Unholy Death Knight

Abilities

Runes

The Death Knight has Unholy, Frost, and Blood runes by default, with one pair of each type for a total of six runes. Our abilities cost one or more runes of certain types (other abilities cost Runic Power instead, explained below). Some of these abilities benefit from a passive mechanic previously called Reaping (that functionality now stated within each ability’s tooltips), which converts the runes spent into Death. Death runes count as any type of rune, meaning they can be used in place of Blood, Unholy or Frost runes.

Unholy DKs have two Unholy, two Frost, and two Blood runes. Runes that have just been used will take a few seconds to recharge, until they can be used again. How fast your runes recharge is influenced by your current haste. Only one rune of each type may recharge at the same time. For example, if you have just used both your Unholy runes, they will be recharging one after the other, and not simultaneously. A Death rune counts as the type of rune that it replaced. Death runes are referred to as the rune space that they occupy, such as Unholy-Death, Frost-Death, or Blood-Death, and more than one Death rune can be recharging at the same type if they are of different rune types.

In practice you will want to use your runes as much as possible. This will create some downtime afterwards, when your runes will be recharging. During that time, you will want to use abilities that require Runic Power.

Runic Power

Every rune you spend on an ability will generate Runic Power (RP). 1-rune cost abilities generate 10 RP whereas 2-rune cost abilities generate 20 RP. Army of the Dead generates 30 RP and Empower Rune Weapon generates 25 RP. We can hold up to a maximum of 100 runic power; any RP that you generate beyond that limit is wasted. Ideally you should spend your RP ahead of time to avoid overcapping, but in some situations (e.g. while under the effects of Heroism) you cannot avoid to cap your RP.

RP is used to cast Death Coil or Breath of Sindragosa which in turn generates Shadow Infusion stacks and procs Rune-regenerating talents such as Runic Corruption, Blood Tap, and Runic Empowerment. Like Runes, RP can be “pooled”, meaning you can hold onto it for later use. This is useful when maximizing the uptime of Dark Transformation, holding onto RP right as DT expires to quickly stack Shadow Infusion.

Passives

Necrosis
Increases the gain of multistrike from all sources by 5%.

Sudden Doom

While in Unholy presence, your autoattack swings have a 3PPM chance to proc this passive, making your next Death Coil cast free of cost.

Unholy Aura

Increases haste by 5% and versatility by 3% to all raid members within 100 yards.

Unholy Might

Increases strength by 5%.

Reaping

When you use Festering Strike, Blood Boil, or Icy Touch, the runes spent will recharge as Death runes. This is what makes Unholy’s single target and AoE rotations work, allowing us to use Scourge Strike and Blood Boil  inbetween each death rune cycle, initiated by casting Festering Strike x2. Reaping also allows us to convert orphan frost runes into death by using icy touch. This passive is now stated within each abilities tooltips.

Draenor Perks

Empowered Gargoyle

Enhanced Dark Transformation

Enhanced Fallen Crusader

Improved Soul Reaper

Core Abilities

Scourge Strike

A melee strike that deals both physical and shadow damage based on weapon damage and mastery. SS costs 1 Unholy rune and is primarily used on both Unholy and Death runes for single target, and only Unholy runes for AoE.

Festering Strike

A melee strike that deals physical damage based on weapon damage. FeS costs both a Blood and a Frost rune, and extends the duration of all diseases by 6 seconds. This is primarily used to convert our Blood and Frost runes into Death so that we can Scourge Strike or Blood Boil off of them. It is also used more heavily with Necrotic Plague- more on that later.

Blood Boil

A ranged ability that deals damage to all targets around you within 10 yards or 15 yards with Glyph of Blood Boil. Blood Boil costs a Blood rune and converts all runes spent on this ability into Death runes. While also dealing damage, this ability spreads the diseases on your target to all enemies within range. While using Necrotic Plague, it will extend the longest duration NP active on a nearby target.

Death Coil

A ranged spell ability that deals shadow damage based on attack power and mastery. This ability can also be used to heal an Undead ally (our ghoul), ourselves while Lichborne is active, and on all allies with Glyph of Death Coil. Successfully landing a Death Coil on an enemy or ally will build Shadow Infusion. Shadow Infusion increases pet damage dealt by 10% for 30 seconds, and will stack up to a total of 5. Once 5 stacks are reached, Dark Transformation is able to be cast.

Raise Dead

Raise Dead summons a permanent ghoul to fight by our side. The ghoul receives 0.5 attack power per 1 attack power that we have and all its attacks are based on melee damage. The ghoul has an energy bar much like Rogues do and deals damage with Claw and normal melee attacks. There are 3 other pet abilities you can utilize:
• Leap behaves similarly to Warrior’s Heroic Leap in that your pet will instantly jump to your target.
• Gnaw a short 3 second stun while also dealing an insignificant amount of damage.
• Huddle grants 50% damage reduction to your ghoul while also preventing other pet actions for 10 seconds.

Not much needs to be done to correctly utilize our pet. The ghoul should be assigned to the Assist pet stance, and Attack and Follow are abilities that should be keybound to manage what your pet is attacking and to move him when you want him to follow you to a new target. Gnaw should be turned off from automatically casting to prevent any unwanted stuns. Gnaw is a short duration stun and puts it on diminishing returns so it can create issues if you’re trying to crowd control a target. Huddle is never used in PvE because it benefits from Avoidance already. I would also turn automatic Leap off to avoid any unintentional pulling and/or jumping at mobs. I have Gnaw and Leap keybound to utilize the stun and charge when I need it.

Dark Transformation

Consumes all 5 Shadow Infusion stacks and transforms your ghoul, taking on a more hulk-y appearance, granting it a variation of new abilities and increasing damage dealt by 100%; damage is increased to 140% with  Item – Death Knight T17 Unholy 2P Bonus.

When the pet is transformed:

• Claw transforms to Sweeping Claws, dealing 25% more damage and cleaving up to 2 additional targets.
• Gnaw transforms to Monstrous Blow, dealing slightly more damage and applying a 1-second longer stun (4s total).
• Huddle transforms to Putrid Bulwark, allowing the ghoul to continue attacking with the damage reduction buff active.
• Leap transforms to Shambling Rush, charging the enemy instead, interrupting a spell and immobilizing them for 2 seconds.

Outbreak

A cost-free 1-minute cooldown ability that applies both Blood Plague and Frost Fever, or 1 stack of Necrotic Plague

Plague Strike

A melee strike that costs 1 Unholy rune and deals physical damage based on weapon damage, infecting the target with both Blood Plague and Frost Fever, or 1 stack of Necrotic Plague.

Icy Touch

A ranged spell ability that deals frost damage based on attack power, infecting them with Frost Fever or 1 stack of Necrotic Plague. This does not have much use at all for Unholy because Plague Strike already applies Frost Fever, and Outbreak can apply it too. The only use this ability has is to convert orphan Frost runes into Death. With Glyph of Icy Touch, this ability turns into a useful enemy dispel.

Death and Decay

A ranged target reticle spell ability that deals shadow damage to all enemies standing in it based on attack power and mastery. DnD lasts for 10 seconds and deals a tick of damage each second. This is used whenever 2 or more targets will stand in its ground effect for a majority of its ticks.

Soul Reaper

A melee strike ability that costs 1 Unholy rune, initially dealing physical damage based on weapon damage and inflicts the target with a debuff that expires after 5 seconds. If the target is below 45% health when that debuff expires, it will trigger an effect that deals shadowfrost damage based on attack power and mastery. If the target dies before the debuff expires, you will gain 50% haste for 5 seconds as a consolation prize.

Summon Gargoyle

A 3 minute cooldown that summons a Gargoyle that casts Gargoyle Strike for 30 seconds. This strike is a ranged spell ability that deals plague damage (shadow and nature) based on our attack power and mastery. The rate at which it casts Gargoyle Strike is increased by our haste rating. Our pets now scale dynamically with our stats so there is no need to “snap shot” before using this ability.

Empower Rune Weapon

A 5 minute cooldown the immediately recharges all of our runes and generates 25 runic power. Best used when all runes are exhausted and runic power is low.

Dark Simulacrum

This ability inflicts your target with a debuff that copies the next mana-costing ability that they cast. When an ability is copied, the button and tooltip will transform into the copied spell, allowing a one-time use of this ability. As of late, this has had no uses for PvE but has had some great uses in the past.

Unholy Presence

As Unholy, you will always want to be in Unholy presence while DPSing. The increased haste and movement speed is superior to Frost Presence’s runic power generation.

Defensive Abilities

Anti-Magic Shell

Absorbs 75% spell damage taken for 5 seconds until the buff expires or damage exceeds 40% of your health. AMS also returns 2 runic power for every percent of health absorbed, up to 80 runic power per use. Glyph of Regenerative Magic reduces the cooldown on AMS if the buff expires after it’s full duration (i.e. spell damage doesn’t exceed 40% health). Glyph of Absorb Magic increases the absorption limit up to 80% of the player’s health (from 40%). Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell increases the spell damage absorb to 100%- not particularly useful because the absorption limit is still the same.

Icebound Fortitude

A cost-free 20% damage reduction to all damage taken for 8 seconds. Best used right before taking significant amounts of unavoidable damage. Glyph of Icebound Fortitude reduces the cooldown in half but reduces the duration to 4 seconds, making it a useful option when taking frequent short bursts of damage.

Blood Presence

While Unholy Presence is superior in the case of DPS, there are situations that can benefit from switching to Blood Presence for a brief amount of time. This is for the increased stamina, armor, and damage mitigation to survive significant bursts of damage.

Death Strike

While we don’t use Death Strike in our rotation, certain situations may call for its healing capabilities in order to survive. Moreover, we gain Dark Succor whenever we kill an enemy in Unholy presence, granting us free Death Strikes and an increased heal.

Utility

Mind Freeze

This is our interrupt ability. Short and simple, use this to interrupt spellcasting.

Strangulate

Similar to Mind Freeze, we can also interrupt with this spell or silence. This ability costs 1 Blood rune however.

Raise Ally

This is our battle resurrection ability. Best used with Glyph of Raise Ally to make it cost-free.

Death Grip

Pulls your target directly in front of you. If you do not have Glyph of Tranquil Grip, it will taunt the target as well.

Unholy

Notes

• Unholy uses Unholy Presence with each and every talent variation.
• For single target damage, any talent configuration is viable, however, Defile is the better choice if you are consistently getting a majority of Defile’s 10 ticks. If you aren’t, Breath of Sindragosa is better, and if there’s any cleave or AoE, you should be playing Necroblight (UB+NP).
• With 6.2 tuning, Necroblight is quite weak in comparison to Frost AoE until it acquires Reaper’s Harvest. Additionally, for single target damage, Necroblight with Fel Cleave and Fel Burn trinkets is superior than using Reaper’s Harvest.
• For your main-hand runeforge use Rune of the Fallen Crusader.
• Unholy uses Multistrike food, enchants, and gems for single target and AoE, and with all talent variations.

Rotation

1) Cast Dark Transformation when at 5 stacks of Shadow Infusion. When Dark Transformation is about to expire (~10s), begin pooling at least 90 Runic Power so that you can quickly stack Shadow Infusion to 5 once DT expires.

2) Unholy Blight to quickly stack Necrotic Plague whenever it isn’t on your target. Outbreak is used to apply another stack of the plague once runes are recharging.

3) Breath of Sindragosa when Runic Power is at or above 75 and your first set of runes are recharged. A separate priority system is used while BoS is ticking, that list is found right below this priority list.

4) Plague Leech when 2 runes are fully exhausted and/or diseases are about to expire or Outbreak is within 1 GCD of coming off cooldown.

5) Save Runes or Blood Charge so that Soul Reaper is used off cooldown while in execute range (less than 45%). Because the bonus damage from SR is activated when the target reaches a health % threshold, you can time your spell cast so that the the bonus damage triggers just as the target reaches that threshold. In most cases, you’d use SR around 46-47%, but if the target does not have a lot of health and/or is being focused down, you can cast Soul Reaper earlier.

6) Defile is used off cooldown when the target will take a majority of its ticks.

7) Summon Gargoyle should always be used off cooldown unless needed for a DPS intensive phase. Pets scale dynamically now so there isn’t a need to snapshot stats. If you have T18 4pc, you should wait until Crazed Monstrosity is up before you pop Gargoyle.

8) Apply and maintain Blood Plague and Frost Fever by alternating between Outbreak with Plague Strike. For Necrotic Plague, using Outbreak will add another stack. Thus, Outbreak should be cast when you are below 15 stacks and have an open GCD to cast it (i.e. all runes are recharging and RP/BT isn’t capped)

9) When and if the duration of Necrotic Plague is getting low and Unholy Blight’s cooldown is not up yet, use Festering Strike on Death runes to extend the duration. NP’s duration should match or exceed the time remaining on Unholy Blight. It is typically best to hold off on spending death runes until the disease reaches approximately 10 seconds to better determine whether you need to extend it.

10) Spend pairs of Blood and Frost runes on Festering Strike, Unholy or Death runes on Scourge Strike, and Runic Power on Death Coil. FeS on B/F runes > SS on U/D runes > Death Coil. Prioritize exhausting your runes over Blood Charge over exhausting Runic Power (Rune cap > Blood Charge Cap > Runic Power Cap).

11) Blood Tap should be used in between your rune ability usage and before you overcap charges. To avoid the Rune Desync issue (explained further under Blood Tap in the talents section), prioritize activating Blood Tapped runes while Blood and Frost runes are recharging in a non-death status or generate Unholy_Death runes by using it while both Unholy runes are exhausted and a Blood and Frost rune is recharged (e.g. uu FF BB | uu Ff Bb | uu DD DD | uu Dd Dd). Never overcap your Blood Charges or cap your runes to achieve this- that results in a larger loss than a gain.

12) Use Empower Rune Weapon when you have GCDs to fill and/or resources will not overcap. ERW is great for quickly stacking Necrotic Plague after you’ve exhausted all runes.

13) Never use Army of the Dead when you are able to attack a target. Always use it 6 seconds before a boss is engaged or you have absolutely nothing to attack.

While Breath of Sindragosa is ticking:

Follow this very strict priority system to optimize the damage and duration of this talent:

1. Cast racial abilities like Blood Fury or Berserking when BoS begins ticking
2. Cast on-use trinkets when BoS begins ticking
3. Consume a Strength potion when BoS begins ticking
4. Cast Dark Transformation when Shadow Infusion reaches 5 stacks
5. If a spell damage ability can be absorbed, cast Anti-Magic Shell to generate runic power
6. Cast Plague Strike or Outbreak if diseases are not ticking on the target
7. Cast Festering Strike on Blood and Frost runes while runic power is below 80
8. Cast Arcane Torrent if you are a Blood Elf and runic power is below 70
9. Cast Scourge Strike on Death and Unholy runes if runic power is below 88
10. Cast Blood Tap if at 5 or more stacks of Blood Charge
11. Cast Plague Leech if 2 runes are fully exhausted
12. Cast Empower Rune Weapon if runic power is below 60
13. Cast Death Coil when you have a Sudden Doom proc

On 2 or more targets:

• Necrotic Plague naturally jumps to targets within range each time that it ticks for damage. If there’s a large amount of enemies, Blood Boil can be used to instantly spread the plague to every target within range. Keep in mind that Blood Boil will prioritize spreading the longest duration NP that is active on any target within range.
• As with single target, the priority with Necroticblight AoE is to also maintain a 15 stack plague until Unholy Blight’s cooldown is up. Weave in Festering Strike inbetween your Blood Boils as necessary to extend the duration enough to match or exceed Unholy Blight’s cooldown.
• Blood Boil to spread and maintain diseases ticking on all possible targets.
• Death and Decay when the targets will remain in the ground effect for a majority of its duration.

On 3 or more targets:

• Blood Boil on Death runes instead of on Scourge Strike.
• Plague Leech off cooldown when 2 runes are fully exhausted.

T18 Necroblight Opener

1. Army of the Dead 6s before pull
2. Draenic Strength Potion 1s before pull
3. Death’s Advance
4. Boss is engaged
5. Unholy Blight
6. Festering Strike
7. Scourge Strike
8. Outbreak
9. Follow Priority
10. Summon Gargoyle as soon as Dark Transformation is active

Breath of Sindragosa Opener

1. Army of the Dead 6s before pull
2. Draenic Strength Potion
3. Death’s Advance
4. Boss is engaged
5. Summon Gargoyle
6. Outbreak
7. Festering Strike
8. Scourge Strike
9. Festering Strike
10. Scourge Strike
11. Plague Leech
12. Plague Strike
13. Breath of Sindragosa
13. Scourge Strike x3
14. Empower Rune Weapon
15. Festering Strike
16. Scourge Strike
17. Dark Transformation if at 5 SI stacks
17. Festering Strike
18. Scourge Strike
19. Follow Priority

Defile Opener

1. Army of the Dead 6s before pull
2. Draenic Strength Potion
3. Death’s Advance
4. Boss is engaged
5. Summon Gargoyle
6. Outbreak
7. Festering Strike
8. Defile; if the target is moving or will be moved, use Scourge Strike
9. Death Coil if Sudden Doom procced
10. Festering Strike
11. Scourge Strike; Defile if it was not used earlier
12. Follow Priority

Priority List

This is a list of abilities that are ordered based on the priority they have in the rotation.

Dark Transformation when:
Shadow Infusion is at 5 stacks

Plague Leech when:
Two runes are fully exhausted
AND/OR
Diseases are about to expire
AND/OR
Outbreak is off cooldown or within 1 GCD of coming off cooldown

Soul Reaper when:
The target will reach execute range within 5 seconds
OR
The target is at or below 45%

Blood Tap when:
A rune is needed to Soul Reaper

Breath of Sindragosa when:
Runic Power is at 75
AND
A Blood, Frost, and Unholy rune is recharged

Summon Gargoyle when:
It is off-cooldown

Unholy Blight when:
Disease(s) are not ticking on any target

Outbreak when:
Disease(s) are not ticking on any target

Plague Strike when:
Disease(s) are not ticking on any target

Blood Boil when:
Diseases are not ticking on 2 or more targets

Defile when:
The target will remain in the ground effect for most of its duration

Death and Decay when:
Two or more targets are in range of each other
AND
The targets will remain in the ground effect for most of its duration
AND
Both Unholy runes are capped

Festering Strike when:
Both Blood and Frost runes are capped

Scourge Strike when:
Both Unholy runes are capped

Festering Strike when:
The duration of Necrotic Plague does not match or exceed the cooldown time remaining on Unholy Blight

Death and Decay when:
Two or more targets are in range of each other
AND
The targets will remain in the ground effect for most of its duration

Blood Boil when:
Three or more targets are within 15 yards of each other
AND
A Death rune is recharged

Outbreak when:
Necrotic Plague is not at 15 stacks

Blood Tap when:
Blood Charge is at 10 or more

Death Coil when:
Sudden Doom is active
AND/OR
Runic power is greater than 80
AND
Blood Charge is less than or equal to 10

Scourge Strike when:
An Unholy or Death rune is recharged

Festering Strike when:
A pair of Blood and Frost runes are recharged

Blood Tap when:
Blood Charge is at 5 or more

Death Coil when:
You have enough Runic Power

Empower Rune Weapon when:
All runes are exhausted
AND/OR
Runic Power is exhausted

Army of the Dead when:
6 seconds before the pull
OR
You are unable to attack anything

Talents Cheat Sheet

Level 56: Plague Leech if using Defile or Breath of Sindragosa. Unholy Blight if using Necrotic Plague. Plaguebearer never

Level 57: Anti-Magic Zone to mitigate a raid wide spell damage ability. Purgatory in all other cases

Level 58: Death’s Advance, the other talents are used situationally when there’s a need for slows or a stun

Level 60: Blood Tap or Runic Corruption if you have a lot of trouble using BT

Level 75: Death Pact

Level 90: Situational for the encounter

Level 100: Breath of Sindragosa for single target encounters and when you can AMS soak an ability while breath is active, Defile is an alternative to BoS on single target encounters, Necrotic Plague for AoE

Talents Advanced

Level 56: Plaguebearer, Plague Leech, Unholy Blight

Plaguebearer
PB grants Death Coils the ability to extend the duration of Blood Plague and Frost Fever by 4 seconds or add a stack of Necrotic Plague. This talent is passive and thus requires no effort to use properly. The value of this talent is low because Festering Strike naturally extends the duration of diseases by 6 seconds per cast. The only use this talent currently has is when paired with Necrotic Plague however Unholy Blight is a better talent to use for that purpose.

Plague Leech
PL consumes active diseases and generates 2 fully exhausted Death runes in return. If two runes are not fully exhausted, only 1 rune will be generated. This talent is used as diseases are falling off or Outbreak is off cooldown. This talent does not work well with Necrotic Plague because it consumes all stacks of the disease.

Unholy Blight
UB will spread Frost Fever and Blood Plague or add a stack of Necrotic Plague to all targets each second within 10 yards for 10 seconds . Necrotic Plague naturally gains 15 stacks in 30 seconds. While this talent is active, Necrotic Plague will stack to 15 within 10 seconds or 9 seconds when paired with an Outbreak application. This talent does not have much use outside of Necrotic Plague because diseases are easily spread with Blood Boil.

Level 57: Lichborne, Anti-Magic Zone, Purgatory

Lichborne
LB provides immunity to charms, fears, and sleep and increases Leech by 10% for 10 seconds. Leech is one of the new tertiary stats that returns a portion of your damage and healing done as healing to you. With 10% Leech, you will be healed by 10% of the damage you deal. This talent is useful when there are any of the mentioned loss of control abilities throughout an encounter. This talent is also useful for when you aren’t going to use AMZ and you do not foresee Purgatory proccing but is seldom used.

Anti-Magic Zone
AMZ reduces spell damage taken by 20% for each player standing in the bubble. This talent is useful when a majority of the raid is able to group up for a raid-wide spell damage ability.

Purgatory
When you receive damage that would have killed you, your health stops at 1 hp and a debuff named Shroud of Purgatory will activate. The Shroud of Purgatory debuff is a healing absorption effect that lasts for 3 seconds and will prevent you from dying. The debuff gains healing absorption equal to the amount of fatal damage prevented and will kill you if it is not removed. The debuff is often removed with Death Pact and/or a Health potion. Otherwise, burst heals will be needed such as a Paladin’s Lay on Hands.

Level 58: Death’s Advance, Chilblains, Asphyxiate

Death’s Advance
DA increases passive movement speed by 10% and will prevent any movement-impairing effects from reducing you below 70% of normal movement speed. When activated, you gain 30% movement speed and cannot be slowed below 100% of normal movement speed for 6 seconds. In Warlords of Draenor, movement speed bonuses have been changed to be additive (e.g. 110% Passive Movement speed + Death’s Advance = 140% Movement Speed for 6 seconds).

Chilblains
This talent grants Frost Fever or Necrotic Plague the ability to reduce movement speed by 50% for 10 seconds. Additionally it grants Chains of Ice the ability to immobilize for 3 seconds.

Asphyxiate
This talent replaces Strangulate and will now stun for 5 seconds. Alternatively it functions as a silence if the target is immune to stuns.

Level 60: Blood Tap, Runic Empowerment, Runic Corruption

Blood Tap
BT passively generates a stack of Blood Charges for every 15 Runic Power spent. The talent is usable when 5 or more Blood Charges are active. Blood Tap is off the global cooldown (GCD), which allows you to activate it while casting other abilities. Consuming 5 charges will activate a fully-depleted rune as a Death rune. The rune in which it activates depends on your current spec as well as which runes are currently fully exhausted. For Unholy it prefers a depleted Frost or Blood rune. For Blood it prefers depleted Blood runes. For Frost it prefers depleted Unholy runes. The randomness of rune activation can be controlled by allowing those prioritized runes to recharge. For example, you can let a Blood and Frost rune recharge, exhaust the Unholy rune, use Blood Tap, and it will activate an Unholy_Death rune.

One of the main benefits of this talent is that the rune it generates is always a Death rune. Death runes are inherently more valuable because they can always be the best rune for the given situation and because of the flexibility they provide. However, this interferes with Unholy’s passive Reaping mechanic. When a Frost rune that is currently recharging in a Death status is activated with Blood Tap, that rune will refresh in a non-death status when it gets used up. So instead of the 2 Frost_Death runes that you would have had if you waited for the rune to naturally recharge, you instead have 2 Death and 1 Frost after the rune recharges, meaning the net gain of the Blood Tap was a Frost rune.

Additionally, if you haven’t also generated a Blood rune with Blood Tap, you will have a ‘spare’ Frost rune which cannot be paired with a Blood rune, until you generate the same problem with your Blood runes. This means that BT can effectively generate 1 normal rune, and convert one other Death rune to normal, as you pair the orphan Frost with a Death that could have been otherwise used on Scourge Strike.

The only way to avoid this is to hold your Blood Charges and only use it while pairs of Blood/Frost runes are recharging in a non-death state. Alternatively, you can try generating an Unholy_Death rune as that rune can always be used on Scourge Strike, Death status or not. If managed properly, the rune desync is trivial, however, this can be quite difficult to achieve due to the added micromanagement and potential for over capping blood charges.

Overall for this tier, you can use either BT or RC but I would recommend learning to use BT. If you are likely to overcap Blood Charges, Runic Corruption is the better choice. If you are using a macro to Blood Tap, Runic Corruption is the better choice as manual control of the talent is required to optimally use it.

Runic Empowerment
RE has a 1.5% chance per Runic Power spent to activate a random fully-depleted rune. This talent requires us to exhaust all our runes to get any benefit back from it. The other two talents allows us to hang onto our current runes. This is because RE only works on fully depleted runes (i.e. both sets of a specific rune have to be recharging in order for RE to proc it). Overall this talent isn’t as efficient and simulated results show RE below BT and RC.

Runic Corruption
RC has a 1.5% chance per Runic Power spent to increase your rune regeneration rate by 100% for 3 seconds. The time that RC lasts scales with your current haste rating, decreasing the higher it is. This talent is quite easy to manage compared to BT as it is passive and requires no effort to use properly.

Level 75: Death Pact, Death Siphon, Conversion

Death Pact
Death Pact heals for 50% of your max health and applies a debuff absorbing incoming healing equal to 25% of your max health for 15 seconds with a 2 minute cooldown. This is the correct talent choice for PvE as it does not consume any resources that would be better spent towards DPS. Use this talent if Purgatory procs or when you take a significant amount of damage.

Death Siphon
DSi deals shadowfrost damage and heals for a portion of the damage dealt. An average hit deals an insignificant amount of damage compared to our primary abilities.

Conversion
Conversion restores 2% of maximum health per second and costs 20 runic power per second until cancelled. The trade-off is too large for this talent to be as useful compared to Death Pact.

Level 90: Gorefiend’s Grasp, Remorseless Winter, Desecrated Ground

Gorefiend’s Grasp
Gorefiend’s Grasp is an AoE death grip that groups all enemies (4 player cap for PvP) within 20 yards on top of whomever you are targeting, hostile, friendly, or on self. This talent is useful when a group of targets are scattered and need to be cleaved or positioned elsewhere.

Remorseless Winter
Remorseless Winter grants a buff for 8 seconds that slows enemies within 8 yards every second. Each pulse reduces movement speed by 15% for 3 seconds and stacks up to 5 times, resulting in a 75% movement speed decrease. Any target that receives a fifth stack application will be stunned for 6 seconds. This talent is optimally used in a group stun rotation, lining up with the expiration of stuns provided from other classes.

Desecrated Ground
Desecrated Ground generates a stationary 8-yard radius ground effect for 10 seconds that provides immunity to roots, snares, and loss of control effects while standing in it. Using this ability instantly removes these effects much like a PvP trinket would.

Level 100: Necrotic Plague, Defile, Breath of Sindragosa

Necrotic Plague
NP is a 30-second disease that replaces your normal diseases. The disease stacks to a maximum of 15, naturally receiving a stack every 2 seconds, increasing in damage for each one. The disease automatically jumps to any target within 8 yards of the infected target each time it deals damage and cannot exceed traveling past 30 yards from the original target. Using Blood Boil will spread the highest duration disease to all targets instantly. Festering Strike extends the duration of this disease by 6 seconds, and abilities like Outbreak, Unholy Blight, and the Plaguebearer talent build stacks faster than it’s natural stack rate. UB will stack your Necrotic Plague to 15 within 10 seconds, Outbreak will apply 1 stack, and using Death Coil with the Plaguebearer talent will add a stack. Refer to the Playstyle section to learn how to properly use this talent.

Defile
DeF replaces your Death and Decay, lasts for 10 seconds, ticks for Shadowfrost damage each second, and grows in radius and damage by 2.5% each second. Refer to the Playstyle section to learn how to properly use this talent.

Breath of Sindragosa
BoS deals Shadowfrost damage every 1 second to enemies in a 12-yard frontal cone and inflicts them with Mark of Sindragosa for 6 seconds. This ability deals 50% reduced damage to all secondary targets. BoS drains 15 Runic Power per second until RP is exhausted or the ability is cancelled.

Glyphs

Major

Glyph of Regenerative Magic
Allows more frequent uses for Anti-Magic Shell if it does not fully absorb all magic damage. There are no downsides to this glyph and is strongly recommended.

Glyph of Blood Boil
Extends the damaging and disease spread range of Blood Boil, pretty much mandatory for any encounter with movement or AoE.

Glyph of Raise Ally
Makes our battle rez free of cost, avoiding having to pool Runic Power in the event that a brez is needed.

Minor

Glyph of Tranquil Grip
Removes the taunt component of Death Grip. A must for all DPS as we rarely if ever want to taunt adds or a boss.

Glyph of Army of the Dead
Removes the taunt component of the ghouls summoned by this ability. A must for all DPS as it can cause some annoying situations with your tanks.

Glyph of Path of Frost
Situationally used to mitigate unavoidable fall damage.

Glyph of Death’s Embrace
Could potentially be useful when you’re unable to attack a mob for a period of time but have runic power stored up. You can utilize this glyph by using death coil on your ghoul to stack Shadow Infusion in preparation for when you can attack a mob.

Situational

Glyph of Absorb Magic
Increases the absorption limit of AMS up to 80% of the player’s health (from 40%). Useful for when there’s a significant burst of spell damage.

Glyph of Dark Simulacrum
Reduces the cooldown and allows for a more generous time during which it can copy an enemy’s abilities. Useful when Dark Simulacrum can be used to copy a high damage spell often.

Glyph of Icebound Fortitude
When short bursts of damage or stuns are taken often.

Glyph of Icy Touch
When enemy dispels are needed and other classes are unable to.

Glyph of Shifting Presences
When there’s a need to shift to Blood Presence for damage mitigation often.

Glyph of Death and Decay
Adds a snare component to DnD. Useful when slows are needed and you cannot spec into Chilblains.

Glyph of Runic Power
Primarily a PvP glyph but could be useful for DPS if struck by slows often.

Unused

Glyph of Outbreak
The DPS trade-off for this glyph is a loss.

Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell
Increases the duration of AMS by 3 seconds; not particularly useful in PvE.

Glyph of Empowerment
Mostly useless because we have Death Pact to fulfill the purpose of a burst heal.

Glyph of Chains of Ice
We’re never compelled to consistently cast Chains of Ice to ever make this glyph worthwhile. There’s much better options to slow/root consistently than wasting runes/damage on CoI.

Glyph of the Ice Reaper
As said above, we’re never compelled to consistently cast CoI to ever make this glyph worthwhile. It is not a gain to use Chains of Ice with Breath of Sindragosa.

Glyph of Icy Runes
Read above.

Glyph of Mind Freeze
There’s never been a need for this glyph. You’ll always want to coordinate interrupt rotations in your raid. Having a 1 second shorter Mind Freeze cooldown isn’t going to make or break that.

Glyph of Unholy Command
Never been used in PvE, more of a leveling or battleground glyph than anything.

Glyph of Death Coil
More of a PvP glyph. We’re never going to be using Death Coil defensively like this in PvE as we have healers.

Glyph of Death Grip
More of a leveling/battleground glyph. It’s much better to just move in range rather than using up a glyph slot for this.

Glyph of Corpse Explosion
Does nothing, purely an aesthetic ability as a nod to the WotLK death knight.

Glyph of Resillient Grip
Not useful as we’d only ever want to cast Death Grip on mobs that aren’t immune to it.

Stats

Single Target: PL+DeF w/ Fel Cleave+Burn
Multistrike > Critical Strike > Versatility > Mastery > Haste

AoE: UB+NP w/ Reaper’s Harvest
Multistrike > Mastery > Versatility > Critical Strike > Haste

For more detailed weights and evaluation, check out my spreadsheet here.

Strength
Increases attack power by 1 per point of strength. Attack Power increases your base DPS value by 1 for every 3.5 attack power. A majority of our abilities scale with attack power, dealing damage based on an attack power coefficient. AP coefficients are a ratio representing the rate at which attack power is converted to bonus damage. For example, an ability with an attack power coefficient of 20% would receive 1 bonus damage per 5 points of attack power.

Death Knight Attack Power coefficients

Ability	Coefficient
Breath of Sindragosa	100%
Defile	33.3%
Necrotic Plague	3.2%
Necrosis	18.4%
Soul Reaper	333.7%
Blood Boil	48%
Blood Plague	23.64%
Death Coil	80% dmg / 400% heal
Frost Fever	23.64%
Icy Touch	31.9%
Death and Decay	12%

Mastery: Dreadblade
Dreadblade increases the damage that all shadow damage-dealing abilities do. Abilities effected are Scourge Strike, Blood Boil, Death Coil, Blood Plague, Necrotic Plague, Defile, Breath of Sindragosa, Death and Decay, Soul Reaper, and our Gargoyle’s main ability: Gargoyle Strike. Unholy’s passive Necrosis grants our SS, FeS, Plague Strike, Soul Reaper, and Blood Boil multistrikes to also deal additional shadow damage.

44 Mastery Rating = 1% Mastery

Critical Strike
Increases the chance to critically hit with abilities and autoattacks. Everyone has a base 5% critical strike chance, and there are no longer different chances to critically strike with melee and ranged abilities. When an ability critically strikes, they will deal double damage as a baseline.

110 Critical Strike Rating = 1% Critical Strike Chance

Haste
Increases attack speed and rune regeneration rate. It also increases the rate at which Gargoyle casts Gargoyle Strike.

90 Haste Rating = 1% Haste

Versatility
Increases all damage and healing done, and decreases all damage taken.

130 Versatility Rating = 1% Damage/Healing Done
260 Versatility Rating = 1% Damage Reduction

Multistrike
Increases the chance that abilities have to hit a second and a third time, each dealing 30% of the initial damage. Unholy’s passive Necrosis increases the gain of multistrike from all sources by 5%.

66 Multistrike Rating = 1% Multistrike Chance

Breath of Sindragosa – Single Target Gear

Slot	Item	Source
Helmet	Helm of Precognition	Socrethar
Neck	Corrupted Talonguard Pendant	Shadow-Lord Iskar
Shoulder	Demongaze Pauldrons	Xhul’horac
Cloak	Cloak of Incendiary Wrath	Archimonde
Chest	Demongaze Chestplate	Mannoroth
Bracer	Hot-Rolled Iron Bracers	Iron Reaver
Gloves	Demongaze Gauntlets	Socrethar
Waist	Ravenous Girdle	Gorefiend
Legs	Demongaze Legplates	Gorefiend
Boots	Treads of the Defiler	Archimonde
Ring	Thorasus, the Stone Heart of Draenor	Legendary Questline
Ring	Congealed Globule Loop	Kilrogg Deadeye
Weapon	Hellrender	Zakuun
Trinket	Discordant Chorus	Zakuun
Trinket	Empty Drinking Horn	Mannoroth

Necrotic Plague AoE Gear

Use the single target gearlist while making the following item changes:

Slot	Item	Source
Helmet	Demongaze Helm	Kormrok
Bracer	Wristplate of the Wretched	Shadow-Lord Iskar
Gloves	Gauntlets of Derision	Tyrant Velhari
Trinket	Reaper’s Harvest	Archimonde
Trinket	Discordant Chorus	Zakuun

Item value comparison spreadsheet

Hellfire Citadel Boss Guide

Some details from this section will be left out until Mythic progression is over.

Hellfire Assault

Talents
Unholy Blight and Necrotic Plague

Glyphs
Glyph of Dark Simulacrum, Glyph of Raise Ally, Glyph of Blood Boil

Strategy
AoE all the things. You can Dark Simulacrum the Fel casters to get either their Incinerate or Felfire Volley cast although it’s quite difficult to capture these spells as they are a high priority damage target. If using Necrotic Plague, you need to be careful on your Unholy Blight usage and timing. I typically UB on the pull, and spam runes on Festering Strike until the first adds spawn. From there, I spam Blood Boil and attempt to carry the plague throughout the center of the room. From there on, it’s important to evaluate what will get you the most 15-stack uptime on NP and if it is possible to carry a plague throughout the room between tank and add spawns (in some instances there is). If using Defile, your placement and timing is all that is necessary; only use it when you feel that a majority of its ticks will damage something.

Iron Reaver

Talents
Plague Leech and Defile if you have Empty Drinking Horn
or
Unholy Blight and Necrotic Plague if you have Reaper’s Harvest
or
Plague Leech and Breath of Sindragosa otherwise

Glyphs
Glyph of Runic Power, Glyph of Raise Ally, Glyph of Regenerative Magic

Strategy
You can AMS+IBF soak his frontal cone attack Barrage for extra damage (I wouldn’t recommend doing this on Mythic) or you can wait and save AMS for his raid-wide AoE mechanic, Pounding. Additionally, you can intentionally stand in the Fel Fire to gather 3-4 stacks of Immolation and AMS soak those for extra damage. Throughout the fight, I also intentionally AMS + IBF soak the Blitz damage to mitigate the immense amount of movement when the Iron Reaver does this. Save AMS for Artillery if you are targeted throughout Reaver’s flying phase. Glyph of Runic Power triggers off of the fuel streaks he lays down in his air phase.

Kormrok

Talents
Unholy Blight and Necrotic Plague

Strategy
Necrotic Plague should be extended enough at 15 stacks to withstand the duration of the Grasping Hands. You should drop an early Unholy-rune Death and Decay in preparation for this and then spam Blood Boil endlessly until all the hands die. You should save AMS for the obnoxious Fel Outpouring (aka shadow globules) as they move in an erratic pattern, deals heavy damage, and are quite difficult to navigate through. Otherwise, save AMS to intentionally soak an Explosive Burst from the tank for more damage.

Hellfire High Council

Talents
Plague Leech and Defile if you have Empty Drinking Horn
or
Unholy Blight and Necrotic Plague if you have Reaper’s Harvest
or
Plague Leech and Breath of Sindragosa otherwise

Strategy
Necrotic Plague should be extended enough to last throughout Jubei’thos’s Mirror Images. When Jubei splits, you should run around the room spreading your Plague to each possible target. With the Blood Boil glyph and the size of the image hitboxes, you can pretty much spread it throughout the entire room despite the fact that they are pretty spread out. This will deal an enormous amount of AoE damage and take care of this phase quite quickly (one of the many strengths of Necrotic Plague!). Save AMS for Reap and try to stack your Reap pools on top of each other while absorbing that damage.

Kilrogg Deadeye

Talents
Plague Leech and Defile if you have Empty Drinking Horn
or
Plague Leech and Breath of Sindragosa otherwise

Strategy
Make use of your Death Grips/Gorefiends to quickly handle the spawning adds and blood globules (i.e. get them away from the boss or blood pool). Save AMS for his Death Throes. If you are assigned to be sent down, you can use an un-glyphed Army of the Dead while downstairs to save your healer some trouble.

Gorefiend

Talents
Unholy Blight and Necrotic Plague
with
Chilblains

Strategy
Necrotic Plague is king here. Maintain 15 stacks as much as you can and try to spread it out around the room. Use Death Grips/Gorefiend’s Grasp wisely while in his stomach to prevent the mobs from leaving. Chilblains is very useful here to slow the skeletons in the stomach phase, as well as outside when they’re fixated on a raid member.

Shadow-Lord Iskar

Talents
Plague Leech and Defile if you have Empty Drinking Horn
or
Unholy Blight and Necrotic Plague if you have Reaper’s Harvest
or
Plague Leech and Breath of Sindragosa otherwise

Strategy
Necrotic Plague is quite tricky here as there’s a split second between Shadow-Lord phasing out and the adds spawning. It’s important that you Blood Boil at the right exact moment or you can lose your 15-stack NP. Save AMS for his Focused Blast. Use the following macro to quickly pass around the Eye of Anzu:

/target [@mouseover, exists]
/click ExtraActionButton1
/targetlasttarget

Socrethar the Eternal

Talents
Plague Leech and Defile if you have Empty Drinking Horn
or
Plague Leech and Breath of Sindragosa otherwise

Glyphs
Glyph of Runic Power, Glyph of Raise Ally, Glyph of Regenerative Magic

Strategy
DeF/BoS should be used here as it’s primarily a single target encounter, however, if you want to pad on ghosts or what have you, you can play Necroblight. Additionally, you can take up Chilblains to slow them but it’s not really necessary as ranged and the construct are easily able to take care of that. Utilize Death Grip on the Shadowcallers and Gorefiends on the ghosts to group them up in an AoE slow.

Fel Lord Zakuun

Talents
Plague Leech and Defile if you have Empty Drinking Horn
or
Plague Leech and Breath of Sindragosa otherwise

Strategy
AMS soak Wakes of Destruction to prevent them from hitting Fel Crystals.

Xhul’horac

Talents
Unholy Blight and Necrotic Plague

Strategy
Necrotic Plague is amazing on this encounter. Use Gorefiend’s and Death Grips to group up the imp and other adds for quick AoE. You can AMS soak the orbs that the imps throw at your raid. Otherwise, save AMS for explosions, Fel Surge, or Overwhelming Chaos in the last phase.

Tyrant Velhari

Talents
Plague Leech and Defile if you have Empty Drinking Horn
or
Plague Leech and Breath of Sindragosa otherwise

Strategy
BoS is quite powerful here as there’s always something to AMS soak throughout the encounter. Defile pulls slightly ahead with Empty Drinking Horn otherwise. I strongly recommend using BoS/DeF over Necroblight even if you have the class trinket as single target damage is more important than the 2 target cleave, especially throughout her 2nd phase. On the pull, you can use AMS and run around like crazy to soak up damage from the movement debuff and keep BoS fueling longer.

Mannoroth

Talents
Unholy Blight and Necrotic Plague

Strategy
Use Death Grip and Gorefiend’s Grasp to group up the Dread Infernals at the center of the boss (away from the raid). AMS soak Fel Hellstorms and Mannoroth’s Gaze. Get used to the Fel imp spawn timers throughout phase 2 so you can prepare your runes for blood boil spam.

Archimonde

Talents
Unholy Blight and Necrotic Plague

Strategy
Press buttons.

AddOns

CompactRunes

The one and only AddOn I feel that every Death Knight should use. I can’t imagine using anything else to easily visualize rune sets. In addition, it has proc reminders to warn you of abilities coming off cooldown such as Pillar or Gargoyle and a whole other slew of options to easily customize watching your resources.

 

Skullflower’s UI

If you’re looking for a complete UI replacement with AddOn profiles and easy customizations, check my UI out. I use it for all my characters, including my Death Knight. It also has a profile for CompactRunes!

Stat Weight Score

This addon will show you dps values on item tooltips ingame based on the stat weight values that you’ve set.

WeakAuras

With this AddOn, you can do anything. Literally anything, provided you have some lua knowledge. If you don’t, well that’s not a problem! The options are pretty simple to follow and you can make notifiers for any buff/debuff imaginable. You can also customize it to warn you in different ways, such as through sounds, animations, text, etc. All of my weakauras can be found here.

Macros

Breath of Sindragosa
This prevents accidentally canceling the ability by pressing it more than once.
#showtooltip
/cast !Breath of Sindragosa

PL/UB Talent Switching
This allows you to use the same button for Plague Leech and Unholy Blight without having to move the ability from the talents pane to your action bar.
#showtooltip
/cast [talent:1/2]Plague Leech;[talent:1/3]Unholy Blight

Presence Shifting
This allows you to easily switch between Blood and Unholy presence within one button.
#showtooltip
/cast Blood Presence
/cast Unholy Presence

Raise Ally Mouseover
Useful to quickly Battle Rez a raid member without having to target them first.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,help] Raise Ally; Raise Ally

Focus Target AoE Grip
Useful to quickly AoE grip to a target without having to target them.

#showtooltip Gorefiend's Grasp
/cast [@focus,exists][] Gorefiend's Grasp

Player AoE Grip
Useful to quickly grip to your position without having to target yourself.

#showtooltip
/cast [@player] Gorefiend's Grasp

Gargoyle with Trinket use
Useful to pair on-use trinkets like Scabbard with Gargoyle together.

#showtooltip
/cast Summon Gargoyle
/use 13

Horn of Winter CancelAuras
Useful to cancel any immunities that prevent attacking without having to right click it in your auras frame.

#showtooltip Horn of Winter
/cancelaura Divine Shield
/cancelaura Ice Block
/cancelaura Hand of Protection
/cancelaura Lichborne
/cast Horn of Winter

Focus Mind Freeze
Useful to Interrupt a target without having to target them.

#showtooltip
/cast [@focus,harm,nodead][] Mind Freeze

Mouse Over Death Grip
Useful to quickly grip targets without having to target them first.

#showtooltip death grip
/cast [target=mouseover, exists] Death Grip; Death Grip