Jan 11

Welcome to Part 7 of the “So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight” series. Today we will talk about the unholy talent tree.
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The Unholy Tree

The unholy tree deals the most magic damage of any of the death knight trees. It focuses on improving the duration and strength of the death knight’s diseases, and also brings significant improvements to the death knight’s ghoul. Furthermore, unholy has arguably the best AoE damage of any death knight spec.

Death Runes

Each death knight talent tree has a talent that causes certain runes to become death runes after using certain abilities. For unholy, this talent is Reaping. This talent changes blood runes into death runes when using Blood Boil and Blood Strike.

Strike

Each death knight talent tree has a talent that gives you a new strike. For unholy, this ability is Scourge Strike.

Scourge Strike is a melee attack that deals its damage as shadow damage–which means that it ignores armor, a boon for both PvE and PvP.

Aura

Each death knight talent tree has a passive aura that affects your party or raid. For unholy, this aura is Unholy Aura, which boosts your raid’s run speed by 15%. There is a lot of disagreement about whether or not Unholy Aura is a good investment of two talent points for PvE raiding–my personal opinion is anything that gets folks out of the (insert random element here) is great, and the aura is a boon to leveling and grinding.

Runic Power Ability

Each death knight talent tree has an ability that uses runic power as it’s 51-point talent. For unholy, this ability is Unholy Blight. Although Unholy Blight isn’t as fun or as useful now as it was during beta, it is still a great spell (especially for 40 runic power come 3.0.8) that deals AoE damage over time to all enemies in range. Great for both AoE tanks and DPSers.

Unholy death knights also have the option of speccing into Summon Gargoyle. This commonly underrated spell does very good damage, and the developers have stated it will be nerfed.

After patch 3.0.8, the ability Corpse Explosion (which currently costs an unholy rune to cast) will cost only runic power, and will do significantly more damage than it does now.

Raid Buffs

Unholy’s most notable “buff” isn’t really a buff at all. Anti-Magic Zone places a stationary, translucent bubble on the ground, and spell damage taken is reduced for anyone inside the dome.

Furthermore, unholy death knights can spec into Ebon Plaguebringer. If they do so, when any of the death knight’s diseases are on a target, that target also takes additional spell damage from any source.

Unholy DPS

Unholy DPS depends heavily on diseases and other magic damage. Talents like Epidemic, Crypt Fever, Ebon Plaguebringer, Wandering Plauge, Rage of Rivendare and Unholy Blight improve disease damage and utility, as well as AoE damage. Unholy also receives a DPS and utilility boost in the form of Master of Ghouls, which causes a summoned ghoul to be treated like a controllable pet with no duration (it will last until it is killed or is dismissed). A MoG ghoul does quite a bit of damage, and should not be scoffed at.

Unholy Tanking

Unholy is a popular tanking spec. The general concensus is that (before patch 3.0.8), unholy is the better tanking tree after a death knight has enough avoidance to keep Bone Shield up for 30 seconds or longer. However, after patch 3.0.8, Bone Shield will only have 20% damage mitigation, instead of 40%, and it seems likely that, at least in theorycrafting, frost will come out ahead, although unholy will remain a solid tanking tree. The additional AoE damage brought by the tree makes it especially popular for AoE tanking 5-mans and heroics.

Unholy DPS Specs

• 17/0/54: Unholy DPS
  This is the basis for most traditional unholy DPS specs. Some of the points are flexible. After patch 3.0.8 brings 70% passive AoE avoidance to ghouls via Night of the Dead, I suspect placing two points here from Desecration will be quite common.

Unholy Tank Specs

• 10/5/56: Tank
  An unholy tank build, while keeping the staple five talent points from each tree, focuses on good AoE threat and additional magic avoidance via Magic Suppression and Anti-Magic Zone. Other points, such as those spent in On a Pale Horse, can be moved around in the talent tree per the tank’s preference. Bladed Armor from the blood tree is popular, as the AP gain from tank gear is quite significant.

Rotations

I will keep track of runic power, but only runic power generated by runic abilities, including the Glyph of Icy Touch. I will take Dirge into account. If you have more runic power during a section where you are dumping runic power, keep doing so until you cannot any longer.

While Death and Decay is our most efficient AoE spell, be sure to be careful with this ability while not tanking–don’t steal aggro!

DPS Rotation

1. Start by applying your diseases by using Icy Touch and Plague Strike:

2. In a single-target scenario, use your blood runes to Blood Strike twice; in an AoE situation, use Pestilence and then Blood Boil (the AoE situation steals a death rune from you, which causes you to miss out on a Plague Strike later–simpy replace it with Blood Strikes):

or

3. Now ScourgeStrike:

4. Use Summon Gargoyle or Death Coil (or Unholy Blight in an AoE situation) to dump runic power (one global cooldown):

//

5. Wait for your frost and unholy runes to cool…

…and cast Scourge Strike again:

6. Now wait for your second death rune to cool…

…and Scourge Strike once more:

7. If your diseases are still up, you can Scourge Strike yet again. Otherwise, Icy Touch and Plague Strike applies the diseases:

/

8. You’ve got a bunch of runic power, use it on your Gargoyle, Death Coil, or Unholy Blight:

//

9. Time to repeat the rotation.

Tanking Rotation

For a tanking rotation, follow the guidelines in the tanking article.

Related posts:

1. Tanking as an Unholy Death Knight
2. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Blood Tree
3. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Frost Tree
4. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Basics
5. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight