[Unholy Death Knight] Mythic+ Guide (8.1.0)

[Arkod]

Unholy Death Knight

8.1.0 updated version

Content:

Core Abilities

Talents

Azerite Traits

Stats and BiS gear

Rotation


Hello everyone, I am Arkod and on this guide I am going to give a better understanding about how Unholy Death Knight should be played in order to optimize your performances.

First of all, let's see which are your Core Abilities:

Outbreak (used in order to keep up our DoT, Virulent Plague on targets)

Festering Strike (your main festering wounds generator)

Scourge Strike (your main festering wounds spender)

Death Coil (your main runic power spender)

Death and Decay (used in combination with Scourge Strike can result into huge AoE damage capabilities whenever you encounter trash packs)

Apocalypse (it will help you out whenever you need to burst down enemies)

Dark Transformation (you want to keep this off cooldown most of the time, unless a huge pack of trash is about to be engaged by the dungeon group)

Epidemic (even though this is no longer a staple in the unholy death knight's kit, it's still worth mentioning)



Talents:

Now, there is a little bit of a diversity when it comes to talents which can be used, so lets see how the most popular one looks like.



This build has a lot of damage potential and with [b]Reaping as the seasonal affix it will most likely keep growing in popularity among the community.

The idea behind it is to make every Death and Decay window count like there is no tomorrow. It may look odd at first to see Epidemic excluded from the core, however, seems like the seasonal affix really gives Pestilence the opportunity to shine.

Your setup is basically untouched, but you will find it a little bit faster-paced now due to the Dark Transformation + Death and Decay windows occurring more frequently due to Death Coil being your source of Runic Power dumping 90% of the time.

Azerite Traits:

For those of you who aren't familiar with the concept of Azerite Traits, I'll try to explain on this section as good as I can. These traits can be acquired on Head, Shoulders and Chest armor pieces, coming in a number of three combinations (so far for 8.0.1 gear pieces). Even though their effect may not be as impactful as the one of Legion's legendaries, they are still providing quite a major advantage and, in some cases, even influence your rotation. So, let's have a look at some of them:

Festermight : your absolute BiS choice in any scenario, you want two of these in your gear.

Magus of the Dead : your other sought after trait. It's ideal to have one of these since it provides quite a lot of damage (keep in mind that this trait is more focused on single-target so it may be a little bit worse than Helchains in dungeons where trash packs are all over the place)

Harrowing Decay : I'd recommend this trait only if you don't have the option to pick neither one of the traits mentioned above (you can combo this with the talent Harbinger of Doom but overall the results won't be as satisfying as the ones with the first build.)

Helchains: This is currently tied up with Magus of the Dead in terms of how impactful it can be. You can pick this one in dungeons flooded with a lot of trash packs since Magus is a little pit more single-target oriented.

Stats and BiS gear:

Unholy is a versatile spec so you can "play" with your stats to some extent.
Ideally, you want to focus them on the following order:

Strength > Mastery > Haste > Critical Strike

Mastery, unlike on 8.0.1, has become way more valuable now, we wait it as high as possible, ideally over 70% since it has a huge impact on our cleave windows and overall everywhere else.

Next, Haste should be as high as possible too, ideally between 23% to 30%, the more you got, the better it is for single-target scenarios in order for your character to keep being relevant there too.

Last but not least,Critical Strike, should be at around 10-15%.

Don't try to aim for all stats at once, do it at your own pace once a satisfying percent of mastery has been reached.

Now that we saw which are the stats, let's look at the gear and which items may or may not be wise choices.

Head: Helm of Abyssal Malevolence Why? Magus of the Dead, Festermight and Overwhelming Power all in one piece of gear

Shoulders: Dyno-Sprocket Spaulders Why? Magus of the Dead + Festermight

Chest: Sea Swell Chestplate or Sinister Gladiator's Plate Chestpiece Why? Magus of the Dead, Festermight and Overwhelming Power

Cloak: Drape of the Loyal Vassal

Bracers: Sinister Gladiator's Plate Vambraces

Hands: Grips of the Everlasting Guardian

Belt: Girdle of Pestilent Purification

Legs: Sharkwater Waders

Feet: Sinister Gladiator's Plate Warboots

Rings: Sinister Gladiator's Band - Footbomb Championship Ring

Trinkets: Here we have a little bit more freedom in picking the gear. However, the following ones are the trinkets which you should aim for

1. Vial of Animated Blood

2. Sinister Gladiator's Insignia

3. Prism of Dark Intensity

4. Rezan's Gleaming Eye

5. Ramping Amplitude Gigavolt Engine

Any of the items mentioned above can be swapped with different ones which provide similar stats, so don't worry if you are missing some of them.

Rotation:

Our main resources are runic power and runes so it's important to get the best out of them. In this section we will see how this can be done:

First of all, always start with Outbreak. This will apply Virulent Plague to your target and the enemies which surround it.

The next ability which you want to use is Dark Transformation (usually we keep this one off cooldown, even better if we have Helchains as one of our azerite traits, even though it is nowhere near as good as the BiS ones mentioned previosuly).

Now that we applied our DoT and transformed our ghoul, it's time to use Festering Strike in order to put some Festering Wounds on enemies.

Differently to the 8.0.1 rotation, we will no longer waste our runes by using [url=Festering Strike on multiple targets thanks to our new entry into the core abilties Pestilence.

Do not hesitate to use Apocalypse and Army of the dead whenever you get the opportunity. Sometimes is better to dump them on trash patrols, especially on the weeks when the main concern isn't caused by the bosses of the instance which you're doing.

As mentioned above, we use runic power and runes so it's important to not waste valuable resources. We can avoid this by tracking them. For instance, if you are already close or at the runic power cap but Death and Decay is still active, instead of using another Scourge Strike you can dump some of that runic power via Death Coil, avoiding the rune overcap.

I hope that this post helped out some of you. Feel free to pm me on forum or discord if you got any questions.

[Ayro]

Well done!

Looks a lot better

We all pay eventually