WoW The War Within: Unholy Death Knight Build

Jonas Author

Created - 14.01.2025 Updated - 15.01.2025

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Finding a good and exciting DPS class in WoW is hard. But if you want one of the more popular ones in the game right now, then check out our WoW The War Within Unholy Death Knight build. Much like our Hunter Beast Mastery build, this is perfect for raids, PvP, and more.

Building a new character takes a lot of work. So if you want to make it quicker on your end, make sure to check out our RPG Stash store for excellent deals on WoW gold first.

Stat Priority

Our primary stat is Strength. Strength is always going to be the key stat for increasing your damage as an Unholy Death Knight, and it should be prioritized above all else.

In terms of secondary stats, you can follow the priority listed here, but always remember: as you acquire higher-level gear, it’s generally better to focus on item level. Only when comparing pieces of gear with the same item level should you worry about secondary stats.

For example, if you have a choice between two pieces of gear, one with better secondary stats but a lower item level, and one with a higher item level, the higher item level piece is usually the better upgrade.

Here’s a breakdown of the secondary stats and their importance:

1. Mastery: As an Unholy Death Knight in "The War Within," Mastery increases the damage of your minions—which you’ll have quite a few of. Mastery also boosts the damage of your shadow abilities, so it's a great stat to stack for maximizing your overall damage. Given that your minions are a significant part of your damage output, this stat is highly valuable.
2. Haste: Haste improves your attack speed and also affects your Rune regeneration. One of the key resources for a Death Knight is Runes, and having more Haste means your Runes regenerate faster, allowing you to use your abilities more often. More Haste translates into higher uptime on your abilities and more overall damage.
3. Versatility: This stat is very versatile (pun intended). Versatility increases your damage done, healing done, and reduces the damage you take. It's a solid all-around stat that benefits you both offensively and defensively.
4. Critical Strike: Critical Strike increases your chances to deal double damage or healing. This is a great stat for bursting down enemies, but it doesn't have the same overall impact as Mastery or Haste when it comes to maximizing your overall DPS as an Unholy Death Knight.

Set Bonus

Now, let’s look at our set bonuses for this season:

• Two-set bonus: This bonus increases the damage of your minions. Given that your minions play a central role in your damage output, this set bonus significantly boosts your DPS.
• Four-set bonus: When you summon a minion, your Haste is increased by 2%, stacking up to 8% for 8 seconds. This bonus makes your Haste even more valuable when you’re actively summoning your minions. The faster your Haste is, the quicker your abilities regenerate, leading to more damage in a shorter amount of time.

Utilities & Defensives

Next, we’re going to dive into the utilities and defensives available to Unholy Death Knights in The War Within. While there are many spells and abilities you could have in your spellbook or talent tree, we’ll focus on the most important ones for you to know and use in combat.

Some other abilities might be useful in niche situations, but these are the core ones that will serve you well in most encounters.

Path of Frost

This ability is excellent for utility. Path of Frost lasts for 10 minutes and allows you to walk on water by freezing the water beneath your feet. While it might not be needed often in raids, it’s particularly useful in Mythic Plus dungeons, where certain encounters require mobility over bodies of water. In PvP or special circumstances, Path of Frost can also be a lifesaver.

Chains of Ice

Chains of Ice is a crowd control ability that can freeze your target in place. It reduces the movement speed by 70% for 8 seconds and costs 1 Rune. While it only affects one target at a time, it can be a lifesaver for slowing down enemies that are too close to you or your allies. Use it to keep enemies in place or to control the pace of an encounter.

Mind Freeze

On a 15-second cooldown, Mind Freeze is your interrupt. This is your "kick" ability, and it’s crucial for preventing enemies from casting dangerous abilities. Be sure to use Mind Freeze at the right moments to stop your enemies’ spellcasting and protect your team from harmful effects.

Death Pact

Death Pact is a defensive cooldown that heals you for 50% of your maximum health but absorbs incoming healing equal to 30% of your maximum health for 15 seconds. It’s a great way to regain a large portion of health in a pinch, but it also absorbs any incoming healing during that time. It’s an excellent tool for surviving tough situations where you need a quick burst of healing.

Raise Ally

While Death Knights don’t typically have the ability to resurrect others, they do have a battle res ability called Raise Ally. This allows you to resurrect a fallen ally during combat, which can be a game-changer in high-stakes situations like Mythic Plus or raids. Raise Ally has a long cooldown, but it’s invaluable when your team needs a quick recovery.

Icebound Fortitude

This defensive ability freezes your blood and grants immunity to all stuns. It also reduces damage taken by 30% for a short time. Icebound Fortitude is an excellent cooldown for when you need to reduce incoming damage and avoid being stunned during difficult encounters. It’s crucial for staying alive in tough fights.

Anti-Magic Zone

Anti-Magic Zone places a zone around you that reduces spell damage taken by your party and raid members by 20% for 8 seconds. This ability is particularly helpful in situations where you need to mitigate a significant amount of magical damage, such as certain boss fights or high-damage AoE spells. It’s also useful for protecting your allies when dealing with magic-heavy enemies.

Lichborne

Lichborne draws upon Unholy energy to make you undead for 12 seconds. During this time, your leech increases by 6%, you take less damage, and you become immune to charm and fear effects.

This is a fantastic ability for increasing your survivability, as it gives you extra leech (which heals you based on the damage you deal) and makes you harder to control with debuffs like fear or charm.

These are the core utilities and defensive abilities that you’ll want to know about as an Unholy Death Knight in The War Within.

While there are other niche abilities like Death Grip, Control Undead, and others that may come in handy in specific situations, these are the key ones that will help you survive and thrive in both raiding and Mythic Plus content.

By using your abilities effectively, you’ll be able to maximize your contribution to your team and crush your enemies with the power of death and decay.

Raid Rotation

Now, let’s dive into the exciting part: the raid rotation for Unholy Death Knights! This rotation can be complex, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes an exhilarating and powerful way to deal damage.

We'll start with the basics and then layer in the specific details, including hero talents that really bring out the strength of the Unholy Death Knight in The War Within.

Hero Talent: Rider of the Apocalypse

One of my absolute favorite hero talents for Unholy Death Knights is Rider of the Apocalypse. It's all about the four horsemen and brings a lot of flavor and power to your rotation. It's a fun ability that I highly recommend using in both Mythic Plus and raiding.

But before we get into those specific details, let’s first go over the general rotation.

Pre-Combat Setup: Raise Dead

Before you even engage in combat, ensure that your Raise Dead ability is active. You can only have one ghoul fighting for you at a time, but your ghoul is a vital source of damage throughout the encounter.

As an Unholy Death Knight, you also have Runic Power and Runes to manage. Your abilities will use Runic Power, and your Runes will be consumed by other abilities, then regenerate over time. It’s all about managing these resources efficiently to maximize your damage output.

Core Rotation

1. Soul Reaper (Priority Ability)
• Cooldown: 6 seconds
• When to Use: You should use Soul Reaper when the target is at or below 35% health—or when it will be within the next few seconds. The ability strikes the enemy with Shadow Frost damage and applies Soul Reaper to them. If the target's health drops below 35% within 5 seconds, the ability explodes, dealing massive damage.
• TLDR: Only use Soul Reaper if the target is at or below 35% health or about to drop below that threshold.
2. Death Coil
• When to Use: Use Death Coil when you have over 80 Runic Power or when you get a Sudden Doom proc (more on this below).
• Sudden Doom: Sudden Doom is an ability where your auto attacks have a chance to make your next Death Coil cost 10 Runic Power less and critically strike. Additionally, it will burst a festering wound (we’ll get into festering wounds shortly).
3. Festering Strike (For Festering Wounds)
• When to Use: Festering Strike applies two to three festering wounds to the target. Festering Wounds are pestilent lesions that will burst upon death or when they are damaged by Choring Shadows, causing Shadow damage and generating Runic Power. Make sure you use this ability to stack festering wounds on the target.
4. Harbinger of Doom (Sudden Doom Talent)
• Effect: This talent makes Sudden Doom trigger more often and can accumulate two charges. It also increases the damage of Death Coil by 20% or Epidemic by 10%. While Epidemic isn’t used in the raid rotation, this talent ensures that Death Coil becomes even more powerful.
5. Scourge Strike / Clawing Shadows
• What is Scourge Strike?: It deals damage and bursts festering wounds. However, in The War Within, Clawing Shadows replaces Scourge Strike. It deals damage and bursts festering wounds in a similar fashion.
• When to Use: Use Clawing Shadows when you need to burst festering wounds.
6. Outbreak
• When to Use: Use Outbreak to apply Virulent Plague. This deals Shadow damage to the target and infects nearby enemies with Virulent Plague, a disease that deals damage over 27 seconds. When the infected target dies, it erupts, causing more Shadow damage to nearby enemies.
7. Choring Shadows
• When to Use: Use Choring Shadows when you have festering wounds on the target. It will deal massive damage, especially if you have Rotten Touch (which is granted after using Death Coil with Sudden Doom). Rotten Touch increases the damage of Choring Shadows by 50%.
8. Festering Strike (Alternative)
• When to Use: If you only have two or fewer festering wounds on the target, use Festering Strike to apply more festering wounds.
9. Death Coil for Death Rot
• When to Use: Use Death Coil to apply Death Rot, which debuffs the enemy, causing them to take more Shadow damage from you. This debuff lasts for up to 10 seconds. If Death Coil consumes Sudden Doom, it will apply two stacks of Death Rot, which is highly beneficial for increasing your overall damage.
10. Choring Shadows for Additional Damage
• When to Use: If you have three or more festering wounds but don't have Rotten Touch active, use Choring Shadows. If you have nothing else to use, Death Coil is your next best option to burn through excess Runic Power.

Using Cooldowns

Once you’re familiar with the core rotation, you can incorporate your cooldowns to significantly increase your damage output:

1. Abomination Limb
   • This ability summons an additional limb that deals significant damage and pulls in enemies, increasing your control and AoE damage.
2. Apocalypse
   • Apocalypse brings down doom upon the enemy, dealing massive damage and bursting up to four festering wounds. It also summons an army of ghouls that will further aid in your damage output.
3. Dark Transformation
   • Dark Transformation turns your ghoul into a powerful Undead monstrosity for 15 seconds. During this time, the ghoul deals damage to five nearby targets and becomes much more powerful, gaining 100% energy. Use this ability whenever it’s available to maximize your ghoul’s damage.
4. Riders of the Apocalypse (Hero Talent)
   • This talent is absolutely insane! It summons the Riders of the Apocalypse (each representing one of the four horsemen) to fight for you, significantly increasing your damage output. The Unholy Frenzy it triggers boosts your overall damage by 20%, making this an incredibly powerful moment in your rotation.
5. Raise Abomination
   • This ability raises an Abomination to fight for you for 30 seconds. The Abomination will apply festering wounds to enemies with each melee attack and infect nearby targets with Virulent Plague.

The Unholy Death Knight raid rotation in The War Within is both intricate and extremely fun. Your goal is to apply festering wounds, manage your Runic Power effectively, use your cooldowns at the right times, and keep up Virulent Plague on your enemies.

Once you master the rotation, you’ll find that your damage output becomes not only powerful but highly rewarding. Keep up with Soul Reaper at low health, use Death Coil for Sudden Doom procs, and make the most of your cooldowns to maximize your damage.

Now that we’ve covered the raid rotation, let’s move on to the Mythic Plus rotation in the next section.

Mythic+ Rotation

When transitioning to the Mythic+ rotation for Unholy Death Knights, you'll notice several talent changes aimed at optimizing AoE (area-of-effect) damage, which is crucial for dealing with packs of enemies.

While this rotation may look quite different from the single-target raid rotation, it’s actually a bit more straightforward once you get used to it. The goal here is to effectively spread your diseases and burst festering wounds on multiple enemies while managing Runic Power and Runes.

As always, the first step when entering combat is to get your Raise Dead ability up. This will summon your ghoul to fight for you. You can only have one ghoul at a time, but it plays a crucial role in your overall damage output.

Core Rotation

1. Scourge Strike (Plaguebringer Focus)
   • When to Use: In Mythic+, use Scourge Strike instead of Clawing Shadows due to the Plaguebringer talent. This causes your disease damage to occur at double speed, enhancing disease spread efficiency.
   • Priority: Keep Plaguebringer active at all times using Scourge Strike.
2. Abomination
   • When to Use: Summon Abomination for AoE damage. It applies festering wounds to enemies, contributing significantly to AoE situations.
3. Abomination Limb
   • When to Use: After summoning Abomination, use Abomination Limb to deal AoE damage and pull enemies together for efficient damage dealing.
4. Apocalypse
   • When to Use: Use Apocalypse on enemies with the fewest festering wounds. It bursts festering wounds and summons additional ghouls to boost your damage output.
5. Epidemic
   • When to Use: Cast Epidemic when Sudden Doom procs. It flares Virulent Plague, dealing AoE damage.
   • Additional Benefit: Increases the duration of Dark Transformation by 1 second, keeping your ghoul empowered longer.
6. Dark Transformation
   • When to Use: After Epidemic, cast Dark Transformation. This empowers your ghoul for 15 seconds, significantly boosting its damage output.
7. Festering Strike
   • When to Use: Applies festering wounds to your target. Use it to prepare enemies for bursting with Choring Shadows.
8. Unholy Assault
   • When to Use: Use Unholy Assault to boost your damage and gain a burst of Runic Power. Great for short AoE bursts.
9. Vile Contagion
   • When to Use: Inflicts diseases and spreads festering wounds to nearby enemies. Use on targets with the most festering wounds to maximize spread.
10. Epidemic (Spending Runic Power)
    • When to Use: After Vile Contagion, continue using Epidemic to spend Runic Power and deal AoE damage.
11. Defile
    • When to Use: Place Defile to deal AoE damage over time and increase your Mastery in the area.

1. Defile When to Use: Defile is a powerful AoE ability that deals Shadow damage to all enemies within the targeted area. Use Defile after applying festering wounds to as many targets as possible. Defile will grow in size and deal more damage as enemies stand in it, so make sure to position it well for maximum effect. You also have two charges of Defile, allowing you to use it twice in quick succession if needed.

1. Burst Phase: Enter Defile
   • When to Enter the Burst Phase: The burst phase begins when you cast Defile and spread your diseases. Use Defile to maximize the damage from Scourge Strike, Epidemic, and Dark Transformation.
   • During the Burst Phase: After casting Defile, continue to use Scourge Strike to keep up Plaguebringer, and use Outbreak to refresh Virulent Plague. Follow this up with Epidemic to spread Sudden Doom and burst festering wounds on all enemies. If no targets have festering wounds, use Epidemic to apply them.

1. Repeat the Rotation
   • After Defile has expired, return to the build phase by applying festering wounds and refreshing your diseases on enemies. Reapply Defile when it’s available, and continue this cycle until Defile is off cooldown. Use Scourge Strike, Outbreak, and Epidemic as needed to maintain damage uptime.

The Mythic+ rotation for Unholy Death Knights is all about managing diseases, festering wounds, and maximizing your AoE potential. The key abilities to focus on are Scourge Strike, Epidemic, Defile, and Vile Contagion.

Once you enter the burst phase with Defile, use your cooldowns like Apocalypse and Dark Transformation to boost your damage and make the most of the festering wounds you've applied.

Now that we’ve covered the core rotation for Mythic+, let’s dive into the Rider of the Apocalypse hero talent for Unholy Death Knights! This talent offers some exciting gameplay and adds even more potential for your damage output in Mythic+ and raids.

Wreak Havoc As A Death Knight

The Death Knight is easily one of the top classes in WoW The War Within right now and it’s a good one to use as well. If you want another timeless class, check out our Fury Warrior build. If you want more DPS classes, we’ve got a ranking guide as well.