Unholy Death Knight Gearing Guide

In Season 4 of Dragonflight, we will be able to acquire the Season 4 tierset (as voted for by the community)! This can be obtained from raid bosses across all 3 of the Awakened Raids. We will also be able to craft tier pieces with the Creation Catalyst from week 1 of the season. You will want to get this tier set as it is an excellent bonus to your throughput!

Season 4 Tier Set

• 2 Set Bonus: Apocalypse summons an additional Magus of the Dead. Your Magus of the Dead Shadow Bolt now fires a volley of Shadow Bolts at up to 4 nearby enemies.
• 4 Set Bonus: Each Rune you spend increases the duration of your active Magi by 0.5 sec and your Magi will now also cast Amplify Damage, increasing the damage you deal by 5% for 10 sec.

2 Set Bonus Discussion

A lot of Unholy’s strength in Season 4 comes from this new tierset. Unholy’s damage comes from Magus of the Dead now, due to Summon Gargoyle and Army of the Dead being nerfed. So with these changes in mind most of your damage has been taken away from Summon Gargoyle, and instead put into Magus of the Dead.

This tierset also gives Unholy some passive cleave from Apocalypse and Army of the Dead, which makes Apocalypse a lot more valuable and important to cast in AoE/Cleave scenarios, however it is capped to 4 targets in total, so while it does give Unholy more AoE capability it won’t scale insane well when you’re doing big pulls.

4 Set Bonus Discussion

This is more of a cherry on the top and of course plays well into the 2 set bonus, the Magus of the Dead will now give you a small damage buff which is nice, but more importantly they will be extended by spending runes. Magus of the Dead is a large portion of your damage now, so you will want to extend them as much as possible without overcapping on Runic Power or overcapping on Sudden Doom procs.

Where do I get tier pieces in Season 4?

Tier set pieces can be acquired from a number of bosses in each Awakened Raid. You can also acquire a piece of gear from Mythic Plus, an Awakened Raid or your weekly vault and turn it into a tier piece of the same slot with the Creation Catalyst!

Unholy Death Knight Best in Slot Gear

The tables below aim to give you a general list of gear that is good for Unholy Death Knight, these lists are not a perfect replacement for simming your character.

Unholy Death Knight Raid Best in Slot List

This list will provide the Best in Slot gear for a raid environment, using gear from both Mythic+ and the raid itself.

Unholy Death Knight M+ Best in Slot List

This list will provide the Best in Slot gear for doing M+ keys focusing on damage output.

Notable Items

Fyr’alath the Dreamrender - Death Knights this season have a legendary weapon which they can obtain from the raid Amirdrassil the Dreams Hope. This is a random drop from Fyrakk the Blazing, with a bad luck protection system built in for each time the weapon does not drop, so you will eventually get it! If you already have this weapon from Season 3, then you will be able to upgrade it by purchasing the upgrade item from the Season 4 vendor!

This is an insanely powerful weapon and the best 2H in the game. Not only is it the highest item level, but it also has an on use ability and passive damage effect (without losing any secondary stats for it, which is really big!). The on use is a channeled ability and you cannot do anything else while this ability is channeling. You will want to use this before you use your main cooldowns as the ability does not affect the throughput of your other cooldowns, and you don’t want to interrupt the setup of your Army of the Dead window. The weapon ability also has a 2 minute cooldown, so it will naturally not align with your other abilities as long as you use it on cooldown.

Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows: Just like the previous season, this is a very powerful 3 minute on use trinket for Unholy. Even though we have seen significant nerfs to our Summon Gargoyle and Army of the Dead, the Mastery this trinket provides to our minions is still very strong because it’s still buffing our Magus of the Dead, which is the majority of our single target damage in Season 4. You will also be able to get this item at its maximum ilvl from from the dungeon Dawn of Infinites (on hard mode), and you must complete it without dying if you want to get the myth track version, otherwise you will only get a heroic version (if it drops). This is a trinket you will want to make a top priority when you begin Season 4.

When using this trinket, you will want to make sure that it will give you Mastery by making Mastery your highest secondary stat (true stat value, not percent), and use it at 20 seconds of Summon Gargoyle so you get a perfect overlap of this trinkets buff during your cooldowns.

While you do not have Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows you can use these on use trinkets instead (ordered based on trinket strength/power):

1. Ashes of the Embersoul - Obtained from Smolderon in Awakened Amirdrassil (2 minute cooldown trinket, hold and use in conjunction with Army of the Dead & Summon Gargoyle, and use at 20 seconds remaining of Summon Gargoyle just like Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows.
2. Blazebinder’s Hoof - Obtained from The Ruby Life Pools Mythic Plus Dungeon (2 minute cooldown trinket, hold and use in conjunction with Army of the Dead & Summon Gargoyle, and use at 20 seconds remaining of Summon Gargoyle just like Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows).

Neltharion’s Call to Suffering: This trinket is strong due to the large amount of primary stat (strength) you get once it procs, so if it procs during your cooldowns then it provides a significant boost to your throughput. In Season 4 we are using the Season 3 tierset which means most of our damage comes from our Magus of the Dead, so even if you don’t get the ideal procs of this trinket for your Summon Gargoyle, you are still getting a massive benefit from this trinket while your Magus of the Dead are active, which makes the rng of this trinket a lot more forgiving than it was in Season 2.

Generally speaking this trinket is on average performing the same as Whispering Incarnate Icon and Ominous Chromatic Essence (when you have the maximum benefit from additional trinkets in your raid), so naturally this trinket is going to the best overall choice as it does not require other players using the same trinket in order to perform well.

If you do not have this trinket, then using either Cataclysmic Signet Brand or Whispering Incarnate Icon / Ominous Chromatic Essence (with all the buffs from other raiders using the trinkets) will suffice.

Voice of the Silent Star: This is a cloak which is a dps increase, however it’s not as good as it may seem. Unholy is a very frontloaded spec, where most of its damage comes from your Summon Gargoyle and Army of the Dead window, if this cloak effect does not proc during those cooldowns then it’s not really that much of a gain. It is of course a dps gain but you are sacrificing quite a lot of health for it (Death Knight has stamina multipliers such as Veteran of the Third War), which is definitely not worthwhile in a progress setting. I only recommend using this cloak in farm scenarios when you and your guild are comfortable with the raid and are not having any issues with survivability.

Pip’s Emerald Friendship Badge: For Mythic Plus scenarios this is a very solid trinket that provides you with a solid flow of secondary stat’s through the dungeon, (the only downside is that the stats you get are random and not deterministic, but that’s not too bad for Mythic Plus as your secondary stats level out more in AoE/Cleave scenarios).

Seal of Diurna’s Chosen & Seal of Filial Duty: In Season 1 of Dragonflight, Unholy Death Knight’s didn’t really use these rings, as there were not many ways to proc their effects (they are procced by fire damage). However, in Season we have Fyr’alath the Dreamrender, which applies a DoT which will constantly tick and deal Shadowflame damage (Fire and Shadow damage). This means that we can reliably proc the effects of these rings which means they are much better for us in Season 4.

Another reason is because in Season 4 we have so many secondary stats, that our “ideal” stats are going to be hitting very high diminishing returns thresholds, so the value of the less desirable stats goes up because we already have enough of our most important stats. So the downside of Seal of Diurna’s Chosen having mediocre stats is not much of a thing in Season 4.

Crafted Embellishment Gear

Torc of Passed Time & Primal Molten Vambraces (with Blue Silken Lining) - This embellishment provides a lot of Mastery while you are above 90% health which can be very strong for Unholy (due to the increased minion damage from Mastery: Dreadblade).

Currently these embellishments are giving the most total throughput, however they can be quite inconsistent if you are frequently taking damage (which is typical during progression). So, when using Blue Silken Lining you want to make sure that you are at least getting 30% total uptime of the buff to make using them worthwhile.

In Season 4 this is generally quite achievable as the raids you will be doing are in a nerfed state to their original form, and if you have been playing Dragonflight since launch you will know how to best mitigate the damage you will be taking, making optimisation for Blue Silken Lining more reliable.

Elemental Lariat: If you are greatly struggling with uptime on Blue Silken Lining, then you can swap out the Torc of Passed Time for an Elemental Lariat, however this neck is not very good unless you have at least 5 gems in your gear so do consider that before swapping.

Bullion Items Priority List

In Season 4 we will have access to Antique Bronze Bullions by defeating Awakened raid bosses! You will be able to acquire one Antique Bronze Bullion a week, and items will cost you 2 Antique Bronze Bullions. These items are all of the weapons, trinkets and unique items from all three Awakened Dragonflight raids, so this is a great way to acquire those key pieces of powerful raid gear.

Here is a list of which items you want to prioritize and in what order (if you manage to loot one of these items before you acquire it via Bullions, then you are lucky and can move onto the next!)

1. Scale of Awakening - used to upgrade Fyr’alath the Dreamrender
2. Neltharion’s Call to Suffering
3. Seal of Diurna’s Chosen
4. Seal of Filial Duty
5. Voice of the Silent Star