Unholy Death Knight Talents Guide

A big focus of this build is summoning and empowering minions. Minions are summoned by using Apocalypse, Raise Abomination and consuming Sudden Doom procs. These minions are then buffed by Unholy Aura, Commander of the Dead and universal buffs such as Festermight and one of your main cooldowns Unholy Assault, which shares the same cooldown time as Raise Abomination.

Commander of the Dead is the most important talent for this minion build, as it buffs your Magus of the Dead, Army of the Dead and Raise Abomination by 45% for 30 seconds. This means you will want to use Apocalypse immediately after Raise Abomination so you get the maximum uptime of Commander of the Dead for the Abomination.

As this setup uses the hero talent specialization San’layn, a large aspect of this build's gameplay is also sustaining the buff Essence of the Blood Queen. After using Apocalypse your Dark Transformation will activate Gift of the San’layn, which greatly amplifies the effects of your Essence of the Blood Queen as well as replacing Scourge Strike with Vampiric Strike while it’s active. Vampiric Strike not only increases and sustains your Essence of the Blood Queen stacks, but also greatly contributes to another talent and large source of damage in this build, Infliction of Sorrow.

You (and your Dark Transformation via Unholy Blight) will be applying Virulent Plague to your targets which is then amplified and extended by Vampiric Strike (via Infliction of Sorrow). At the end of your Dark Transformation your next Scourge Strike will consume Virulent Plague and deal all of its remaining damage in a single hit. It is important to consume Virulent Plague with Infliction of Sorrow just before Unholy Assault ends, so it can benefit from the additional 20% damage increase. With all of this in mind, while Dark Transformation is active, Vampiric Strike becomes a high priority in your rotation.

Festermight is another buff which you will gain during your rotation, and is triggered by consuming Festering Wounds. Festering Wounds are applied by either Festering Strike, Raise Abomination’s attacks or your ghouls Infected Claws. While Dark Transformation is active your ghoul will cleave and have a chance to apply Festering Wounds on multiple targets with Infected Claws. Wounds can also be consumed on multiple targets at once via Cleaving Strikes. It is important to note however that San’layn has a unique approach to Festering Wounds, as Vampiric Strike does so much damage, applying wounds with Festering Strike is not worthwhile. So, Festering Wound application is completely ignored during Dark Transformation when playing San’layn.

Outside of Dark Transformation however, applying and consuming Festering Wounds require runes, which are not infinite and must be replenished passively, but can be recharged faster by triggering Runic Corruption. This is triggered by using Death Coil which is another core ability for your rotation. Death Coil is your runic power spender which will also apply Death Rot to your target, further increasing your shadow damage (sadly does not buff Magus of the Dead’s Shadow Bolt damage). You will get random procs of Sudden Doom which reduces the cost of Death Coil by 10 runic power and make it automatically crit. It is very important to spend Sudden Doom immediately as it will summon a Magus of the Dead (via the talent Doomed Bidding), as well as greatly buffing your Vampiric Strike damage by applying Rotten Touch.

This build also has execute components in Soul Reaper and Reaping. As this build uses San’layn, Soul Reaper is not as high of a priority as it is for Rider of the Apocalypse based builds, so it should only be used when Dark Transformation is not active. Reaping greatly buffs not only your Death Coil damage by multiplicatively scaling with Frenzied Bloodthirst, but also buffs Vampiric Strike and multiplicatively scales with Rotten Touch.

Situational Adjustments

On council based encounters, you can talent out of All Will Serve and play Improved Death Coil instead. For heavy consistent multi-target encounters you can talent out of All Will Serve for Menacing Magus, and replace Raise Abomination for Legion of Souls instead.

The main focus of this builds throughput is summoning and empowering minions. Minions are summoned by using Apocalypse, Legion of Souls and by consuming Sudden Doom procs. These minions are then buffed by Unholy Aura, Commander of the Dead and universal buffs such as Festermight and one of your main cooldowns Unholy Assault, which shares the same cooldown time as Legion of Souls.

Commander of the Dead is the most important talent for this minion build, as it buffs your Magus of the Dead and Army of the Dead by 45% for 30 seconds.

In this build your Magus of the Dead are the most important of all, as they are cleaving with their Shadow Bolt casts to up to 8 targets (via Menacing Magus), so when combined with the additional damage from Commander of the Dead, Unholy Aura and Unholy Assault, the majority of your damage will be from the Magus’ in both single and multi-target scenarios.

As well as minions, you (and your Dark Transformation via Unholy Blight) will be applying Virulent Plague to your targets and maintaining multiple buffs to empower your other abilities as well as your minions. Festermight is one of these buffs, and is activated by consuming Festering Wounds. Festering Wounds are applied by either Festering Strike, Festering Scythe (high priority in multi-target), Legion of Souls or your ghouls Infected Claws. While Dark Transformation is active your ghoul will cleave and have a chance to apply Festering Wounds on multiple targets with Infected Claws. Wounds can also be consumed on multiple targets at once via Cleaving Strikes which is very important for multi-target throughput as not only will you gain more stacks of Festermight, but you will also trigger Bursting Sores.

Applying and consuming Festering Wounds require runes, which are not infinite and must be replenished passively, but can be recharged faster by triggering Runic Corruption. This is triggered by using Death Coil/Epidemic which are two other core abilities for your rotation. Death Coil/Epidemic are runic power spenders which will be duplicated by Whitemane and apply Death Rot to your targets, further increasing your shadow damage dealt to them (sadly does not buff Magus of the Dead’s Shadow Bolt damage). You will get random procs of Sudden Doom which reduces the cost of Death Coil by 10 runic power and make Death Coil/Epidemic automatically crit. It is very important to spend Sudden Doom immediately as it will summon a Magus of the Dead (via the talent Doomed Bidding). In single target scenarios, it will also greatly buff your Clawing Shadows as Death Coil casts consuming Sudden Doom also apply Rotten Touch.

This build also has execute components in Soul Reaper and Reaping. You will want to use Soul Reaper on cooldown when your target is <35% health as it also buffs your pets by an additional 10% for 8 seconds after it has dealt damage. Using Soul Reaper on cooldown will maintain a constant uptime on Reaping’s minion buff. In multi-target scenarios like Mythic Plus however, this becomes much less of a priority as you will gain more damage from popping more Festering Wounds or using Epidemic.

Situational Adjustments

Mythic Plus often requires different forms of utility depending on your comp and which key you are doing, so you can give up talents such as Wraith Walk, Grip of the Dead, Coldthirst, etc for others such as Anti-Magic Zone, Asphyxiate, Vestigial Shell, Control Undead, etc.

A big focus of this build is summoning and empowering minions. Minions are summoned by using Apocalypse, Legion of Souls and consuming Sudden Doom procs. These minions are then buffed by Unholy Aura, Commander of the Dead and universal buffs such as Festermight and one of your main cooldowns Unholy Assault, which shares the same cooldown time as Legion of Souls.

Commander of the Dead is the most important talent for this minion build, as it buffs your Magus of the Dead, and Army of the Dead by 45% for 30 seconds.

In this build your Magus of the Dead are the most important of all, as they are cleaving with their Shadow Bolt casts to up to 8 targets (via Menacing Magus), so when combined with the additional damage from Commander of the Dead, Unholy Aura and Unholy Assault, the majority of your damage will be from the Magus’ in both single and multi-target scenarios.

As this setup uses the hero talent specialization San’layn, a large aspect of this build's gameplay is also sustaining the buff Essence of the Blood Queen. After using Apocalypse your Dark Transformation will activate Gift of the San’layn, which greatly amplifies the effects of your Essence of the Blood Queen as well as replacing Scourge Strike with Vampiric Strike while it’s active. Vampiric Strike not only increases and sustains your Essence of the Blood Queen stacks, but also greatly contributes to another talent and large source of damage in this build, Infliction of Sorrow.

You (and your Dark Transformation via Unholy Blight) will be applying Virulent Plague to your targets which is then amplified and extended by Vampiric Strike (via Infliction of Sorrow). At the end of your Dark Transformation your next Scourge Strike will consume Virulent Plague and deal all of its remaining damage in a single hit. It is important to consume Virulent Plague with Infliction of Sorrow just before Unholy Assault ends, so it can benefit from the additional 20% damage increase. With all of this in mind, while Dark Transformation is active, Vampiric Strike becomes a high priority in your rotation. In multitarget, it is important to have Cleaving Strikes active for the whole duration of your Dark Transformation so your Infliction of Sorrow is ramping up on multiple targets, as well as making your Vampiric Strikes trigger Bursting Sores as much as possible.

Festermight is another buff which you will gain during your rotation, and is triggered by consuming Festering Wounds. Festering Wounds are applied by either Festering Strike, Festering Scythe (high priority in multi-target), Legion of Souls or your ghouls Infected Claws. While Dark Transformation is active your ghoul will cleave and have a chance to apply Festering Wounds on multiple targets with Infected Claws. Wounds can also be consumed on multiple targets at once via Cleaving Strikes. It is important to note however that San’layn has a unique approach to Festering Wounds, as Vampiric Strike does so much damage, applying wounds with Festering Strike is not worthwhile. So, Festering Wound application is completely left up to Legion of Souls and Dark Transformation while it is active. The only time you will want to use Festering Strike during Dark Transformation is when you have Festering Scythe ready and there are multiple enemies for it to cleave onto.

Outside of Dark Transformation however, applying and consuming Festering Wounds require runes, which are not infinite and must be replenished passively, but can be recharged faster by triggering Runic Corruption. This is triggered by using Death Coil/Epidemic which are two other core abilities in your rotation. Death Coil/Epidemic are runic power spenders which will also apply Death Rot to your targets, further increasing your shadow damage dealt to them (sadly does not buff Magus of the Dead’s Shadow Bolt damage). You will get random procs of Sudden Doom which reduces the cost of Death Coil by 10 runic power and make Death Coil/Epidemic automatically crit. It is very important to spend Sudden Doom immediately as it will summon a Magus of the Dead (via the talent Doomed Bidding). In single target scenarios, it will also greatly buff your Vampiric Strike as Death Coil casts consuming Sudden Doom also apply Rotten Touch.

This build also has an execute component in Soul Reaper and Reaping. As this build uses San’layn, Soul Reaper is not as high of a priority as it is for Rider of the Apocalypse based builds, so it should only be used when Dark Transformation is not active, and even then in Mythic Plus scenarios where there are multiple targets, you are better off popping more Festering Wounds or using Epidemic instead of using Soul Reaper. Reaping also greatly buffs your Death Coil damage by multiplicatively scaling with Frenzied Bloodthirst.

Situational Adjustments

Mythic Plus often requires different forms of utility depending on your comp and which key you are doing, so you can give up talents such as Wraith Walk, Grip of the Dead, Coldthirst, etc for others such as Anti-Magic Zone, Asphyxiate, Vestigial Shell, Control Undead, etc.