Cataclysm Classic Unholy Death Knight Talent Builds

Unholy Death Knight has a relatively restrictive talent build but offers some slight flexibility if you find yourself in a situation where your group needs Anti-Magic Zone though it will come at a slight cost of some personal DPS.

This spec goes is focused on maximizing our DPS. This build recommended chooses not to take Anti-Magic Zone which is either incredibly powerful or almost useless depending on the encounter. If you find yourself in a situation where you need to Anti-Magic Zone then we recommended taking one of the points from Runic Power Mastery and one of the points from Improved Blood Tap to finish Magic Suppression and to finally get the Anti-Magic Zone talent.

In this section we will go over some of the key talents you will use when you are playing a Unholy Death Knight. Be sure to understand your most important talents as they are vital to play the build to its fullest strength.

• Virulence — increases the damage dealt by your diseases, as Unholy a ton of your damage will come as a result of applying and maintaining your diseases on as many targets as possible.

• Morbidity — increases the damage dealt by your Death Coil and Death and Decay abilities which are both abilities that will be used often throughout our rotation.

• Unholy Frenzy — increases the Melee and Ranged Haste of the target by 20% while dealing 2% of the targets health as damage to the target effected by Unholy Frenzy for 30 seconds. This is an incredibly powerful buff that is best cast on yourself in order to maximize the effect of your Summon Gargoyle ability.

• Runic Corruption — reduces the Runic Power cost of your Death Coil ability by 6 and causes your Runic Empowerment ability to no longer refresh a depleted Rune but instead increases the rate that your Runes regenerate by 100% for 3 seconds which is a massive net gain in Rune regeneration.

• Shadow Infusion — causes your Death Coil to empower your Ghoul increasing its damage dealt by 6% for 30 seconds, stacking up to 5 times.

• Rage of Rivendare — increases the damage dealt by your Plague Strike, Scourge Strike, and Festering Strike abilities by 45%, all of which are used regularly in our rotation with Plague Strike being our primary Rune spending ability.

• Unholy Blight — causes the target of your Death Coil ability to take 10% of the damage of the Death Coil as an additional damage-over-time effect.

• Dark Transformation — causes your Ghoul to transform into a much more powerful version of itself, this ability consumes 5 stacks of your Shadow Infusion talent but the benefits of transforming your Ghoul will greatly outweigh the damage increase from Shadow Infusion.

• Ebon Plaguebringer — causes your Plague Strike, Icy Touch, Chains of Ice, and Outbreak abilities to increase the Magic damage taken by the target by 8% and increase the damage the target takes by diseases by 30%.

• Sudden Doom — causes your main-hand weapon attacks to have a chance to make your next Death Coil ability to not any Runic Power. Death Coil is an important part of our rotation to not only deal damage but stack Shadow Infusion in order to be able to cast Dark Transformation.

• Summon Gargoyle — summons a Gargoyle minion that deals a massive amount of Shadow damage to a target over the course of 30 seconds. This scales incredibly with any bonus sources of Attack Power like your Golemblood Potion and Attack Speed bonuses like Bloodlust or Unholy Frenzy but keep in mind there is a global cool-down cap so try not to stack Speed bonus increases.

• Bladed Armor — 6 Attack Power for every 180 Armor you have, while this acts as a largely passive damage increase this talent is great as it increases the potency of nearly all of our abilities.

Prime glyphs are new to Cataclysm, giving you a third "row" of glyphs you can use on your character. While there are a couple of different options to choose from, there are some very clear front runners for each specialization.

• Glyph of Scourge Strike — increases the damage dealt by your Scourge Strike ability by 20% which is our primary spender of Unholy and Death Runes.
• Glyph of Raise Dead — gives your summoned ghoul an additional 40% of your Strength and Stamina causing it to scale even better with your current gear and making it much more resilient to damage giving you considerably more uptime on your pet which acts as a large source of your damage.
• Glyph of Death Coil — increases the damage dealt by your Death Coil ability which acts as our main spender of Runic Power.

Major glyphs typically offer utility-based options and can be highly situational. For Unholy there are no real mandatory glyphs, but we have highlighted what we view as the most generally useful.

• Glyph of Dark Succor — causes your next Death Strike while performed in Unholy Presence or Unholy Presence within 15 seconds of killing a target that grants Experience or Honor to heal for at least 20% of your maximum health.
• Glyph of Pestilence — increases the radius of your Pestilence ability by 5 yards making the range of your disease spread much larger allowing you to spread diseases to enemies you may have otherwise missed.
• Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell — increases the duration of our Anti-Magic Shell buff by 2 seconds.

Minor glyphs typically provide very minor benefits. Your choices will typically depend on what quality of life increase is the most meaningful for you.

• Glyph of Horn of Winter — increases the duration of your Horn of Winter ability by 1 minute. This ability is used to generate Runic Power so we will often be using it to do so on cooldown but this can be helpful maintaing the buff when you are otherwise too busy to rebuff.
• Glyph of Resilient Grip — instantly refreshes your Death Grip cooldown on a target that is immune.
• Glyph of Blood Tap — removes the self-damaging component of our Blood Tap ability.