Unholy Death Knight PvP Guide for Cataclysm Classic

Unholy Death Knight is an incredibly high single target damage class in PvP and master of utility due to countless tools like Death Grip, Lichborne, Anti-Magic Shell, Desecration and Necrotic Strike.

Strengths

• Consistent up time and very difficult to peel off of a target.
• Incredible burst when using cooldowns like Summon Gargoyle.
• Ability to disrupt in multiple ways thanks to abilities like Death Grip.
• Powerful defensive cooldowns especially against incoming Magic damage.

Weaknesses

• Incredibly susceptible to crowd control.
• Struggles when being targeted especially by Physical damage dealers.
• Very limited mobility.
• Reliant on pets and cooldowns to deal damage.

• Glyph of Raise Dead — Increases the Stamina and Strength your ghoul gains from your stats by 40% making it deal considerably more damage and be considerably tankier.
• Glyph of Death Coil — Increases the damage and healing done by your Death Coil by 15%. This is your primary spender of Runic Power and when paired with Lichborne can be used to self-heal in an emergency.
• Glyph of Scourge Strike — Scourge Strike is your primary damage dealing ability so any increase of damage is quite useful.

• Glyph of Strangulate — Causes your Strangulate ability to last two seconds longer when interrupting an enemy, making the silencing effect even more potent.
• Glyph of Death Grip — Allows you to cast Death Grip from 5 yards further, allowing you to more easily close the gap and disrupt enemies.
• Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell — Increases the duration of your Anti-Magic Shell allowing you to avoid more incoming Magic effects.

• Glyph of Blood Tap — Removes the self-damaging portion of your Blood Tap ability.
• Glyph of Death's Embrace — Causes your Death Coil ability to refund 20 Runic Power when used to heal, making self-healing or healing your ghoul a bit more efficient.
• Glyph of Resilient Grip — Instantly refreshes your Death Grip cooldown if the target is immune to the effect.

Make sure to check out our Spells Summary Page first. Having a good understanding of not only what your abilities do but how to optimally use them can often times be the difference between winning or losing in PvP. PvP will require you to constantly change your priorities from dealing damage, to surviving or having to peel to keep one of your teammates alive so knowing how to best use your spells will give you the best chance at victory!

1. Outbreak — to apply diseases to your target, if Outbreak isn't available sure Icy Touch and Plague Strike.
2. Necrotic Strike — Can be used to reduce the healing your target takes, it is often times better to deal damage with Scourge Strike but always consider using this especially when attacking a Healer.
3. Chains of Ice — Use this to slow your enemy so you can stick to your target.
4. Death Grip — Use this to immediately close the gap on your enemy or as an impromptu interrupt.
5. Festering Strike — While not typically used in PvP this can be used to maintain your diseases.
6. Death Strike — Use this to help survive large incoming damage, it is rare that you will want to use this over a higher damaging ability like Scourge Strike, but sometimes you will need to make the decision to self-heal to survive.
7. Death Coil — Acts as your primary spender of Runic Power. This can be used to deal damage to stack Shadow Infusion for Dark Transformation, but can also be used on yourself with Lichborne active to heal yourself or on your ghoul to keep it alive.
8. Mind Freeze — Interrupts your targets spell casting, use this early and often to mitigate incoming damage or stop your target from healing.

Unholy Death Knight deals most of its damage via cooldowns like Summon Gargoyle and Dark Transformation.

• Summon Gargoyle — 3-minute cooldown. Use this to summon a gargoyle that will deal massive damage to your target over 30 seconds, this scales directly with your current buffs so if possible pair with any Strength or Attack Power procs.
• Dark Transformation — Instantly transforms your ghoul into an empowered version of itself greatly increasing the damage it deals. This should be used as often as Shadow Infusion stacks allow.
• Anti-Magic Shell — 45-second cooldown. Absorbs Magic damage up to 75% of your total health, this also renders you immune to Magic effects while it is active.
• Icebound Fortitude — 3-minute cooldown. Reduces your damage taken.
• Dark Simulacrum — applies a debuff to an enemy that allows the Death Knight to duplicate the next spell cast by the enemy. In PvP this can be incredibly powerful if you are able to predict a big cooldown like Divine Shield from a Paladin.
• Empower Rune Weapon — is a five-minute cooldown that instantly resets the cooldown of all of your Runes and grants you twenty five Runic Power. This ability is best used when you have depleted most if not all of your Runes.
• Death Pact — instantly sacrifices your ghoul healing you for 25% of your maximum health. While our ghoul is a massive part of our damage you will deal no damage while dead so it is important to keep this cooldown in mind when taking large incoming damage.

Death Knight has three different presences to choose from, Blood Presence, Unholy Presence and Frost Presence. In PvP we will primarily be using Unholy Presence but there are rare situations where we will be using Blood Presence in an effort to survive incoming damage but the damage reduction is rarely worth the damage loss as you will often times be too far behind to regain control of the situation.

• Blood Presence — increases your Stamina by 8%, the armor contribution of your gear by 55%, and all incoming damage taken is reduced by 8%.
• Unholy Presence — increases your attack speed and Rune regeneration rate by 10% and movement speed by 15% as well as reducing the global cooldown on your abilities by 0.5 seconds.
• Frost Presence — damage and Runic Power generation by 10%.

While trying to get the most out of your Unholy Death Knight in Cataclysm PvP, these are the professions we recommend:

1. Blacksmithing — Gives you access to two additional gem sockets in your Gloves and Writs allowing you to add Strength or Resilience depending on if you feel like you need to become tankier or you need to deal more damage.
2. Engineering — allows you access to the Engineering Helmet Reinforced Bio-Optic Killshades which can be socketed with Cogwheels increasing your Resilience and another secondary stat of your choosing by 208 as well as Synapse Springs which pairs incredibly with your Summon Gargoyle cooldown.

The list linked below includes the best possible gear setup for an Death Knight in PvP.

Unholy Death Knight is an incredibly versatile class that can synergize well with many other classes. Highlighted below are some of the strongest arena comps in the game to help you decide what best to pair with your Death Knight.