Unholy Death Knight DPS Guide — The War Within (11.1.0)

The Death Knight class has received multiple changes in 11.1, with the most impactful ones being covered here. To view a full list of changes, please see the link below:

The Unholy Death Knight has received a number of changes in the 11.1 Patch, including nerfs to our survivability, visual updates, functional updates as well as ability tuning. The list below includes the most important bits.

• Veteran of the Third War now grants 12% increased stamina (was 20%).
• Null Magic now reduces magical damage taken by 5% (was 8%).
• Permafrost now generates an absorb shield at 30% of your auto attack damage (was 40%).
• Defile visual has been updated and no longer covers ground mechanics.
• Raise Dead and Apocalypse now summon minions instantly (previously took 4 seconds and have had their visuals updated.
• Magus of the Dead, Commander of the Dead, Soul Reaper and Scourge Strike/ Clawing Shadows have all been buffed.

The survivability changes will clearly impact us negatively. However, we will still be close to the tankiest spec in the game. They are justified in our option, when one considers the absurd lengths that DPS Death Knights could tank both mechanics, but also raid and dungeon bosses at times.

The visual update to Defile is nice due to it now properly being rendered beneath ground mechanics. The general changes in 11.1 that significantly increases the visibility of ground mechanics also help. Whether or not the ability now looks nice is a completely different debate that we will let the reader decide on their own...

The ability tuning changes are overall buffs to the spec. They have been made to somewhat counteract the very strong synergy that San'Layn has with the new tier set. San'Layn will still have a niche in low-target cleave, but Rider will still be best in pure Single Target. Furthermore, San'Layn will start the patch being significantly behind Rider until we have acquired the 4-set, which makes San'Layn competitive again.

For guide changes, BiS gear has been updated to include the new gear available in 11.1. Furthermore, San'Layn rotational gameplay has been expanded and more emphasis has been put on highlighting its strengths (2-target cleave etc). Finally, talents have been updated to reflect our new best setups that have changed due to the ability tuning, as well as the tier set.