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WotLK Classic Unholy Death Knight Spec, Builds, Talents, and

Glyphs

Last updated on Aug 18, 2022 at 15:15 by Sellin 6 comments

On this page, you will find out the best PvE talent choices and builds for your Unholy
Death Knight in WotLK Classic, as well as advised glyphs.

Pages in this Guide

1 Introduction 2 Spell Summary 3 Builds, Talents, and…

4 Rotation, Cooldow… 5 Stat Priority 6 Enchants and Cons…

7 Gear and Best in Slot 8 Pre-Raid Gear

TABLE OF CONTENTS OF THIS PAGE

1. Talent Builds for Unholy Death Knight 3. Glyphs

2. Important Unholy Death Knight Talents

1. Talent Builds for Unholy Death Knight

Unholy Death Knight talents focus on strengthening your pets and increasing not
only your personal damage but
members of your group through powerful debuffs; some
talents also increase your survivability.

1.1. Leveling Builds

If you were looking for a leveling-oriented build, please refer to our Death Knight leveling guide.

Death Knight Leveling Guide

1.2. Talent Build

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Major Glyphs

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Minor Glyphs

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The talent build listed above is the standard talent build for two-handed
Unholy Death Knight DPS. While there is some
talk about the viability of dual-wielding
as Unholy there are yet to be conclusive results as to how it actually performs;
as
such this guide will exclusively focus on the two-handed weapon version of
Unholy. The only point considered to be
flexible in the talent build is taking
the single point from Morbidity and putting it into Unholy Blight.
However,
Morbidity is preferred for the reduced Death and Decay cooldown as
it often leads to more overall damage over
the course of an entire raid, especially if you
factor in trash.

2. Important Unholy Death Knight Talents

2.1. Unholy Tree
Ravenous Dead causes your ghoul to scale with your stats in a meaningful
way, greatly increasing the damage it
deals.

Necrosis adds a Shadow damage portion to your auto attacks causing

them to scale even better with other talents
that increase your Shadow damage.
 Night of the Dead greatly reduces the amount of damage your ghoul will
take from AoE attacks, allowing it to survive
most encounters without having to
worry about keeping it alive.

Impurity causes your spells to be 20% more powerful based on your

Attack Power.

Master of Ghouls allows you to control your Ghoul as a pet as opposed

to the guardian it naturally is, granting it
unlimited duration and access to the
pet bar.

Desolation greatly increases the benefit of your Blood Strike

ability by giving you a considerable buff that you
should try to keep active as much
as possible.

Bone Shield acts as a powerful defensive cooldown but also increases

the damage you deal while it is active. Make
sure you are actively trying to avoid
instances of incoming damage so you can maximize your damage output.

Crypt Fever drastically increases the damage dealt by your diseases.

Ebon Plaguebringer greatly increases the Magic damage taken by the

target from all sources.

Scourge Strike is your primary spender of Unholy and Frost Runes.

Rage of Rivendare greatly increases the damage dealt by your abilities

to targets afflicted with Blood Plague and
gives a considerable amount of
Expertise.

Summon Gargoyle summons an extremely powerful pet that deals a

considerable amount of damage, scaling with
your stats and buffs at the time
it is summoned.

2.2. Frost Tree

Black Ice is helpful since a considerable amount of damage
you deal is either Shadow or Frost, making this talent a
massive damage increase.

Endless Winter increases your Strength, but more importantly removes the
Runic Power cost of Mind Freeze,
allowing you to spend your Runic Power
freely.

Icy Talons greatly increases your attack speed when a target is afflicted
with Frost Fever.

3. Glyphs
3.1. Major Glyphs
Glyph of the Ghoul greatly strengthens your ghoul by causing it to scale
with your Strength and Stamina. The Ghoul
is a massive part of your DPS as Unholy,
so any additional scaling will make any item you receive even more valuable.

Glyph of Dark Death is used because unlike Blood, where you are incentivized to keep
a certain amount of Runic
Power, or Frost, where you will be casting Frost Strike,
Death Coil is your primary spender of runic power and you will
be casting it quite often.
The added damage from the glyph scales incredibly with talents like Morbidity
and
Impurity.

Glyph of Icy Touch is used as Unholy since your diseases have quite a
few multipliers, so the added damage from this
glyph causes it to benefit even
more from these.

3.2. Minor Glyphs

Glyph of Raise Dead removes the reagent cost of summoning a ghoul

Glyph of Pestilence increases the radius of your Pestilence

ability by 5 yards.

Glyph of Horn of Winter increases the duration of your Horn of Winter

buff by a minute, lessening the number of
times you have to cast it in combat.

4. Changelog
23 Aug. 2022: Page added.