Unholy Death Knight Raid Guide (2024)

Welcome to the Unholy Death Knight Raid guide for the World of Warcraft patch 11.0! 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

Patch 11.0.2 - The War Within

Unholy Death Knight

Unholy Death Knight Raid Guide (1)Unholy Death Knight Raid Guide (2)

Unholy Death KnightRaid

Single Target

Average

AoE

Strong

Utility

Weak

Survivability

Excellent

Mobility

Weak

Hero Talents

Patch 11.0.2 - The War Within

Unholy Death Knight

  • 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.

Rider of the Apocalypse

San'layn

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.
    • 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 3% Strength, increasing by 1% for every Rune spent while Nazgrim is active.
  • 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.
  • 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.
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

Patch 11.0.2 - The War Within

Unholy Death Knight

Single-Target
Rider of the Apocalypse

Single-Target with Adds
Rider of the Apocalypse

Single-Target
San'layn

Single-Target with Adds
San'layn

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 theNerub-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 andDeep Divesections 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.
  • 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

Talent Adjustments

Listing all the changes within the Class and Spec tree compared to the default build.

  • Added
    • San'layn Hero Talents
    • Plaguebringer
    • Ebon Fever
  • Removed
    • Rider of the Apocalypse Hero Talents
    • Clawing Shadows
    • Improved Death Coil

Talent Adjustments

Listing all the changes within the Class and Spec tree compared to the default build.

  • Added
    • San'layn Hero Talents
    • Plaguebringer
    • Ebon Fever
  • Removed
    • Rider of the Apocalypse Hero Talents
    • Clawing Shadows
    • Improved Death Coil

Rotation

Patch 11.0.2 - The War Within

Unholy Death Knight

Tier Set

  • 2-Set:Your minions deal 8% increased damage.
  • 4-Set: When you summon a minion, yourHaste is increased by 2%, up to 8% for 8 sec.

Single-Target

Rider of the Apocalypse

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

Rider of the Apocalypse

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

Patch 11.0.2 - The War Within

Unholy Death Knight

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.

  • Pandemic
  • Spell Queue Window
  • Stat Diminishing Returns

Nerub-ar Palace

Patch 11.0.2 - The War Within

Destruction Warlock

The following tips are mainly applicable to Heroic Bosses. Mythic tips are released after our progression concludes.

← Scroll for more Bosses

Ulgrax

Bloodbound Horror

Sikran

Rasha'nan

Broodtwister Ovi'nax

Nexus-Princess

Silken Court

Boss Tips

  • During Carnivorous Contest, use Death's Advance while soaking to not get sucked 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.
  • 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.
  • Use Outbreak on the boss as your first global in the inside phase to potentially hit all of the adds with your diseases. Sometimes they spawn further out than the spread range from the boss but there is a good chance it hits at least 3 out of 4.

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 Abomination Limb, 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.
  • Using cooldowns on pull and basically on cooldown for the remainder of this fight is extremely important as the first wave of adds spawns roughly 45 seconds but take a few seconds to stack up. You want to have Dark Transformation up for each wave.
  • Make sure you set your pet to attack a Blood Parasite so it can spread Festering Wounds with Sweeping Claws.
  • Interrupt the Voracious Worms just outside of melee since you have a kick with 15 yard range. Let the actual melee kicks do the ones under the boss.
  • Playing Unyielding Will allows you to use Anti-Magic Shell to remove the healing absorb from Experimental Dosage, Unstable Infusion, and Caustic Reaction if an egg explodes. You can also pre-immune all of these instead.

Boss Tips

  • Use Death's Advance to avoid the suck in from Nether Rift.
  • 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 and Anti-Magic Shell to prevent getting knocked back and the debuff from getting hit respectively.
  • Unyielding Will does not remove Stinging Swarm.
  • Death's Advance does not prevent the pull of Web Vortex.
  • On beta you were able to Icebound Fortitude out of Spike Storm's Impaled if you got hit. It is unclear if this was intended but it's worth a shot if you get hit.

Stat Priority

Patch 11.0.2 - The War Within

Unholy Death Knight

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.

Rider of the Apocalypse

San'layn

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.

In The War Within, a San'layn Unholy Death Knight scales extremely well with both Haste and Mastery. After you hit about 30% Haste, Mastery begins out-scaling Haste and becomes basically equal to Strength on Single-Target.
On AoE this changes to Mastery being better than both by a considerable margin but there are no real AoE fights in this raid. You should mainly focus on the 3 of these stats rather than deviating from this.

Higher Item level items are better in normal scenarios. 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 individual 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

Patch 11.0.2 - The War Within

Unholy Death Knight

Best in Slot
Rider of the Apocalypse

Best in Slot
San'layn

Farmable Alternatives

SlotItemLocation
HeadWrathbark GreathelmThe Great Vault
Neck"Emergency Stop" KeychainThe Great Vault
ShoulderExhumed Centurion's SpikesTier/Catalyst
CloakConsecrated CloakCrafted
ChestExhumed Centurion's BreastplateTier/Catalyst
WristEverforged VambracesCrafted
GlovesExhumed Centurion's GauntletsTier/Catalyst
BeltGirdle of Somber PloysThe Great Vault
LegsExhumed Centurion's ChaussesTier/Catalyst
BootsBoots of the Black BulwarkThe Bloodbound Horror
Ring 1Key to the UnseemingThe Bloodbound Horror
Ring 2Writhing RingwormBroodtwister Ovi'nax
Trinket 1Ara-Kara SacbroodAra-Kara, City of Echoes
Trinket 2Treacherous TransmitterNexus-Princess Ky'veza
WeaponWild HammerThe Great Vault
SlotItemLocation
HeadWrathbark GreathelmThe Great Vault
NeckSureki Zealot's InsigniaSikran
ShoulderExhumed Centurion's SpikesTier/Catalysr
CloakConsecrated CloakCrafted
ChestExhumed Centurion's BreastplateTier/Catalyst
WristEverforged VambracesCrafted
GlovesExhumed Centurion's GauntletsTier/Catalyst
BeltGirdle of Somber PloysThe Great Vault
LegsExhumed Centurion's ChaussesTier/Catalyst
BootsBoots of the Black BulwarkThe Bloodbound Horror
Ring 1Key to the UnseemingBroodtwister Ovi'nax
Ring 2Writhing RingwormThe Bloodbound Horror
Trinket 1Mark of KhardrosThe Great Vault
Trinket 2Treacherous TransmitterNexus-Princess Ky'veza
WeaponWild HammerThe Great Vault

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.

SlotItemLocation
HeadWrathbark GreathelmMists of Tirna Scithe
Neck"Emergency Stop" KeychainThe Stonevault
ShoulderEarthshape PauldronsGrim Batol
CloakAnvilhide CapeThe Stonevault
ChestExperimental Goresilk ChestguardAra-Kara, City of Echoes
WristBracers of Umbral MendingGrim Batol
GlovesFogweaver GauntletsMists of Tirna Scithe
BeltGirdle of Somber PloysThe Dawnbreaker
LegsLegplates of DualityCity of Threads
BootsBallast SinkersSiege of Boralus
Ring 1Circle of BoneGrim Batol
Ring 2Umbriss BandGrim Batol
Trinket 1Ara-Kara SacbroodAra-Kara, City of Echoes
Trinket 2Mark of KhardrosGrim Batol
WeaponWild HammerGrim 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 (When replacing a second on-use trinket)
    • This is the best passive trinket by a noticeable margin as it provides consistent passive Strength.
  • Ovi'nax's Mercurial Egg
    • While this is not specifically a passive trinket, it does not share a cooldown with other active trinkets and acts as a passive stat trinket based on whether you are standing still or moving.
  • Void Pactstone
    • Not a bad option for a passive trinket, unfortunately it is just not as good.

Embellishments

It's recommended to hold your Spark of Omens craft and wait for further tuning.

  • Dawnthread Lining
    • With how sturdy you are as an Unholy Death Knight, this is your best option as you can keep a very high uptime on this buff with the amount of damage prevention tools you have.

Remaining Sparks

  • Darkmoon Sigil: Vivacity - Weapon Only
    • This is only usable on your weapon so this means taking an item level hit in exchange for this embellishment. It is good but if you already have a 639 from your Vault or Mythic Raid, it is likely not worth crafting this until you are able to replace the other crafted item with a higher item level piece as well.
  • Crafted items are 636 item level and regular items are 639 on max item level, therefore, it's 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

Patch 11.0.2 - The War Within

Unholy Death Knight

  • 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

HeadNerubian Gemweaver
NeckMagnificent Jeweler's Setting 2x
CloakEnchant Cloak - Chant of Winged Grace
ChestEnchant Chest - Crystalline Radiance
WristEnchant Bracer - Chant of Armored Avoidance
Nerubian Gemweaver
WaistNerubian Gemweaver
LegsStormbound Armor Kit
BootsEnchant Boots - Scout's March
Ring 1Enchant Ring - Cursed Haste
Magnificent Jeweler's Setting 2x
Ring 2Enchant Ring - Cursed Haste
Magnificent Jeweler's Setting 2x
WeaponRune of the Fallen Crusader

You buy Nerubian Gemweaver from the Great Vault Vendor to add sockets to your Helm, Wrists & Waist.

Races

Patch 11.0.2 - The War Within

Unholy Death Knight

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

Patch 11.0.2 - The War Within

Unholy Death Knight

Discover recommended macros for an Unholy Death Knight during Raid encounters and watch a quick video guide on creating simple macros for your character.

Macro Import Guide Video

Cursor Macros

Anti-Magic Zone -CastsAnti-Magic Zone at your Cursor position.

/cast [@cursor] Anti-Magic Zone

Death and Decay - Casts Death and Decay at your cursor position.

/cast [@cursor] Death and Decay

If 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 Decay

Mouseover Macros

Focus Macros

Pet Macros

Addons

Patch 11.0.2 - The War Within

Unholy Death Knight

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.

Unholy Death Knight Raid Guide (3)

Addons

WeakAuras

Changes this Patch

Patch 11.0.2 - The War Within

Unholy Death Knight

Patch 11.0.2

Patch 11.0

FAQ

Patch 11.0.2 - The War Within

Unholy Death Knight

Q: How does the ramping proc chance of Sudden Doom work?

Credits

Written By: Miniaug

Reviewed By: Revvez

Unholy Death Knight Raid Guide (2024)

References

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