Unholy Death Knight DPS Gear and Best in Slot — The War Within (11.0.7)

Last updated Dec 18, 2024 at 21:00 by Bicepspump 73 comments
General Information

On this page, you will find the best gear and best in slot items for your Unholy Death Knight in World of Warcraft The War Within (11.0.7).

1.

BiS Gear Guide for Unholy Death Knight

Welcome to our Gear and BiS Page for Unholy Death Knight for The War Within Season 1. Check this page to learn everything you need to know about gearing a Unholy Death Knight, including the BiS Gear from all sources, Raiding, and Mythic+, information on the best Trinkets, Tier Sets, and much more.

We have three BiS lists below, each detailing the best gear you can obtain from a specific source. We have the overall list, a raid-only one, and, finally, a mythic+-only list. They are all optimised to give you the highest single target DPS. The various builds we run have very similar stat and trinket priorities and will run the same set of gear.

2.

BiS Gear for Unholy Death Knight

Overall BiS List Mythic+ Gear BiS List Raid Gear BiS List
3.

Overall BiS List for Unholy Death Knight

Below, you will find the theoretical BiS set of gear for The War Within Season 1.

Slot Item Boss/ Dungeon/ Source
Helm Wrathbark Greathelm Icon Wrathbark Greathelm Mists of Tirna Scithe
Neck Sureki Zealot's Insignia Icon Sureki Zealot's Insignia Sikran
Shoulder Exhumed Centurion's Spikes Icon Exhumed Centurion's Spikes Rasha'nan
Cloak Consecrated Cloak Icon Consecrated Cloak (Haste Mastery) with Writhing Armor Banding Icon Writhing Armor Banding Tailoring
Chest Exhumed Centurion's Breastplate Icon Exhumed Centurion's Breastplate Broodtwister Ovi'nax
Bracers Bracers of Umbral Mending Icon Bracers of Umbral Mending Grim Batol
Gloves Exhumed Centurion's Gauntlets Icon Exhumed Centurion's Gauntlets Sikran
Belt Girdle of Somber Ploys Icon Girdle of Somber Ploys The Dawnbreaker
Legs Exhumed Centurion's Chausses Icon Exhumed Centurion's Chausses Nexus Princess Ky'veza
Boots Boots of the Black Bulwark Icon Boots of the Black Bulwark The Bloodbound Horror
Ring #1 Writhing Ringworm Icon Writhing Ringworm Broodtwister Ovi'nax
Ring #2 Cyrce's Circlet Icon Cyrce's Circlet Siren Isle
Trinket #1 Treacherous Transmitter Icon Treacherous Transmitter Nexus Princess Ky'veza
Trinket #2 Ovi'nax's Mercurial Egg Icon Ovi'nax's Mercurial Egg Broodtwister Ovi'nax
2H Weapon Charged Claymore Icon Charged Claymore (Haste Mastery) with Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension Icon Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension Blacksmithing
3.

Mythic+ Gear BiS List for Unholy Death Knight

This list contains the highest DPS setup, with farmable gear from Mythic+ Dungeons. This is a great place to start on a relatively new character, as you can infinitely grind out these items from Mythic+.

Slot Item Boss/ Dungeon/ Source
Helm Wrathbark Greathelm Icon Wrathbark Greathelm Mists of Tirna Scithe
Neck 'Emergency Stop' Keychain Icon 'Emergency Stop' Keychain The Stonevault
Shoulder Earthshape Pauldrons Icon Earthshape Pauldrons Grim Batol
Cloak Anvilhide Cape Icon Anvilhide Cape The Stonevault
Chest Experimental Goresilk Chestguard Icon Experimental Goresilk Chestguard Ara-Kara, City of Echoes
Bracers Bracers of Umbral Mending Icon Bracers of Umbral Mending Grim Batol
Gloves Machinist's Searing Handguards Icon Machinist's Searing Handguards The Stonevault
Belt Girdle of Somber Ploys Icon Girdle of Somber Ploys The Dawnbreaker
Legs Gormshell Greaves Icon Gormshell Greaves Mists of Tirna Scithe
Boots Ichor-Stained Sollerets Icon Ichor-Stained Sollerets City of Threads
Ring #1 Cyrce's Circlet Icon Cyrce's Circlet Siren Isle
Ring #2 Circle of Bone Icon Circle of Bone Grim Batol
Trinket #1 Mark of Khardros Icon Mark of Khardros Grim Batol
Trinket #2 Ara-Kara Sacbrood Icon Ara-Kara Sacbrood Ara-Kara, City of Echoes
2H Weapon Wild Hammer Icon Wild Hammer Grim Batol
3.

Raid Gear BiS List for Unholy Death Knight

This list contains the highest DPS setup, only using gear from the Nerub-ar Palace Raid.

This list is mostly useful for informing your organized guild of what loot is optimal for you for loot distribution purposes.

Slot Item Boss/ Dungeon/ Source
Helm Wrathbark Greathelm Icon Wrathbark Greathelm Mists of Tirna Scithe
Neck Sureki Zealot's Insignia Icon Sureki Zealot's Insignia Sikran
Shoulder Exhumed Centurion's Spikes Icon Exhumed Centurion's Spikes Rasha'nan
Cloak Royal Emblem of Nerub-ar Icon Royal Emblem of Nerub-ar Ulgrax the Devourer
Chest Exhumed Centurion's Breastplate Icon Exhumed Centurion's Breastplate Broodtwister Ovi'nax
Bracers Ravaged Lamplighter's Manacles Icon Ravaged Lamplighter's Manacles Rasha'nan
Gloves Exhumed Centurion's Gauntlets Icon Exhumed Centurion's Gauntlets Sikran
Belt Greatbelt of the Hungerer Icon Greatbelt of the Hungerer Ulgrax the Devourer
Legs Exhumed Centurion's Chausses Icon Exhumed Centurion's Chausses Nexus Princess Ky'veza
Boots Boots of the Black Bulwark Icon Boots of the Black Bulwark The Bloodbound Horror
Ring #1 Cyrce's Circlet Icon Cyrce's Circlet Siren Isle
Ring #2 Writhing Ringworm Icon Writhing Ringworm Broodtwister Ovi'nax
Trinket #1 Treacherous Transmitter Icon Treacherous Transmitter Nexus Princess Ky'veza
Trinket #2 Ovi'nax's Mercurial Egg Icon Ovi'nax's Mercurial Egg Broodtwister Ovi'nax
2H Weapon Anub'arash's Colossal Mandible Icon Anub'arash's Colossal Mandible Silken Court
Explore the current most popular gear on U.GG!
3.

Best Cyrce's Circlet Gems for Unholy Death Knight

The Patch 11.0.7 brings a new ring in the form of Cyrce's Circlet. You acquire it by completing various activities on the Siren Isle. What is special about the ring is that it has 3 sockets that can fit one kind of special gem each. You can have one of four different kinds of gem in each socket, resulting in a total of 12 different combinations to choose from!

The ring is released at 639 ilvl and is then upgraded each week to reach a maximum of 658. Depending on your current rings, it might not be worthwhile to equip it until you have upgraded it a couple of times. Sim yourself to be sure!

For now, we go for the secondary stat gems as we scale quite well with secondary stats. As a general rule, you want to play the following:

  • Legendary Skipper's Citrine Icon Legendary Skipper's Citrine, Stormbringer's Runed Citrine Icon Stormbringer's Runed Citrine and Fathomdweller's Runed Citrine Icon Fathomdweller's Runed Citrine for both raid and Mythic+.

For more information on how to get the ring, as well as acquiring all of the different gems that you can possibly socket into it, check out our Cyrce's Circlet guide below!

4.

Gearing a Unholy Death Knight

If you have a new piece of gear for which you need gems and enchant advice, you can find everything on our dedicated page below.

While gearing up, item level will be your primary target. Strength is our best stat, and you shouldn't focus too much on your secondaries at first. Once you start to receive gear pieces with the same ilvl but different stats, that is when you want to start optimizing your stat distribution. Generally, Unholy Death Knights want to prioritize Haste and Mastery! We recommend simming your character to determine what upgrade is best for you! For a more detailed explanation, you can read the Simulations page.

Simming your character is far and beyond the best way to determine if a piece of gear is, in fact, an upgrade. The trick is knowing how to do it in a way that produces reliable results. If you follow the Simulations guide page, you can use this to have a more practical gearing guide than simply following a BiS list.

5.

Season 1 Tier Set for Unholy Death Knight

You only need 4 pieces out of 5 to get both set bonuses. We recommend you get all items except for the Head, due to its Versatility. Check out the BiS List for more information.

6.

Unholy Death Knight Gear Upgrades in The War Within

The War Within has a powerful upgrade system for your gear where you use Valorstones Icon Valorstones and Crests to upgrade your gear. These are obtainable from practically all forms of content in the game.

For more information on the new Gear Upgrades system, check out our dedicated page for it below.

The War Within Gear Upgrade System
7.

Notable Crafted Gear

Unholy wants to run one Charged Claymore Icon Charged Claymore with Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension Icon Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension embellishment. You then combine this with Writhing Armor Banding Icon Writhing Armor Banding on your crafted Consecrated Cloak Icon Consecrated Cloak for your second embellishments. Your weapon is a great choice to craft at a high ilvl early since weapon ilvl combined with embellishment value ends up being a great crest value. Notably, it does not matter which type the weapon is; axe, sword, polearm, mace, etc all work! Simply make sure you select the right type (2-hand) and that the weapon has strength.

If your focus is purely on Mythic+, we recommend crafting double Dawnthread Lining Icon Dawnthread Lining. For BiS setup, pick cloak and wrist. If you want more early power, choose higher-stat items like your non-tier piece or boots. A good alternative is to run Blessed Weapon Grip Icon Blessed Weapon Grip on a crafted 2H weapon.

A good tip is to use crafted PvP gear in the early stages of the season/ gearing. You can easily craft multiple 610 ilvl pieces, which will help you when gearing up.

When it comes to your other crafted slots, we are only wearing two crafted items in our BiS setup (due to the ilvl loss). Use crafting as a way of "filling in the gaps" in your gear, trying to find the best value upgrade in a slot where you already do not have a good piece. Sim yourself to find the best option for you!

7.1.

Best Items to Upgrade for Unholy Death Knight in The War Within

There are three primary items to upgrade as a Unholy Death Knight:

  1. Weapon
  2. Trinket
  3. Head/ Chest/ Legs

With how the upgrade system works with Crests being the limited currency, you want to upgrade the most powerful slots you can. For Unholy Death Knights, this will be your crafted weapon. The weapon is already great crest value, as well as providing one of our embellishments in the BiS setup. After you have crafted your weapon, move on to trinkets and high-stat slot items like Legs, Helm, Chest, etc.

Your second crafted item will be a cloak with Writhing Armor Banding Icon Writhing Armor Banding. These are generally not worth spending crests on to upgrade since the embellishment effect does not scale with ilvl, and the cloak is the worst stat piece in general. We recommend simulating your character to find the best piece to upgrade for you, something that can easily be done in "Top Gear" at raidbots.com.

7.2.

Overall Top Trinkets

Unholy aims to use one on-use Trinket as well as one passive one, or double on-use. In The War Within Season 1, our best on-use is Treacherous Transmitter Icon Treacherous Transmitter followed by Mark of Khardros Icon Mark of Khardros and Skarmorak Shard Icon Skarmorak Shard. Transmitter is about 2% ahead of the second-best choice but does present a somewhat annoying minigame, forcing you to deal with extra mechanics as you use the Trinket. Ovi'nax's Mercurial Egg Icon Ovi'nax's Mercurial Egg is your best passive paired with Transmitter, but both Skarmorak and Mark of Khardros are essentially tied. With a double-on-use setup, simply delay your less powerful Trinket for your next 45-second burst window and then alternate them. Double on-use is great for Mythic+, as well as bosses like Ovinax, where your damage is heavily focused in your 45-second burst window.

8.

Best Trinkets for Unholy Death Knight in The War Within Season 1

Raiding Trinket Tier List Mythic+ Trinket Tier List
9.

Raiding Trinket Tier List for Unholy Death Knight

This Trinket Tier List is single-target biased, as this tends to be the most important aspect of Raiding. Other aspects of the trinkets are also baked into the rankings, such as their ease of use.

8.1.

S-Tier

  • Treacherous Transmitter Icon Treacherous Transmitter — Best on-use Trinket but with an extra minigame attached to it. Sufficiently ahead of other choices to justify the minigame associated with it. If you are finding it difficult, try and use the Trinket when you have some distance from the boss to help spot the orb/circle when they spawn.
  • Mark of Khardros Icon Mark of Khardros — Great 1.5min Trinket that works well combined with Transmitter, allowing for a trinket use every 45 seconds.
  • Ovi'nax's Mercurial Egg Icon Ovi'nax's Mercurial Egg — A passive trinket with an attached minigame, allowing you to control whether or not you gain primary stat or your highest secondary stat. BiS trinket, especially when you can control the stacks to be a good mix.
8.1.

A-Tier

  • Skarmorak Shard Icon Skarmorak Shard — Very similar to Mark of Khadros in pure Single Target but with an added bonus of gaining Mastery when enemies die. Works well on any AoE fight.
  • Ara-Kara Sacbrood Icon Ara-Kara Sacbrood — Great passive trinket.
  • Skyterror's Corrosive Organ Icon Skyterror's Corrosive Organ — Raw damage trinket that works well as a passive option. Simply desync with your on-use stat trinket.
  • Shadow-Binding Ritual Knife Icon Shadow-Binding Ritual Knife — Only obtainable at 626 but still a great choice before you can obtain trinkets at a higher ilvl.
  • Concoction: Kiss of Death Icon Concoction: Kiss of Death — Only obtainable at 626 but still a great on-use option.
  • Quickwick Candlestick Icon Quickwick Candlestick — Only obtainable at 626 but still a great choice before you can obtain trinkets at a higher ilvl.
8.1.

B-Tier

  • Spare Meat Hook Icon Spare Meat Hook — Solid raw damage on-use working well as a passive trinket.
  • Void Pactstone Icon Void Pactstone — Raw damage trinket that does not quite do enough to beat out our good stat passive trinkets.
  • Sikran's Endless Arsenal Icon Sikran's Endless Arsenal — Primarily a tank trinket that still does okay damage for us.
  • Mad Queen's Mandate Icon Mad Queen's Mandate — Raw damage on-use that does okay damage.
8.1.

C-Tier

  • Overclocked Gear-a-Rang Launcher Icon Overclocked Gear-a-Rang Launcher
9.

Mythic+ Trinket Tier List for Unholy Death Knight

This Trinket Tier List is more AoE focused as Mythic+ values AoE damage significantly more. We still look for a good balance between Single Target and AoE though! You can either choose to run one active and one passive or run double active to have a trinket up for every Dark Transformation Icon Dark Transformation window.

8.1.

S-Tier

  • Skarmorak Shard Icon Skarmorak Shard — Paired with every second burst window, this Trinket gains extra value in Mythic+ due to the Mastery gained on enemy death.
  • Treacherous Transmitter Icon Treacherous Transmitter — Really powerful on-use Trinket, which unfortunately has a minigame, making it a bit difficult to use in real scenarios.
  • Ovi'nax's Mercurial Egg Icon Ovi'nax's Mercurial Egg — A passive trinket with an attached minigame, allowing you to control whether or not you gain primary stat or your highest secondary stat. Works well in situations where you can maximise the stat gain by sitting at a good mix of the stats. Best passive Trinket.
8.1.

A-Tier

  • Mark of Khardros Icon Mark of Khardros — Great 1.5min trinket which is easy to use. Solid to pair with another on-use.
  • Ara-Kara Sacbrood Icon Ara-Kara Sacbrood — Solid passive trinket.
  • Shadow-Binding Ritual Knife Icon Shadow-Binding Ritual Knife — Only obtainable at 626 but still a great choice before you can obtain trinkets at a higher ilvl.
  • Concoction: Kiss of Death Icon Concoction: Kiss of Death — Only obtainable at 626 but still a great on-use option.
  • Quickwick Candlestick Icon Quickwick Candlestick — Only obtainable at 626 but still a great choice before you can obtain trinkets at a higher ilvl.
8.1.

B-Tier

  • Skyterror's Corrosive Organ Icon Skyterror's Corrosive Organ — Raw damage trinket that works well as a passive option. Simply desync with your on-use stat trinket.
  • Spare Meat Hook Icon Spare Meat Hook — Solid raw damage on-use working well as a passive trinket.
  • Void Pactstone Icon Void Pactstone — Raw damage trinket that does not quite do enough to beat out our good stat passive trinkets.
  • Sikran's Endless Arsenal Icon Sikran's Endless Arsenal — Primarily a tank trinket that still does okay damage for us.
  • Mad Queen's Mandate Icon Mad Queen's Mandate — Raw damage on-use that does okay damage.
8.1.

C-Tier

  • Overclocked Gear-a-Rang Launcher Icon Overclocked Gear-a-Rang Launcher
9.

Stats

Many people overthink the distribution of their secondary stats. An important thing to remember is that a higher quantity of stats is usually better than a better quality of stats. Because of this, wearing higher item-level gear with worse stats tends to be better than lower item-level gear with great stats. Keep this in mind when considering gear. For more information on stats, please refer to our dedicated page.

For Unholy specifically, aim to have Haste as our top stat by raw amount, followed by Mastery. For a closer look at stats, please see the below article./p>

10.

Jewellery

For neck and ring pieces, you can generally afford to drop 5-10 ilevels in most cases to get our preferred stats: Haste and Mastery. That said, you should always sim yourself to see what is better as the secondary stat diminishing returns can still change your ideal setup. It can be useful to wear crafted jewelry due to how you can control the stats; just remember that you cannot craft the maximum ilvl possible!

Explore the current most popular Trinkets on U.GG!
11.

Changelog

  • 18 Dec. 2024: Updated Cyrce's gems after news sims.
  • 17 Dec. 2024: Updated BiS lists to include Cyrce's Circlet after buffs.
  • 15 Dec. 2024: Update for Patch 11.0.7, adding Cyrce's Circlet.
  • 26 Oct. 2024: Resolved an issue in the Raid BiS list.
  • 21 Oct. 2024: Updated for Patch 11.0.5.
  • 05 Oct. 2024: Updated BiS trinkets.
  • 09 Sep. 2024: Updated for The War Within Season 1.
  • 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within.
  • 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
  • 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
  • 22 Apr. 2024: Updated for Season 4, including Bullion priority and new BiS lists.
  • 20 Mar. 2024: Updated for Patch 10.2.6.
  • 15 Jan. 2024: Updated for Patch 10.2.5.
  • 29 Nov. 2023: Updated BiS after legendary was revealed.
  • 22 Nov. 2023: Updated Dawn drop locations to differentiate between upper and lower.
  • 15 Nov. 2023: Added Ashes to Raid BiS and moved it up in active trinket list.
  • 07 Nov. 2023: Updated BiS list and embellishment recommendations after sporecloak nerfs.
  • 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.2.
  • 04 Sep. 2023: Updated for patch 10.1.7.
  • 20 Jul. 2023: Updated Bis Trinket and Neck.
  • 10 Jul. 2023: Updated trinket bis and added dawn of the infinite gear tips.
  • 10 May 2023: Updated trinket bis after Puzzle nerf.
  • 08 May 2023: Updated bis list and trinket prio after changes.
  • 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.
  • 30 Apr. 2023: Reviewed and Updated for Patch 10.1.
  • 20 Mar. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.0.7.
  • 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
  • 11 Dec. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Season 1.
  • 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
  • 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
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