Unholy Death Knight DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — The War Within (11.0.5)

This build is optimal for your pure Single Target DPS. It synergises well with pet damage, picking up both Unholy Aura and Commander of the Dead to boost all our other pets. It uses the Rider of the Apocalypse Hero Talents. If you prefer to run San'layn, which generally does slightly worse (and is a bit more random in its damage), swap Improved Death Coil for Ebon Fever and Clawing Shadows for Plaguebringer. Also, make sure to select Pact of the San'layn in the Hero Talent tree.

Within the Rider of the Apocalypse tree, there are three choice nodes. Two utility ones and one DPS. For the DPS node, Fury of the Horsemen wins out in all situations. The horsemen themselves deal a great deal of damage, and extending their duration helps to boost this damage significantly. For the utility nodes, we pick Death Charge due to On a Paler Horse not working in a raiding environment. Finally, Horsemen's Aid is great for any encounter with magic damage and magical debuffs vs Pact of the Apocalypse which is more about raw defensive gain.

This tree is our best Single Target option, and we run it on the bosses in the raid where there is no real AoE. Whenever we consider spread AoE or AoE burst, the disease build is what comes into play. Due to this, the spec talents tend to be fixed in place, as we only run them in the pure Single Target scenario.

For the class tree, there's a lot more realistic choice. Above the 20 point delimiter, we don't have too many mandatory spells:

• Death Strike
• Icebound Fortitude
• Runic Attenuation
• Anti-Magic Barrier
• Permafrost
• Icy Talons
• Gloom Ward
• Veteran of the Third War
• Brittle
• Unholy Bond
• Soul Reaper
• Unholy Endurance
• Unholy Ground

Picking these up leaves us with 5 points that we can allocate freely. Cleaving Strikes is mandatory on any cleave fight. Mind Freeze for any fight with interrupt being required. Blinding Sleet if you need AoE CC. Wraith Walk and/or March of Darkness for extra mobility. Anti-Magic Zone and potentially Assimilation to get a nice defensive raid Cooldown. Finally, Enfeeble for some nice passive defensive power. There is simply a lot of choice here, and you can cater your utility to each encounter!

The general choice is to run Unholy Ground on AoE fights and swap it to Enfeeble in pure Single Target.

The bottom part of the tree has a lot less choice. Blood Draw can be exchanged for Runic Protection on fights with a lot of physical damage intake. Furthermore, where you simply do not take any magic damage at all, Null Magic can be allocated to Osmosis or someplace further up the tree. Finally, when you cannot gain particular value from Unyielding Will, this point can be put better to use at Osmosis or, again, further up the tree.

Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the best build directly into your game!

The recommended talents do not account for specific raid encounters (but you can just run it everywhere and be completely fine), which can require a specific talent or build. For a boss-by-boss breakdown of the talent choices for specific encounters, you should check out our dedicated raid page.

This build revolves a lot more around our disease damage, picking up Superstrain instead of going the route to Commander of the Dead. It works really well when our gear is not very optimized, dealing comparable damage to the Commander build. In BiS gear, it does end up being around 4% behind when running the Rider version (1% behind for San'layn). It does really well on multiple fights in the raid due to the prevalence of spread add cleave, really allowing us to leverage our DoTs well.

San'layn and Rider of the Apocalypse do comparable damage with the disease build as a general rule. San'layn does see quite a lot more randomness in its output due to Blood Beast proc randomness. We recommend Rider of the Apocalypse due to more stable DPS throughput as well as the extra mobility from Death Charge.

Within the Rider of the Apocalypse tree, there are three choice nodes. Two utility ones and one DPS. For the DPS node, Fury of the Horsemen wins out in all situations. The horsemen themselves deal a great deal of damage, and extending their duration helps to boost this damage significantly. For the utility nodes, we pick Death Charge due to On a Paler Horse not working in a raiding environment. Finally, Horsemen's Aid is great for any encounter with magic damage and magical debuffs vs Pact of the Apocalypse which is more about raw defensive gain.

Spec talent options in the tree revolve around the target count you are considering. Improved Death Coil gains a significant amount of value on two targets. On a fight like Silken Court, we pick up this talent, sacrificing Ghoulish Frenzy to do so. On encounters with intermittent add cleave, we simply run the default version. It is generally not worthwhile to pick up more AoE in these scenarios since you sacrifice too much Single Target.

For the class tree, there's a lot more realistic choice. Above the 20 point delimiter, we don't have too many mandatory spells:

• Death Strike
• Icebound Fortitude
• Runic Attenuation
• Anti-Magic Barrier
• Permafrost
• Icy Talons
• Gloom Ward
• Veteran of the Third War
• Brittle
• Unholy Bond
• Soul Reaper
• Unholy Endurance
• Unholy Ground

Picking these up leaves us with 5 points that we can allocate freely. Cleaving Strikes is mandatory on any cleave fight. Mind Freeze for any fight with interrupt being required. Blinding Sleet if you need AoE CC. Wraith Walk and/or March of Darkness for extra mobility. Anti-Magic Zone and potentially Assimilation to get a nice defensive raid Cooldown. Finally, Enfeeble for some nice passive defensive power. There is simply a lot of choice here, and you can cater your utility to each encounter!

The general choice is to run Unholy Ground on AoE fights and swap it to Enfeeble in pure Single Target.

The bottom part of the tree has a lot less choice. Blood Draw can be exchanged for Runic Protection on fights with a lot of physical damage intake. Furthermore, where you simply do not take any magic damage at all, Null Magic can be allocated to Osmosis or someplace further up the tree. Finally, when you cannot gain particular value from Unyielding Will, this point can be put better to use at Osmosis or, again, further up the tree.

Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the best build directly into your game!

The recommended talents do not account for specific raid encounters (but you can just run it everywhere and be completely fine), which can require a specific talent or build. For a boss-by-boss breakdown of the talent choices for specific encounters, you should check out our dedicated raid page.

This is your go-to Mythic+ build for all dungeons and affixes. It leverages both disease damage via Superstrain, Ebon Fever, and Plaguebringer, as well as Wounds damage with Bursting Sores.

The build utilises Rider of the Apocalypse but can also be used for San'layn, even if the total damage is not as high. If you do pick San'layn, make sure to always choose Pact of the San'layn in the DPS choice node.

Within the Rider of the Apocalypse tree, there are three choice nodes. Two utility ones and one DPS. For the DPS node, Fury of the Horsemen wins out in all situations. The horsemen themselves deal a great deal of damage, and extending their duration helps to boost this damage significantly. For the utility nodes, we pick Death Charge due to On a Paler Horse not working in a Mythic+ environment. Furthermore, we pick Pact of the Apocalypse for the raw defensive gain.

The primary choice in the spec tree revolves around Vile Contagion. The talent does generate a huge amount of Festering Wounds in AoE, but it takes up 3 GCDs to do so. You can opt to pick up Pestilence instead, or even Festering Scythe if you are keen on that ability. Pestilence is completely passive and enables quicker burst. Festering Scythe takes up GCDs and resources, so it has quite a lot of drawbacks.

For the class tree, we are pretty locked for the most part. Both Blinding Sleet and Mind Freeze are mandatory, along with Cleaving Strikes. Anti-Magic Zone and March of Darkness can be freed up. Coldthirst, Grip of the Dead and Wraith Walk are good options.

Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the best build directly into your game!

An alternative build to your standard Mythic+ build is the Festering Scythe build. This cuts away a significant amount of setup in the rotation and introduces massive scaling. In a dungeon where you can pull big or where the pulls are just too short, this will really excel. The negative aspect is the slightly lower Single Target damage compared to your standard M+ build.

The choice in the talent tree is Vile Contagion vs Pestilence. Vile Contagion brings back the long setup but also generates a significant number of wounds. Pestilence is completely passive but also does not generate as many wounds. We recommend Pestilence as a general rule, as it frees up a lot of GCDs to focus more on dealing raw damage.

For the class tree, we are pretty locked for the most part. Both Blinding Sleet and Mind Freeze are mandatory, along with Cleaving Strikes. Anti-Magic Zone and March of Darkness can be freed up. Coldthirst, Grip of the Dead and Wraith Walk are good options.

Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the best build directly into your game!

When leveling, we prioritise slightly differently compared to our other builds. We want direct up-front damage without any setup, as well as good multi-dot capabilities. Furthermore, mobility matters a lot, which is why we want to pick up On a Paler Horse!

Delves generally does not have the same fight length as Mythic+ content. We, therefore, use a build which requires less setup to start dealing damage!