome
- Currently an extremely strong racial due to the high value of Strength. This ramps up over the course of a minute and stays at the max value for the rest of the fight.
- Stoneform -- Dwarf
- Dispels Magic and Bleed debuffs. Has been useful in the past on some bosses with Bleeds.
Recommendation
If you only play Unholy, I recommend that you play Troll as it is the highest DPS racial for Unholy. However, if you also play Frost, I recommend that you play Mechagnome as it is the best racial for Frost and barely behind for Unholy.
Macros
Discover recommended macros for an Unholy Death Knight during Raid encounters and watch a quick video guide on creating simple macros for your character.
Cursor Macros
Anti-Magic Zone - Casts Anti-Magic Zone at your Cursor position.
/cast [@cursor] Anti-Magic ZoneDeath and Decay - Casts Death and Decay at your cursor position.
/cast [@cursor] Death and DecayIf you do not like Death and Decay on your cursor you can replace [@cursor] with [@player] and it will instead put it at your feet. Having either of these is important as it removes the targeting reticle and allows you to get it out faster.
/cast [@player] Death and DecayMouseover Macros
Focus Macros
Pet Macros
Addons
Below, you see a screenshot of the author's User Interface for their Unholy Death Knight, outlining which addons are used and how they are utilized in Raids to make your life easier.
Addons
WeakAuras
Changes this Patch
Patch 11.0.2
Patch 11.0
FAQ
Q: How does the ramping proc chance of Sudden Doom work?
Credits
Written By: Miniaug
Reviewed By: Revvez