Unholy Death Knight Raid Guide (2024)

When to Use This Spec

This is the default loadout going into any boss unless specified otherwise. This build is quite close to the pure single target build in damage output on single target, so it is a very small loss to gain a considerable amount of AoE damage. You have to adjust the class talent tree based on the utility needed for the encounter and to make your life easier, boss-specific talent loadouts are available in theRaids section for the last bosses of each Awakened Raid.

Gameplay Altering Talents

Discover all talents that significantly alter your gameplay within the Spec and Class Talent trees. This section gives a concise overview of these talents and their applications but for a more detailed look check out the Rotation andDeep Divesections below.

Spec Tree

• Superstrain
  • Outbreak and any other disease application spell now also applies Frost Fever and Blood Plague at 80% effectiveness.
• Morbidity
  • Increases damage taken per disease applied meaning you always want your diseases up before hitting anything.
• Ebon Fever
  • Causes all diseases to deal 12% more damage in half the duration. This effectively increases all of your disease damage by 130%.
• Infected Claws
  • A major factor in why you don't constantly press Festering Strike as this gives roughly 8 Festering Wounds per minute.
  • Every hit in multi-target situations from Sweeping Claws has a separate chance of applying a Festering Wound, meaning you don't have to constantly Festering Strike multiple targets.
• Apocalypse
  • Bursts up to 4 Festering Wounds on the target, summoning 4 ghouls that deal damage for 15 seconds.
• Raise Abomination
  • Replaces Army of the Dead, instead summoning an abomination that applies all diseases when it spawns in a small radius around it and applies a Festering Wound on each of its' auto attacks for 30 seconds.
• Unholy Assault
  • Puts 4 Festering Wounds on your target and Increases your damage by 20% for 20 seconds.

Class Tree

• Soul Reaper
  • Used rotationally when hitting enemies under 35% health.
• Cleaving Strikes
  • Cleaving Strikes allows your Scourge Strike to hit up to 7 additional enemies while you are standing in Death and Decay or when you have the buff from recently standing in your Death and Decay.
• Abomination Limb
  • Grips enemies to you for 12 seconds with a minimum range of 8 yards and a max range of 20 yards as well as dealing a decent amount of damage over the duration.
• Runic Attenuation
  • A very nice source of passive Runic Power generation to help smooth your rotation out.
• Anti-Magic Zone and Assimilation
  • Your raid cooldown that lasts for either 8 seconds or until 150% of your maximum health has been absorbed in total by everyone standing in the zone.
  • Talenting into Assimilation makes this absorb 10% stronger, 165% of your maximum health, and have a 30 second reduced cooldown.
• Null Magic
  • Reduces your magic damage taken by 10% and reduces the the duration of harmful magic effects by 35%. While the reduced magic damage portion of Null Magic works against all magic damage, the reduced duration of harmful magic effects does not work on the vast majority of debuffs in the raid as that could simply break too many things. If it is important, the debuffs that this works on and does not work on are noted in the Raids section.
• Vestigial Shell
  • Puts a Lesser Anti-Magic Shell on 2 nearby allies that absorbs a small amount of damage and reduces the duration of some harmful magic effects. This does not have any immune capabilities and just acts as a shield on your allies that can reduce the duration of some harmful magic effects.
• Death's Echo
  • Gives you 2 charges of Death and Decay, Death's Advance and Death Grip.
• Will of the Necropolis
  • Reduces all damage taken by 35% when below 30% health, including the portion of the hit that takes you below 30%. For example, if you take a hit that takes you from 60% to 10%, the portion of the hit below 30% of your health is reduced by 35%
• Unholy Endurance
  • Transforms Lichborne into a defensive cooldown and increases the amount of Leech it grants.
• Unyielding Will
  • Anti-Magic Shell's cooldown is increased by 20 seconds but it removes all harmful magic effects when cast. While this says all, it doesn't mean all as removing certain debuffs could potentially break encounters if some debuffs were removed early. Make sure to check the Raids section in this guide to see what you can and can't remove on a fight by fight basis.
• Gloom Ward
  • Increases all absorbs on you by 15%, this is incredibly powerful as it increases the absorb of spells like Anti-Magic Shell and Power Word: Shield and other similar abilities.

When to Use This Spec

You will want to use this spec whenever you come to a boss that is purely single target. As this is only a pure single target build, you will only use this on a few bosses

Talent Adjustments

Listing all the changes within the Class and Spec tree compared to the default build.

• Added
  • Commander of the Dead
    • Dark Transformation now buffs all summoned minions by 35% for 30 seconds.
  • Unholy Aura
    • All enemies within 8 yards of you take 20% increased damage from all pets.
• Removed
  • Morbidity
  • Superstrain

When to Use This Spec

This spec will likely only be used on 1 fight, The Primal Council in Vault of the Incarnates.

Talent Adjustments

Listing all the changes within the Class and Spec tree compared to the default build.

• Added
  • Bursting Sores
    • When you pop your Festering Wounds, they now do increased damage and deal damage in an area around them.
  • Defile
    • Replaces Death and Decay making it deal increased damage and reducing the cooldown to 20 seconds.
  • Menacing Magus
    • Allows your Magus of the Dead to cleave with Shadow Bolt.
  • Vile Contagion
    • On a 45 second cooldown, you can now spread your current target's Festering Wounds to 7 nearby enemies.
• Removed
  • Ghoulish Frenzy
  • Harbinger of Doom
  • Rotten Touch

Offensive Cooldown Usage on Boss

Boss Tips

• Unholy Death Knights can go on either add or boss duty so you need to adjust your cooldowns for that. The above timeline is for boss damage only, but if you are on adds the timings are delayed for your 4th and 5th casts of both Dark Transformation and Apocalypse to extract their maximum potential on add waves.
• In the first phase of the fight it is recommended to use Anti-Magic Shell on Greatstaff of the Broodkeeper when you pop 4 eggs on the first cast and on the overlap at 1:11 with Greatstaff of the Broodkeeper and Frozen Shroud at the same time.
• In phase 2 of the boss, you can use Anti-Magic Shell on every Frozen Shroud as the cooldown is just slightly longer than 40 seconds.

Offensive Cooldown Usage

Defensive Cooldown Usage

Utility Cooldown Usage

Boss Tips

• The macro below allows your Mind Freeze to automatically target a Volatile Spark. You can also replace Mind Freeze with Death Grip in a different macro for the same effect.

/tar boss1/targetenemy/focus/tar player/tar focus/tar boss1/targetlasttarget/cast [harm,nodead] Mind Freeze/tar boss1

Phase 1

• ‍Volatile Currentspawns Sparks that need to be dealt with. As an Unholy Death Knight, your toolkit is the following:
  • Mind Freeze
    • You can kick 1 Spark and remove 1 stack.
  • Blinding Sleet
    • Removes 1 stack from all Sparks in front of you and should be used every other wave.
  • Death Grip
    • Removes 1 stack from 1 Spark. This is best used on distant Sparks that ranged spawn and have issues clearing.
• Use Death's Advance on Hurricane Wing to prevent being pushed out of melee.

Intermission 1

• If you are on the Frost side, you can pre-use Anti-Magic Shell to prevent the application of Shattering Shroud.
• Death Grip is especially nice to bring the Stormseeker Acolytes to your stack after dodging Lightning Devastation as they tend to stand and cast in the back if they are not interrupted.

Phase 2

• Use Death's Advance on Tempest Wing and stand under the boss so you are not stacked with other people and take less damage.

Phase 3

• DO NOT use Death's Advance on Magnetic Charge as this is a bad idea since Lightning Breath is likely to be aimed you and it is easier to dodge.
• Use Death's Advance on Tempest Wing and stand under the boss so you are not stacked with other people and take less damage.

Offensive Cooldown Usage

Boss Tips

• You can pre immune the application of Volcanic Heart with Anti-Magic Shell OR before the debuff expires you can Anti-Magic Shell to prevent the application of the DoT effect on yourself only. Do not do this on top of your group.
• If you are targeted with Rushing Darkness, you can Anti-Magic Shell and Death's Advance to not get silenced or knocked back.
• In phase 3, you can prevent the application of Ebon Destruction by pressing Anti-Magic Shell just before the cast ends. You still need to be in a Sundered Reality portal to not die however.

Offensive Cooldown Usage

Defensive Cooldown Usage

Boss Tips

Phase 1

• Use your Death's Advance on Oppressing Howl while running in to prevent the knockback at the very start of the fight.
• Anti-Magic Shell can prevent the application of Scorching Detonation DoT on you.

Phase 2

• You can prevent the application of Infinite Duress by having Anti-Magic Shell up at the time of the cast so you should ensure that this does not happen as it can screw with the flow of the fight more than it helps. Be sure to Death's Advance on the dispel so you do not get displaced.
• Death Grip is extremely useful to help get the adds in and out of Desolate Blossom if they are stuck or if you still need to remove Rescind.
• As a Death Knight you have a ranged kick with‍Mind Freezeso be sure to keep and eye on‍Cosmic Volley to help kick it.
• With‍Blinding Sleetyou can AoE Stop‍Blasting Screamwhenever it's needed.

Phase 3

• Infinite Duress is present again so ensure you do not immune it.
• Embrace of Nothingness is the big soaking mechanic in this phase so you want to use Anti-Magic Shell on it as it grants a large amount of Runic Power.

Offensive Cooldown Usage

Boss Tips

• DO NOT use Death's Advance on the World In Flames knockback as this has an extremely high likelihood of spawning Living Flames inside of the boss, preventing you from gaining stacks of the damage buff and in turn buffing the boss.
• You should use Anti-Magic Shell on the first set of Brand of Damnation or Flame Waves if it is available so that you can have it back up for the intermission.
• In the intermission, you use Anti-Magic Shell to prevent yourself from running out of melee.
  • First World In Flames
    • Use Anti-Magic Shell when you want to stay in melee and it forces you to run out to the third ring. As you are forced out to the third ring twice, you can do this at either time but you want to use whenever it is best for you.
  • Second World In Flames
    • Anti-Magic Shell when it forces you out to the far ring as you don't want to run out that far.
  • Third World In Flames
    • You can use this for Runic Power as needed since it does not force you out of melee.
  • Fourth World In Flames
    • Anti-Magic Shell when it forces you out to the far ring as you don't want to run out that far.

Offensive Cooldown Usage

Defensive Cooldown Usage

Boss Tips

• You can pre-immune Mass Entanglement if you use Anti-Magic Shell before the end of the cast.
  • You are forced to do this on the 2nd wave of Mass Entanglement in Phase 1 to live.
• Death's Advance prevents the pushback from Typhoon so you can easily dodge the Fire Beams in the intermission.

Offensive Cooldown Usage

Boss Tips

• Be sure to use Anti-Magic Shell if it looks like you are about to be hit by 2 Blazes or if you have Blaze and Wildfire is about to happen. You can also use it on Dream Rend to prevent damage while everyone is moving and less healing is happening.

Phase 1

• Use Death's Advance to negate the pull in from Dream Rend.

Intermission

• Death's Advance will negate the knock-up from Incarnate so you can immediately run to your soaking position without taking the Demonic Gateway.

Phase 2

• Death Grip and talenting in to Death's Reach allows you to bring the very far Screaming Souls in to the stack. This is incredibly important and pretty much the only reason to bring a Death Knight!
• Abomination Limb also allows you grip in Screaming Souls up to 20 yards from your position so you can use this on whichever add wave your group prefers to immensely help with grouping them.

Phase 3

• Anti-Magic Shell prevents the debuff after Apocalypse Roar from being applied to you, even if it breaks, negating any significant damage you take in this phase.

Below you are presented with a good list of farmable alternatives that are obtainable outside of WoW’s weekly lockout system. While replaced in time as you progress, these offer immediate character power.

/cast [@cursor] Anti-Magic Zone

/cast [@cursor] Death and Decay

/cast [@player] Death and Decay