Unholy Death Knight DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents (Legion 7.2.5)

Table of Contents

• +Introduction
  • 1. Class Overview
  • 2. Patch 7.2.5 Changes
  • 3. Patch 7.2 Changes
  • 4. Strengths
  • 5. Weaknesses
  • 6. Contents
  • 7. ChangeLog
• +Easy Mode
  • 1. The Basics
  • 2. Talent Choice
  • 3. Stat Choice
  • 4. Basic Rotation
  • 5. Cooldowns
  • 6. ChangeLog
• +Spell Summary
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Main Resources
  • 3. Basic Abilities
  • 4. Important Procs
  • 5. Cooldowns
  • 6. ChangeLog
• ×Builds and Talents
  • 1. Talent Choices
  • 2. Tier 1 (Level 56) Talents
  • 3. Tier 2 (Level 57) Talents
  • 4. Tier 3 (Level 58) Talents
  • 5. Tier 4 (Level 60) Talents
  • 6. Tier 5 (Level 75) Talents
  • 7. Tier 6 (Level 90) Talents
  • 8. Tier 7 (Level 100) Talents
  • 9. ChangeLog
• +Artifact Traits and Relics
  • 1. Artifact Progression
  • 2. Relic Choice
  • 3. ChangeLog
• +Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities
  • 1. Single Target Rotation
  • 2. Multiple Target Rotation
  • 3. Cooldown Usage
    • 3.1. Apocalypse
    • 3.2. Summon Gargoyle
    • 3.3. Army of the Dead
  • 4. Optional Read: Mastering Your Unholy Death Knight
    • 4.1. Runes and Runic Power
      • 4.1.1. Runes
      • 4.1.2. Runic Power
    • 4.2. Virulent Plague
    • 4.3. Festering Wounds
    • 4.4. Anti-Magic Shell Usage
    • 4.5. Abilities and Cooldowns from Talents
      • 4.5.1. Tier 2 Talents
      • 4.5.2. Tier 6 Talents
      • 4.5.3. Tier 7 Talents
  • 5. ChangeLog
• +Stat Priority
  • 1. Basics
  • 2. Getting a Better Understanding
    • 2.1. Statistics Priority
  • 3. ChangeLog
• +Gems, Enchants, and Consumables
  • 1. Gems
  • 2. Enchants
  • 3. Consumables
  • 4. ChangeLog
• +Macros and Addons
  • 1. Macros
    • 1.1. Generic Macros for Death Knights
      • 1.1.1. Raise Ally
      • 1.1.2. Mind Freeze
    • 1.2. Specific Macros for Unholy Death Knights
      • 1.2.1. Outbreak Mouseover Macro
      • 1.2.2. Death Grip Mouseover Macro
      • 1.2.3. Pet Hook Grip Mouseover Macro
      • 1.2.4. Corpse Shield
      • 1.2.5. Dismissing Pet
    • 1.3. Generic Addons for Death Knights
      • 1.3.1. ElvUI
      • 1.3.2. Boss Mods: Deadly Boss Mods or Bigwigs
      • 1.3.3. GTFO
      • 1.3.4. Parrot or Mik's Scrolling Battle Text
      • 1.3.5. Weak Auras
      • 1.3.6. Recount / Skada / Details!
      • 1.3.7. Omen Threat Meter
      • 1.3.8. Grid and GridClickSets (Optional)
    • 1.4. Specific Addons for Unholy Death Knights
  • 2. ChangeLog
• +Gear, Legendaries, and Best in Slot
  • 1. Tier 20 Set Bonuses
  • 2. Legendary Items
  • 3. Loot Competition
  • 4. ChangeLog

General Information

On this page, we present the viable talent choices for Unholy Death Knights in World of Warcraft Legion 7.2.5. We detail what each of the talents do and in which situations they should be taken.

The other pages of our Unholy Death Knight guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

About Our Reviewer

This guide has been reviewed and approved by Tain, a long-time Unholy Death Knight player who raids in Dead Weight, a top 50 guild in the US.

1. Talent Choices

Level	Choices
56	✘ All Will Serve	✔ Bursting Sores	✔ Ebon Fever
57	✘ Epidemic	✔ Pestilent Pustules	✔ Blighted Rune Weapon
58	✘ Unholy Frenzy	✘ Castigator	✔ Clawing Shadows
60	✔ Sludge Belcher	? Asphyxiate	✘ Debilitating Infestation
75	? Spell Eater	? Corpse Shield	? Lingering Apparition
90	? Shadow Infusion	✔ Necrosis	✔ Infected Claws
100	? Dark Arbiter	? Defile	✔ Soul Reaper

Talents can be freely changed when out of combat and in a rested XP area (such as an inn or a capital city). Moreover, Tome of the Tranquil Mind and Codex of the Tranquil Mind can be used to temporarily allow players to change talents anywhere, as long as they are out of combat.

2. Tier 1 (Level 56) Talents

✘ All Will Serve

✔ Bursting Sores

✔ Ebon Fever

• All Will Serve causes Raise Dead to summon a skeletal minion in addition to the ghoul, and it also removes Raise Dead's cooldown. The skeletal minion lasts indefinitely and it uses a ranged attack against your target.
• Bursting Sores increases the damage of bursting Festering Wound by 50%, and also causes all enemies within 8 yards of a burst Festering Wound to take Shadow damage.
• Ebon Fever passively reduces the duration of Virulent Plague by 50% while causing it to deal 20% more damage.

Ebon Fever is the best choice in all situations, with one exception (listed below).

Bursting Sores is the best choice in burst AoE situations (10 seconds or less), but only if you have the The Instructor's Fourth Lesson legendary bracers.

All Will Serve is currently not worth taking.

3. Tier 2 (Level 57) Talents

✘ Epidemic

✔ Pestilent Pustules

✔ Blighted Rune Weapon

• Epidemic is an active ability with 3 charges and a 10-second recharge time. When used, it causes all instances of your Virulent Plague (within 100 yards) to deal Shadow damage to the affected enemy, as well as a small amount of additional Shadow damage to all other enemies around them.
• Pestilent Pustules causes you to gain 1 Rune for every 8th Festering Wound you burst.
• Blighted Rune Weapon is an active ability with a 1-minute cooldown, which causes your next 5 auto attacks to infect the target with 2 stacks of Festering Wound each.

Pestilent Pustules is the recommened option in this tier in all situations, especially if you lack the Tier 19 4-Piece Set Bonus. If you do have this bonus, then Blighted Rune Weapon can out-perform Pestilent Pustules on light AoE on single target situations, but the difference is extremely small and often not worth changing talents over.

If you do have the set bonus, as well as either the legendary belt

Epidemic is currently not viable and should not be considered.

4. Tier 3 (Level 58) Talents

✘ Unholy Frenzy

✘ Castigator

✔ Clawing Shadows

• Unholy Frenzy causes you to gain 100% increased attack speed for 2.5 seconds whenever a Festering Wound bursts.
• Castigator causes each Festering Strike critical strike to apply 2 additional Festering Wound, and each Scourge Strike critical strike to burst 1 additional Festering Wound.
• Clawing Shadows replaces Scourge Strike. It has a 30-yard range (instead of being melee only) and it deals all Shadow damage instead of Scourge Strike's part-Physical and part-Shadow damage.

Currently, Clawing Shadows is the best choice in this tier, and it should always be taken. The other two talents are not good enough to be considered.

5. Tier 4 (Level 60) Talents

✔ Sludge Belcher

? Asphyxiate

✘ Debilitating Infestation

• Sludge Belcher causes Raise Dead to now summon an abomination instead of a ghoul. The Abomination has similar abilities to the ghoul, with the notable difference being that its Hook, which it can use to pull a target to it and immobilise it for 2 seconds (the latter part only during Dark Transformation).
• Asphyxiate is a single-target, 5-second stun with a 45-second cooldown.
• Debilitating Infestation causes Outbreak to reduce the movement speed of affected targets by 50% for 3 seconds.

None of the talents in this tier improve your DPS, but they still have a lot of potential usefulness. We recommend taking Sludge Belcher as a default talent, as this provides you with good utility (in the Hook) and increases the damage reduction of your pet.

Alternatively, Asphyxiate could have some uses in dungeons, especially in Mythic dungeons.

Debilitating Infestation is generally regarded as sub-optimal, and there are many other classes who can slow targets more efficiently.

6. Tier 5 (Level 75) Talents

? Spell Eater

? Corpse Shield

? Lingering Apparition

• Spell Eater increases the absorption capacity of Anti-Magic Shell by 20%, and extends its duration by 5 seconds.
• Corpse Shield is an active ability with a 1-minute cooldown and 10-second duration. During this time, 90% of all damage you take is redirected to your ghoul. If the ghoul dies while Corpse Shield is active, then you cannot resummon it for 30 seconds.
• Lingering Apparition increases your movement speed during Wraith Walk by 30%, and reduces the cooldown of Wraith Walk by 15 seconds.

The talents in this tier do not increase your DPS either, but they can provide you with great benefits during raid encounters. They are quite situational, so you will have to choose based on the requirements of the fight.

Spell Eater is the preferred choice in fights with large amounts of magic damage, allowing you to survive if you make a mistake, to soak the damage of certain abilities, or to avoid certain mechanics altogether. This talent works very well with the Acherus Drapes legendary, which further extends its duration.

Corpse Shield could be used to help you survive mechanics that should otherwise kill you, and can generally provide a good damage reduction (provided that you pair it with the Ghoul's Huddle, or with the Sludge Belcher's Protective Bile, if you have taken this tier 4 talent). It is an extremely strong defensive cooldown. We recommend this talent for fights without significant magic damage.

Finally, Lingering Apparition increases your mobility, which is always a good benefit to have.

7. Tier 6 (Level 90) Talents

? Shadow Infusion

✔ Necrosis

✔ Infected Claws

• Shadow Infusion makes it so that while your ghoul is not transformed (by Dark Transformation), each Death Coil cast reduces the cooldown of Dark Transformation by 7 seconds.
• Necrosis passively causes the first Scourge Strike used within 5 seconds after a Death Coil to deal 40% increased damage.
• Infected Claws grants your ghoul's Claw a 35% chance to apply Festering Wound on the target.

Necrosis provides the greatest DPS increase in both single target and light AoE DPS, but for this to be the case, it must be used optimally.

Infected Claws is the best choice for burst AoE DPS (using Dark Transformation to affect multiple targets with wounds and consume them with Death and Decay). If you do choose this talent, it is advised to pair it with the Bursting Sores tier 1 talent.

Shadow Infusion benefits most from encounters where the player is away from the boss for long periods of time, but pet uptime remains high. Ensuring that the downtime of Dark Transformations is minimised by pooling resources as Dark Transformation ends will be important. If you are a player who prefers minimal micromanagement, you will probably get more use out of the other two talents unless the fight somehow benefits Shadow Infusion in particular.

8. Tier 7 (Level 100) Talents

? Dark Arbiter

? Defile

✔ Soul Reaper

• Dark Arbiter replaces Summon Gargoyle. Instead of a Gargoyle, the ability summons a Val'kyr to fight by your side for 20 seconds. For every 1 Runic Power you spend, the Val'kyr will gain 1% increased damage. This ability has a 2-minute cooldown.
• Defile replaces Death and Decay. With every tick, the Defile area of effect will increase if there are any enemies standing in it. Moreover, each time this happens, your Mastery is increased by 300, stacking up to 10 times. Finally, your Scourge Strike gains a cleaving effect while you are in your own Defile.
• Soul Reaper is an active ability with a 45-second cooldown. It deals Shadow damage to the target, and debuffs them with Soul Reaper for 5 seconds. During this time, bursting a Festering Wound on them grants you 7% Haste for 15 seconds, an effect which can stack up to 3 times.

Overall, we recommend Soul Reaper in this tier, for all situations. That said, Dark Arbiter can be a viable choice, but only if you have Convergence of Fates, 80%+ Mastery, and either the legendary shoulders or Sephuz's Secret.

Defile is most likely viable in encounters where there are frequent waves of minions that will be close enough together to be within Defile's radius. Taking this talent is going to be situational; it benefits from high levels of Mastery, and the legendary helm ( Death March) can dramatically increase its uptime. That said, this talent is most likely to be useful in Mythic+ dungeons, if the other two talents do not work with your current party composition, but we cannot really recommend it in raids over either of the other two talents in this tier.

9. ChangeLog

+ show all entries - show only 10 entries

• 12 Jun. 2017: Updated Dark Arbiter description to account for Patch 7.2.5 changes.
• 27 Mar. 2017: No changes needed for Patch 7.2.
• 11 Mar. 2017: Updated tier 1, 2, 3, 6, and 7 talent discussions.
• 17 Jan. 2017: Made slight updates to some talent evaluations and added a Critical Strike talent path at the start of the page.
• 10 Jan. 2017: Updated talent descriptions to account for Patch 7.1.5 changes, and re-wrote all talent discussions.
• 12 Dec. 2016: Updated most talent sections to account for the fact that, generally, one talent per each tier is now considered the best choice in all situations.
• 16 Oct. 2016: Updated certain aspects of the guide, particularly the All Will Serve and Unholy Frenzy talent discussions.
• 29 Aug. 2016: Updated for Legion's launch.
• 03 Aug. 2016: Updated tier 3 talent discussion to account for the nerf to Clawing Shadows.
• 21 Jul. 2016: Updated tier 1, 2, 6, and 7 discussions to account for encounters that last less than 1 minute, which can happen during the pre-patch.
• 18 Jul. 2016: Updated for the Legion pre-patch.