Unholy Death Knight DPS Talents & Build Guide - Shadowlands 9.2.5

来自 Bicepspump 2022/05/31 变更日志补丁：9.2.5

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宁心书卷宁心圣典

I'm Bicepspump, a semi-hardcore player currently playing on Kazzak. You can often find me on the Death Knight discord discussing rotations and builds, on my stream (B1cepspump), running some juicy Mythic +, or on my youtube channel where I've started doing video guides. Big shoutout to everyone on the Acherus discord that have given me valuable insight through numerous discussions. I take part in writing and optimizing the action priority list for SimulationCraft and continuously test different hypotheses using the SimulationCraft program. Furthermore, I work with the WoWAnalyzer website where I develop modules for the Death Knight specs. Please feel free to contact me on Discord as Bicepspump#6318, I'm always happy to have a healthy discussion! Outside of playing WoW, I work as a data scientist and enjoy playing other games such as Dota 2!

IntroductionHerodamage.comBloodmallet.comBest Unholy DK Talents (Raids)

Detailed Unholy Death Knight Talents

Let's add a large dose of depth to the talent recommendations!

Single target is the king in raids and this build represents that. We pick whatever we can to boost our priority damage!

Tier 1 (Level 15)

万物臣服 is generally the winning talent in this row, simply because of its superiour single target throughput. This is especially true once we receive our 4p since it boosts the damage of this talent! 暗影之爪 can be better if you can use the extra utility it brings or if there is short <5 target cleave windows. It has the added benefit of allowing you to attack from range, something that is useful in raids. It is likely to see a lot of play before people pick up their 4p! 感染之爪 does gain value with lots of adds, but generally not enough to ever warrant picking it.

Tier 2 (Level 25)

邪恶虫群 brings big damage, both directly and through the pet damage buff. It also replaces casts of 爆发, freeing up Runes to be used elsewhere in the rotation.

Tier 4 (Level 35)

Another row with a clear winner. 灵魂收割 simply brings the most damage when the execute can be utilized.

Tier 6 (Level 45)

秽邪契约 brings a significant damage boost for single target and is the pick in all raiding encounters.

Tier 7 (Level 50)

The most defining talent row with very important talents. With the recent mastery buff, 诅咒大军 will be the go-to talent for single target output. 邪恶突袭 is a possible choice if a fight is exceptionally short, not allowing you to gain value from a second 亡者大军

With the introduction of double legendaries, a Night Fae build involving 蔓延转移, 死亡终途, 凋零之地 and 亵渎 becomes viable. The build relies on essentially having 100% uptime on the 消亡之债 buff at 4 stacks, providing a constant 20% strength! Furthermore, it takes advantage of the big scaling of 亵渎 and 凋零之地 to make 消亡之债 hit really hard on single target! The build is generally not recommended due to not being very versatile. It suffers from heavy movement and target movement. However, it deals respectable damage and is very powerful on any stacked cleave fight!

This build has a heavy focus on AoE. It excels in Mythic + where you can execute plenty of large pulls. It revolves around applying and bursting a large number of 溃烂之伤s, dealing big AoE damage through the 爆裂之疡 talent. This build is especially powerful if you run Night Fae. 消亡之债 brings a ton of extra burst to this build's burst window. 亵渎 becomes the choice in this case since you have the 凋零之地 conduit. It scales extremely well and you'll have your 消亡之债 dealing 1.5k damage per tick per target!

Tier 1 (Level 15)

感染之爪 - The basis if your Big AoE wound-build. It's responsible for generating a large quantity of 溃烂之伤s that you can then burst, dealing heavy AoE damage with 爆裂之疡. It provides the most AoE damage in this scenario by far.

Tier 2 (Level 25

爆裂之疡 - Highest potential AoE throughput when combined with 感染之爪. Scales quadratically up to 9 targets (and then as the power of 3/2 afterwards) and makes us scale better than any other spec. Unfortunately, we have issues realising our damage (due to the target cap on 天灾打击) which makes us unable to utilise this awesome scaling at larger target counts.

Tier 4 (Level 35)

Even if 脓疮传染 brings more AoE damage, 灵魂收割 brings far too much priority damage. It helps the build become more versatile!

Tier 6 (Level 45)

秽邪契约 is the best and most versatile choice in the row. 亵渎 can be useful with 凋零之地 conduit but is quite a niche pick. 疫病 generally doesn't generate enough wounds to be useful.

Tier 7 (Level 50)

诅咒大军 is picked for a similar reason as 灵魂收割. It brings a ton of single target damage that can be very helpful on the priority mobs in the dungeon. 邪恶突袭 is an alternative that really brings you into the heavy AoE niche.

This build is a more versatile and single-target oriented build for Mythic +. It gives up the insane quadratic scaling of the wound-build in favour of more single target.

Tier 1 (Level 15)

We pick up 暗影之爪 in this row since it works so well in a Mythic+ environment. Tanks kiting and melee mechanics makes it so useful to be able to stand in your 枯萎凋零 and attack from range! Remember that the cleave from 暗影之爪 is based on you standing in your 枯萎凋零, not the mobs.

Tier 2 (Level 25

We pick up 邪恶虫群 since it provides the most single target damage, as well as scaling well in AoE. 黑死病 isn't best in neither AoE nor single target and 爆裂之疡 is essentially fully focused on AoE. We therefore get much more single target without losing too much AoE.

Tier 4 (Level 35)

灵魂收割 brings a ton of priority single target, making it a great pick in this row. The other choices can bring more AoE but I do feel like the downside of losing 灵魂收割 is too great.

Tier 6 (Level 45)

秽邪契约 is the best and most versatile choice in the row. 亵渎 isn't really useful in any situation at all. It provides both the most AoE and single target in this scenario, making it an obvious pick.

Tier 7 (Level 50)

诅咒大军 is my recommended pick in the final talent row for this build. You'll use 传染 a lot, making the cooldown on 亡者大军 really short. This allows you to provide a lot of priority damage when needed. 邪恶突袭 is a possible pick as well which scales much better in AoE!

This build focuses on what works best in a leveling environment, prioritising what can actually be used on the short fights you encounter with mobs.

Tier 1 (Level 15)

暗影之爪 just provides such a great amount of utility in a leveling environment. You are constantly running around fighting new mobs, making the range such a good piece of value.

Tier 2 (Level 25

邪恶虫群 is my recommended pick in this row. Due to the fights during leveling often being a bit sporadic, you'll be able to have this ability up for a great number of your fights with mobs. It also allows you to easily pull lots of mobs and apply 恶性瘟疫 as you run through them!

Tier 3 (Level 30

死亡延伸 has lots of value while leveling. You are constantly killing enemies, allowing you to quickly engage new targets by gripping them in!

Tier 4 (Level 35)

I recommend 灵魂收割 in this row. It hits very hard and can be used on a majority of mobs with proper timing. You do need to be quite good at this, judging when a specific enemy will be below 35% after 6 seconds. 脓疮传染 is a possible pick if you struggle with the timing of 灵魂收割. It's not great since we generally regenerate a lot of resources between pulling mobs while questing.

Tier 6 (Level 45)

秽邪契约 is the best and most versatile choice in the row. It just brings great single target and AoE damage!

Tier 7 (Level 50)

邪恶突袭 is the most versatile choice, mainly due to the low cooldown. You'll be able to use this frequently, gaining value both from the wounds and the haste!

Unholy Death Knight Talents Overview

Let's look at the mechanics of all our talents!

Tier 1 (Level 15) for Unholy DK

This first row is focused mostly on single target but also has AoE elements to it.

感染之爪 gives your ghoul a 30% chance of applying a 溃烂之伤 when using the 爪击 ability. This also works when you've transformed your ghoul with 黑暗突变 with the added effect of AoE application. It's a great tool for applying 溃烂之伤 to a number of targets in a trash pack. It's also one piece of what enables our quadratic scaling.
万物臣服 makes your 亡者复生 spell raise an additional undead warrior to fight by your side. This little fellow is a skeleton that shoots 鬼灵射击 at your target. It also deals AoE damage through an undocumented cleave portion of its 鬼灵射击. This cleave deals 50% of the initial damage to all targets close to the main target.
暗影之爪 transforms your 天灾打击 ability into a ranged ability usable at up to 30 yards away from your target. It also converts the damage from being 50/50 physical and shadow to being 100% shadow. This brings great utility to any encounter!

Tier 2 (Level 25) for Unholy DK

One of our AoE rows. Choose between making your 溃烂之伤 more bursty, your 恶性瘟疫 hastier or introducing a whole new disease to the picture in the form of 邪恶虫群.

爆裂之疡 makes your 溃烂之伤 deal more damage when burst, as well as dealing damage to all enemies in an 8-yard radius. This is a great tool for AoE since it passively makes your regular rotation cleave. Furthermore, it has synergy with 枯萎凋零 since you can apply 溃烂之伤 to multiple targets and then pop them all at the same time, causing havoc in AoE. This is the second piece in our quadratic scaling.
黑死病 causes your 恶性瘟疫 to deal 15% more damage in half of the duration. This is effectively a 130% increase in raw DPS. However, we do need to pay for it with more GCDs and runes spent on 爆发.
邪恶虫群 causes you to apply 邪恶虫群 to all targets around you for 6 seconds, stacking up to 4 times. This is a disease that deals damage and increases your pet damage on the affected targets. It lasts for 14 seconds but the effective duration is actually longer than this (24.2 seconds) due to how the application works. It also applies 恶性瘟疫, once on the first time it deals damage to a new targets. This is really useful when applying 恶性瘟疫 to a pack of mobs in Mythic +. They might not all be gathered at once, allowing you to leverage the prolonged application process of 邪恶虫群 to apply 恶性瘟疫 to them as they are gathered up by the tank.

Tier 3 (Level 30) for Unholy DK

A utility row containing various forms of Crowd Control.

亡者之握 causes your 枯萎凋零 to slow all targets within it by 90%, decaying by 10% per second. A great tool for AoE Crowd Control and extremely useful in Mythic + for instance.
死亡延伸 allows you to reset the cooldown of 死亡之握 by either killing a mob or a player. Also increases the range by 10 yards. This talent is great for leveling since you'll be able to grip your new targets to you continuously. Also has some use in PvP, but the requirement of Killing Blow makes it a bit hard to trigger. The extra range is always useful.
窒息 is a 4 seconds Single Target stun. A good Crowd Control tool and something that will make it slightly easier to level since you can stun your enemies!

Tier 4 (Level 35) for Unholy DK

The resource generating row - with a pinch of execute. Choose between passively generating Runes through 脓疮传染 or procs of 末日突降 through 末日使者. You can also opt out of the resources and instead spec into our execute 灵魂收割. It does trigger 符文腐蚀 if the target dies under its effect, as well as proccing the 4p if you have it equipped. Sniping mobs without the 4p is generally not worth it, you only get back 0.9 wounds. Sniping mobs with the 4p is 100% worth it though, the buff you get is significant!

脓疮传染 gives your 溃烂之伤 a 10% chance to activate 符文腐蚀 when burst. This has good synergy with talents that causes you to burst more wounds throughout a fight: 感染之爪 and 疫病.
末日突降 passively gives you an increased chance of proccing 末日突降 as well as allowing it to stack up to two times. This synergizes well with abilities that demand a high number of 凋零缠绕: 召唤石像鬼. Still way too undertuned to be picked though, even in this scenario.
灵魂收割 is an active ability that puts a debuff on a target. After 6 seconds, if the target is below 35% hp, the target takes a big chunk of damage. If the target dies, you trigger 符文腐蚀. Great damage boost but will make the rotation feel clunkier since you won't have access to the same amount of resources.

Tier 5 (Level 40) for Unholy DK

Here you get to choose from a number of different defensive and utility increasing abilities.

噬法者 causes your 反魔法护罩 to absorb 30% more magic damage, as well as lasting 5 seconds longer. Great for increasing your survivability against magic damage, as well as allowing you to potentially gain more Runic Power with the larger shield.
幻影步 is just the old baseline ability now made into a talent. Good for fights with heavy movement requirements, but not as useful overall since we now have 死亡脚步.
天灾契约 gives us our own personal Lay on Hands. A great defensive Cooldown that can save you when the healers don't have time to react.

Tier 6 (Level 45) for Unholy DK

Another row with a variety of talents useful for AoE.

疫病 gives your ticks from 枯萎凋零 a 10% chance of applying a 溃烂之伤. This is good for both single target where it makes 枯萎凋零 a DPS upgrade, as well as in AoE since you can pop all the applied wounds with the cleave mechanic of 枯萎凋零. It synergizes well with 爆裂之疡 since you effectively pop much more 溃烂之伤 in both Single Target and AoE. However, the spell itself is capped at generating a total of 10 wounds. You also generate roughly 1 wound per tick, regardless of number of targets. This greatly limits the power of the spell.
秽邪契约 is the Azerite trait 冥狱锁链 with an added strength buff attached to it. Powerful in both AoE and single target, and overall a very versatile talent.
亵渎 replaces your 枯萎凋零 and works in a similar way. The differences are that 亵渎 grows in size and damage when enemies are within it, as well as having a 10 seconds shorter CD. Has strong synergy with 消亡之债, enabling higher uptime on the strength buff. Also works really well with the 凋零之地 conduit, making it do quite a significant amount of damage in AoE.

Tier 7 (Level 50) for Unholy DK

The talent row with your most powerful traits with the biggest impact.

诅咒大军 causes your 凋零缠绕 to reduce the Cooldown of 天启 by 1 second and 亡者大军 by 5 seconds. This is similar to the T20 4-set bonus, and effectively allows you to use 亡者大军 more than once per fight. This is great since the Cooldown deals a massive amount of damage. The extra casts of Apocalypse are also a good DPS addition. This talent is for the players that prefer a more passive playstyle. It also causes your 天启 and 亡者大军 to summon a 亡者魔导师. This adds a big boost of damage to these two cooldowns.
召唤石像鬼 is the old 黑暗仲裁者 in disguise. It works in a very similar manner being a single target cooldown that is buffed by using 凋零缠绕; it works even when you have a proc of 末日突降. This ability is all about maximizing the number of 凋零缠绕 you cast when it's active. It, therefore, has good synergy with 末日使者 although this doesn't mean that the combination is an automatic pick; the other talents might bring other strengths that out-value the synergy value.
邪恶突袭 is a DPS cooldown that's a 脓疮打击 on steroids. It deals damage, stacks up 溃烂之伤 and provides a haste buff. Scales well in both single target and AoE due to said haste buff.

Utility TalentsMythic+

The choice here lies between 亡者之握 and 窒息. 亡者之握 is a very strong slow that is great for when you need to help your tank with kiting the mobs. 窒息 is a strong single target stun that can be invaluable for when you need to crowd control a specific mob. The choice purely comes down to the dungeon and affixes you are playing against.

天灾契约 is my go-to choice in the 5th talent row. It's a very strong heal that greatly increases our survivability. 噬法者 also has potential where it can help us survive those extremely hard-hitting magic damage abilities in Mythic+.

Raiding

The third row is highly situational for raiding. Pick 窒息 if the fight requires a single target stun.

The fifth row is more useful. 天灾契约 is my favorite pick here but also requires awareness. 噬法者 is a pick for the more passive player that doesn't want more buttons to press, or for magic damage heavy fights where you need the extra shield to survive a one-shot ability. Finally, 幻影步 is for fights where movement is key.

War Mode for Unholy Death KnightWar Mode

适者生存 allows you to negate nasty crowd control that various mobs can cast on you.

死亡回响 enables more uses of both movement and damage abilities!

死灵光环 increases the magic damage mobs around you take. Great talent since it increases your damage output.

培育憎恶 converts 亡者大军 into a 90 seconds cooldown which simply works much better during questing!

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评论来自 Anturio

Hey there,

Thanks for the guide.

could you edit the: " Ebon Fever is the best talent for all number of targets, being followed by Pestilent Pustules, The difference ranges from 2% for 2 targets to 1% for 6 targets. Harbinger of Doom is sitting in the back seat with a 2.5% difference for all targets."

to actually show the "Soul Reaper" talent instead of the "Ebon Fever" talent

Thanks!

Ant.

评论来自 Otnot

hey there

评论来自 stygiusmalganis

Hey there! I'm here to update that Clawing Shadows is actually a viable talent for many encounters, it's actually parsing higher than All Will Serve for ST (depending on the gear), also I see some parsers with reaping flame as major, specially in Drest'agath's encounter. Last but not least many Dks are going for 90/100 corruption which means they are going above 40 corruption for raid encounters. would be nice to update about these! love your guide by the way. Glad that UH is doing better than Frost!

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/rankings/24#class=DeathKnight&spec=Unholy

评论来自 t3hclwn

In AoE situations in the pre-patch right now, Pestilence generates plenty of wounds. It is out DPSing Unholy Pact for me by a fair margin because it is less runes spent on Festering Strike and more spent on Scourge Strike, giving me more runic power for Epidemic as well.

评论来自 DaemoniKira

Thanks a bunch for making this guide, Bicepspump! I've been referring back to it regularly for the talent build you recommend for leveling, and it's been fantastic.

I just hit Level 50, and I just noticed that the synergy between the Tier 7 talent 邪恶突袭 and the spell 天启 is insane!
-Both have a cooldown of 1.3 minutes
-邪恶突袭 infects the target with 4 溃烂之伤
-天启 bursts up to 4 溃烂之伤 on the target
and
-邪恶突袭 increases haste by 20% for 12 seconds
-天启 summons 1 ghoul/溃烂之伤 that last for 15 seconds

Super excited to try this out!

I started playing WoW in Legion, and it was a Blood DK that I played the whole expansion. I tried Frost but thought it was boring, and at the time as a new player, I found Unholy too confusing.
I'm so glad I finally decided to give Unholy a try -- it's already one of my favorite DPS specs in the game now!
Can't wait 'til Dragonlords --or whatever, the next expansion-- to max and gear my Unholy DK using your guide :D

评论来自 Achloryn

Hey thanks for the great guide. Quick question though - here you talk about the "Quadratic scaling" in the Infected Claws and Bursting Sores talents, but you never really elaborate on that here. Is that in a different part of the guide?

Unholy Death Knight DPS Talents & Build Guide - Shadowlands 9.2.5

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