WotLK Classic Unholy Death Knight Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities

If you have not already, please read the Spell Summary page. Knowing how each spell and ability works in detail will greatly increase your understanding of the topics discussed on this page.

Unholy Death Knights are one of the strongest melee DPS in the entire game. The amazing buffs that they bring to any group and the utility they have with powerful abilities such as Death Grip, along with the massive amount of damage they can do, puts them in contention for being the among the best DPS melee class.

Unholy lacks a truly spammable AoE damage button, but your AoE damage rotation will mostly consist of applying your diseases using Icy Touch and Plague Strike and then spreading them with Pestilence while keeping Death and Decay down. Remember to use Blood Tap to activate your Runes while AoEing, as the largest limitation on your DPS as Unholy is not having Runes available.

Unholy operates similar to the other two Death Knight specs in that your focus is more of a priority system than a true rotation. However, it is much more of a set rotation than the other two specs due to a lack of damage-increasing procs resulting in a more steady output of damage. The most important rules are to always ensure your diseases are active on the target and your Ghoul is always attacking. Consider macroing pet attack into your commonly-used abilities. In a pure single-target rotation you will not be casting Death and Decay, but as soon as more than one target is active it becomes a DPS increase. Unholy is also the only Death Knight spec where you will have to switch presences during combat to maximize damage. There have been some considerably changes to how Summon Gargoyle snapshotting works but it will still be our main source of damage so focusing on maximizing it's damage is key.

• Icy Touch needs to be used to apply Frost Fever.
• Plague Strike needs to be used to apply Blood Plague.
• Blood Strike is your main spender of Blood Runes.
• Death and Decay will be your primary spender of Unholy and Frost Runes.
• Death Coil will be your primary spender of Runic Power.

As with all other Death Knight specs the largest priority is to use your Runes first and get them on cooldown as it will lead to more casts of your abilities. Blood Strike should be weaved in frequently to refresh Desolation, while Death and Decay will be the primary Frost and Unholy Rune spender. Death Coil will be your spender of Runic Power.

Your opening rotation should look like the following:

1. Start the pull in Unholy Presence;
2. Plague Strike;
3. Icy Touch;
4. Blood Strike twice;
5. Blood Tap;
6. Death and Decay;
7. Ghoul Frenzy;
8. Any on use effects to increase haste such as Potion of Speed or Hyperspeed Accelerators
9. Summon Gargoyle;
10. Empower Rune Weapon and cancel Blood Tap (you want the Blood Runes);
11. Army of the Dead;
12. Blood Presence;

Your rotation following this should be focused on casting as many Death and Decays as possible while weaving in Blood Strike to maximize Desolation uptime, keeping your diseases active and your pets attacking.

Death Knights have three presences they can be in at any given time: Frost, Blood, and Unholy. Each of these presences offers the Death Knight additional stats, be it increased damage, self-healing, more Armor, increased threat generation, or even movement speed and a faster global cooldown. However, you can only have one presence active at a time. Unholy Death Knight utilizes Unholy Presence at the start of pulls to establish necessary globals to maximize and quickly get your Summon Gargoyle out before switching back into Blood Presence shortly after your opener as explained above.

• Blood Presence — Increases damage dealt by 15% and causes 4% of non-periodic damage dealt to heal you.
• Frost Presence — Increases Stamina by 8%, the Armor contributions of your gear by 60%, reduces your damage taken by 8%, and you will generate additional threat while in this presence.
• Unholy Presence — Increases movement and attack speed by 15% and reduces your global cooldown by 0.5 seconds.

Death Knights have some of the strongest cooldowns in the game both from a buffing perspective and from a personal defensive ability point of view.

• Anti-Magic Shell — Absorbs 75% of incoming Magic damage (up to 50% of your max health) and prevents the application of any harmful magic debuffs; any damage absorbed by this will also grant you Runic Power.
• Raise Dead — Summons a ghoul that will do a small amount of damage; this ghoul is also required to use Death Pact.
• Death Pact — sacrifices your ghoul to heal you for 40% of your max health.
• Blood Tap — Activates a Blood Rune and converts it into a Death Rune for the next 20 seconds. Death Runes count as any Rune type.
• Summon Gargoyle — Summons a Gargoyle pet that will attack your target dealing a massive amount of Nature damage and benefiting from any buffs you have active when the Gargoyle is summoned.
• Anti-Magic Zone — Summons a small protective barrier that absorbs Magic damage dealt to any players inside of the barrier.
• Empower Rune Weapon — Immediately refreshes all of your Runes and grants you 25 Runic Power.
• Icebound Fortitude — reduces damage taken by 30% and causes you to become immune to stuns for 12 seconds.