Unholy Death Knight Guide for The War Within (2024)

Last updated on Jun 18, 2024 at 21:00by Bicepspump73 comments

Welcome to our War Within expansion guide for Unholy Death Knight.Ahead of launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about theUnholy Death Knight spec in the forthcoming The War Within expansion,including changes, Hero Talent Trees, and some light predictions on the stateof the spec going into the expansion.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regularchanges expected as updates hit the War Within Beta. This is not meant to bea launch guide for Unholy Death Knight, but instead serves as aresource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving on Beta, andwhat you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

Unholy Death Knight has received a number of changes in The WarWithin so far, primarily in the form of new talents as well as talent treerestructuring. Notable new talents are Unyielding Will, Null Magic, Festering Scythe, Doomed Bidding and Raise Abomination.Furthermore, some of our core spells and talents have been functionally reworked. Festermight now stacks as Iron Fur, where each individual stack has itsown 20-second duration. Furthermore, Sudden Doom now only reduces thecost of your next Death Coil/ Epidemic by 10 Runic Power, butmakes it a guaranteed crit and burst a Festering Wound ( Death Coil only)on each target hit. It also procs significantly more due to a rework in the proc mechanic itself.Finally, Army of the Dead is now a fixed 3-minute cooldown, no moreannoying Cooldown Reduction to worry about!

While nothing changed for Unholy Death Knight's core features,The War Within still has major implications for all specs thanks to the HeroTalent Tree system, new tier sets, and the natural reduction in secondarystats when entering a new expansion.

Unholy Death Knight gets to choose between the Rider of the Apocalypseand San'layn Hero Talent Trees. In sections below, we will talk moredeeply about the implications of these Hero Talent Trees for the spec, and somethoughts on what looks strong and weak ahead of launch.

The Rider of the Apocalypse Hero Talent tree is mainly a passive treewithout much interaction with our kit. We randomly summon Horsem*n to aid usin our fight, which use their own abilities. Mograine does cast Death and Decayand provides some extra cleave whenever this happens. Furthermore, you will summonall four horsem*n every 3/1.5 minutes with your Army of the Dead/ Raise Abomination,making you feel pretty cool as your army of minions end up really quite large.

On a Paler Horse is probably the most interesting talent in the tree,at least for non-instanced content. This allows you to stay mounted in combat,fighting your enemies off the back of a horse. A major speed-up to questingand leveling, as well as a really cool addition to the game. It's a shame itdoesn't work in dungeons and raids, but that also probably would've been too powerful.

In terms of tuning, the rider tree relies heavily on the raw damage of theriders themselves. It looks like a solid option in all scenarios. It does provide a nice defensiveboost via Pact of the Apocalypse, making it a really strong defensive choiceoverall.

The San'layn Hero Talents revolve around the Vampiric Strike ability.This is a random proc off your Death Coil/ Epidemic which turnsyour Scourge Strike/ Clawing Shadows into Vampiric Strikefor the next cast. Vampiric Strike heals your for 2% of your max HP,and provides the Essence of the Blood Queen buff. This buff can stack up to7 times, and a large part of the San'layn gameplay is to try and keep this buff up.We also have very strong synergy with DoTs, which does result in some degenerategameplay!

The gameplay loop of San'layn looks something like this: Pop Dark Transformation, giving you unlimited Vampiric Strikefor its duration via Gift of the San'layn. Prioritise Scourge Strike tostack up your Essence of the Blood Queen buff, as well as increase theduration of your Dots via Infliction of Sorrow. Once your DTfinishes, consume your DoT for a large hit. Pray you get a proc in such a way that your Essence of the Blood Queenlasts until the next Dark Transformation window and then repeat.

The priority change during Dark Transformation gives the treea slightly different feel to play around. Festering Strike gets completelyignored during Dark Transformation! Dropping Essence of the Blood Queenfeels really bad but the bad-luck protection around Vampiric Strike procsmakes this a bit better. The tree presents a disease-focused playstyle that'squite refreshing to play around. The opener gets a bit tricky when tryingto buff your DoT consumption but it is overall pretty straight forward tothink about and optimise.

San'layn also incentivizes us to pick up lots of DoT spells to synergisewith the Infliction of Sorrow mechanic. We want to maximize the amountof hypothetical damage our DoTs would to in their full duration (this is whatthe consumption damage is based off). Therefore, talents like Ebon Feverand Plaguebringer synergize heavily.

Power-wise, San'layn looks good in all situations. Infliction of Sorrowis strong and the Essence of the Blood Queen buff keeps your hastehigh at all times. Defensive-wise, it provides a nice amount of self-healing but not a lotof raw defensive power. It's the tree for running content without a healer, butit won't necessarily prevent you from getting one-shotted.

Below are the Tier Set Bonuses for Unholy Death Knight in The WarWithin. After the wording of the bonus, you will find a brief note/commentarythat is italicized.

• Death Knight Unholy Season 1 2pc — Your minions deal 8% increaseddamage. Completely passive raw damage increase to our minions.
• Death Knight Unholy Season 1 4pc — When you summon a minion, yourHaste is increased by 2%, up to 8% for 8 sec. Works off the summoning of Army of the Dead/ Raise Abomination, Apocalypse, Magus of the Deadand Summon Gargoyle. Very much reliant on Sudden Doom procsvia Doomed Bidding to maintain uptime. Heavily incentivises picking up Doomed Bidding as a talent.

Both set bonuses are completely passive and are not expected to have anygameplay impact.

The tier set favors pet-heavy builds due to the 8% damage increase. Furthermore,it pretty much requires us to pick up Doomed Bidding due to the extrauptime on the 4-set that it provides.

The gain of the tier set very much depends on the talents that end up beingmeta. At best it'll be around 9% total damage. This is roughly in line withmost previous tier sets, which have been sitting at the 10-12% mark.