Unholy Death Knight PvE

[positiv2 953]

This thread is for comments about our Unholy Death Knight Shadowlands Guide.

[Guest Wildmoonsister]

Now that the pre-patch is live, I was hoping for more conversation on the Unholy DK information about the total of 7 rune options with which to rune a Death Knights weapon at the Rune Forge now. 

The Unholy DK guide, written by Abyssalwave, just lists the same Rune as has been recommended for the last 5+ years, with zero explanation about why they believe it is best compared to the other 6 options.  This just leads me to wonder if Abyssalwave was even aware of the new rune options in this expansion. 

I mention it because I am drawn to a couple of the other rune enchants for my weapon and I can't decide between them.  

[Guest Soulnite]

In Stat Priority, Mastery says it increases shadow damage, wich is true, but it also increases minion damage.

I wonder if that would move its priority above one of the other stats.

BR

[Abyssalwave 5]

21 hours ago, Guest Wildmoonsister said:

Now that the pre-patch is live, I was hoping for more conversation on the Unholy DK information about the total of 7 rune options with which to rune a Death Knights weapon at the Rune Forge now. 

The Unholy DK guide, written by Abyssalwave, just lists the same Rune as has been recommended for the last 5+ years, with zero explanation about why they believe it is best compared to the other 6 options.  This just leads me to wonder if Abyssalwave was even aware of the new rune options in this expansion. 

I mention it because I am drawn to a couple of the other rune enchants for my weapon and I can't decide between them.  

The other runeforges aren't even close to competing with Fallen Crusader, they are niches for things like speed leveling but beyond that they can't even come close to the damage provided by fallen crusader. I will add an explanation for them though thanks!

[Abyssalwave 5]

7 hours ago, Guest Soulnite said:

In Stat Priority, Mastery says it increases shadow damage, wich is true, but it also increases minion damage.

I wonder if that would move its priority above one of the other stats.

BR

Currently in prepatch mastery is the go-to stat with 3x magus and Army of the Damned, I will change this to reflect that!

[sysasysa 0]

Hi. I just started playing an Unholy DK and I have a question about Soul Reaper. In the guide, it says, you should use the spell for rune generation, but from what I see in the spell tooltip, it only procs Runic Corruption, if it kills a mob. Also, it only explodes if the mob is at 35% or lower, so I should only be using the spell in the execute phase? Thanks for the advice.

[Abyssalwave 5]

On 11/10/2020 at 4:58 AM, sysasysa said:

Hi. I just started playing an Unholy DK and I have a question about Soul Reaper. In the guide, it says, you should use the spell for rune generation, but from what I see in the spell tooltip, it only procs Runic Corruption, if it kills a mob. Also, it only explodes if the mob is at 35% or lower, so I should only be using the spell in the execute phase? Thanks for the advice.

Yes it should be used off cooldown during execute, I will change that description!

[sysasysa 0]

Apparently before the prepatch the ability used to generate runes, but they reworked it, so it no longer does. So how should the ability be used outside of execute?

[huldu 3]

Please update the use of Soul Reaper. It's not clear in the info that people should only use it during execute phase(35%). I've seen so many new players lately that ONLY use soul reaper and not scourge strike 35%+. I wish blizzard would make it more clear because sometimes people just don't read and hopefully if they stumble onto this guide they know how to use it properly. 

[Guest commoner]

On 11/13/2020 at 5:37 PM, huldu said:

Please update the use of Soul Reaper. It's not clear in the info that people should only use it during execute phase(35%). I've seen so many new players lately that ONLY use soul reaper and not scourge strike 35%+. I wish blizzard would make it more clear because sometimes people just don't read and hopefully if they stumble onto this guide they know how to use it properly. 

I mean, it literally already says what it does in the tooltip. If they can't even have the basic energy to read that then I don't think they'll be doing any effort to read an entire guide. Chances are higher that they're not aware that the talent changed in the prepatch

[Guest kayu]

a bit confused, the theorycrafting unholy dk on the discord and the one that wrote the wowhead guide is saying that venthyr is essentially the best covenant to go for in both raiding and m+ scenarios while icy-veins is saying kyrian, what's the real main difference between the two? Any chance there is a consensus or will I just have to pick one or the other? ;-;

[Guest kayu]

On 11/23/2020 at 4:24 AM, Guest kayu said:

a bit confused, the theorycrafting unholy dk on the discord and the one that wrote the wowhead guide is saying that venthyr is essentially the best covenant to go for in both raiding and m+ scenarios while icy-veins is saying kyrian, what's the real main difference between the two? Any chance there is a consensus or will I just have to pick one or the other? ;-;

nvm seemed they updated it during the last day to match yours ?

[Guest Soel]

Hi

I have a question about the single target rotation.
According to the tooltip Festering Strike only applies 2-3 stacks of wounds not 2-4. So after the opening where you use 2 strikes to get 4+ wounds you will never be able to reach 4 stacks and cast Apocalypse again since you're only casting Festering Strike at 0 wounds. At 1-3 stacks you're alwas using Scourge Strike.

Am I missing something here? Are you supposed to always use 2 festering strikes at 0 wounds or pop to 4 wounds if Apocalypse is off cd?

[Abyssalwave 5]

6 hours ago, Guest Soel said:

Hi

I have a question about the single target rotation.
According to the tooltip Festering Strike only applies 2-3 stacks of wounds not 2-4. So after the opening where you use 2 strikes to get 4+ wounds you will never be able to reach 4 stacks and cast Apocalypse again since you're only casting Festering Strike at 0 wounds. At 1-3 stacks you're alwas using Scourge Strike.

Am I missing something here? Are you supposed to always use 2 festering strikes at 0 wounds or pop to 4 wounds if Apocalypse is off cd?

you pool 4 wounds before apocalypse comes off cooldown so you can use it right as it comes up. I'll add a note about that!

[Guest Mothalius]

How come it says it's been updated for Shadowlands but it actually hasn't been? Same with Stat Priority.. Both are still for BFA?

[Vlad 411]

9 hours ago, Guest Mothalius said:

How come it says it's been updated for Shadowlands but it actually hasn't been? Same with Stat Priority.. Both are still for BFA?

The guide is definitely updated for Shadowlands, including the stats page/priority. Maybe we missed some outdated mention by mistake; can you point out specifically what you feel is still for BfA? Thanks!

[Guest Mothalius]

15 hours ago, Vlad said:

The guide is definitely updated for Shadowlands, including the stats page/priority. Maybe we missed some outdated mention by mistake; can you point out specifically what you feel is still for BfA? Thanks!

When I had posted that, in the gear section it was still showing all the 400 ilvl gear from Nyalotha, I see that's now gone but in place of that there is a chart for best trinkets but instead of showing the actual trinket names in the chart it just says [object text] over and over, so there's also that problem. Also, in stat priority it still says, "In Shadowlands, Mastery is the strongest stat by far with Triple  Magus of the Dead traits and  Army of the Damned as your Level 50 talent."

Triple Magus of the Dead traits were a thing of BFA, as we don't have Azerite Traits anymore, yet it's still posted here. I'd suggest going over everything once more, I know SL is only a few days old but there are some pretty jank problems with a few areas I've noticed on icy-veins as a whole.

 

[Guest Roose]

Anima Powers aren't listed on here

[Valks 2,375]

On 11/28/2020 at 2:12 AM, Guest Mothalius said:

When I had posted that, in the gear section it was still showing all the 400 ilvl gear from Nyalotha, I see that's now gone but in place of that there is a chart for best trinkets but instead of showing the actual trinket names in the chart it just says [object text] over and over, so there's also that problem. Also, in stat priority it still says, "In Shadowlands, Mastery is the strongest stat by far with Triple  Magus of the Dead traits and  Army of the Damned as your Level 50 talent."

Triple Magus of the Dead traits were a thing of BFA, as we don't have Azerite Traits anymore, yet it's still posted here. I'd suggest going over everything once more, I know SL is only a few days old but there are some pretty jank problems with a few areas I've noticed on icy-veins as a whole.

 

Thanks for this, I'll look into this and speak to the writer. As for the Bloodmallet charts, this was an issue with the importer which should now be fixed ?

[Valks 2,375]

23 hours ago, Guest Roose said:

Anima Powers aren't listed on here

You should be able to find them on the Torghast page here: https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/unholy-death-knight-torghast-guide-and-best-anima-powers

[Guest Typo on the guide]

Pherormones legendary is the wrong spell from the db. "Phearomones" is the right one

[Abyssalwave 5]

16 hours ago, Guest Typo on the guide said:

Pherormones legendary is the wrong spell from the db. "Phearomones" is the right one

Thank you for the heads up!

[Guest Anonymous Guest]

I'm confused how is the Sharpened Weapon enhance my combat pots??!!

 

also I don't get this 

"This single target rotation assumes you have taken the tier 7 talent  Army of the Damned. In order to maximize this talent, you should use it when you are very low on  Festering Wounds and have at least 2 Runes available to cast  Scourge Strikes after using the cooldown"

 from what I understand Apocalypse should be used if u have 4+ festering wounds on the target ... but in this guide it says use it when u are very low on wounds? how is that maximizing the use of Army of the Damned?? or are you talking about Unholy Assault??

[Phrozyn 1]

In your guide, you mention recommended addons. mRunes hasn't been updated since 2016.
I would recommend updating this guide to mention Compact Runes and link to it instead.

https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/compact-runes

[Phaydre 0]

On the Huntsman fight, if a Frost/Unholy DK is targeted for Sinseeker, can they prevent getting the nasty Sinseeker dot that does Shadow damage by using Anti-Magic Shell just before they get hit? The tooltip says Anti-Magic Shell will "prevent application of harmful magical effects" so I figure that qualifies.