Unholy DK Warlords of Draenor Guide

[TyrantWave]

As there's not one stickied, though I'd set one up for people.

TL;DR: HOW DO I DO DEEPS?

Single Target

On the pull:

• ~6s Countdown: Army of the Dead + Potion and whatever
• Pull: Summon Gargoyle
• Running In: Defile
• Outbreak
• Festering Strike
• Scourge Strike

Priority

• Soul Reaper
• Defile
• Dark Transformation
• Plague Leech if any of the following:
  
  • Outbreak <1s remains on cooldown
  • Both diseases <1s remains
• Diseases not applied: Outbreak > Plague Strike
• RP > 90 or Sudden Doom proc: Death Coil
• Death or Unholy runes: Scourge Strike
• Blood and Frost pairs: Festering Strike
• Death Coil
• Plague Leech

AoE - 2+ Targets

Similar to the single target rotation, except you substitute Scourge Strike on Death runes for Blood Boil:

• Soul Reaper On UNHOLY runes only
• Defile Ideally on Unholy runes
• Dark Transformation
• RP > 90 or Sudden Doom proc: Death Coil
• Death Runes: Blood Boil
• Unholy Runes and Diseases about to fall off: Outbreak > Plague Strike
• Unholy Runes: Scourge Strike
• Death Coil
• Plague Leech

Before AoE: You should cast 2x Festering Strike to convert Blood and Frost runes to Death -> BT will refresh them as Death.

During AoE: If you get a Frost rune during AoE, cast Icy Touch to convert it.

Other Basic Stuff

Cooldowns
Summon Gargoyle should be used on CD.
Empower Rune Weapon: Use for burst when all runes are down and low on RP.

Presence
If you're not in Unholy Presence then you should go to the corner and think about what you've just done.

Runeforge
Fallen Crusader. There's no debate on this.

Talents
Plague Leech
Anti-Magic Zone
Death's Advance
Runic Corruption
Death Pact
Remorseless Winter / Gorefiend's Grasp
Defile

Glyphs
Blood Boil - More range, more deeps, way too good to pass up.
None are mandatory, but these are good:
Regenerative Magic - more AMS is nice
Icebound Fortitude (If you'll need it frequently)
Dark Simulacrum (If you'll be using it a lot, Auchindoun says hi)
Empowerment Easy health boost alongside burst, or for a final boss push is nice.
Raise Ally It's a free bres, what more do ya want?
Runic Power Situational, but if you can get use out of it pretty damn useful

Army of the Dead
Tranquil Grip

Stat Priority
Str > Multistrike > Mastery > Crit > Versatility > Haste

Since recent fixes to DK modelling in simc, Mastery's value has gone down for UH (Where before, SR was double dipping on the stat). This hasn't changed the priority however.

Food/Flasks/Gems/Enchants
Str flask and potion
Multistrike Food, Gems and Enchants

---

NOW EXPLAIN YOURSELF

Talents

Tier 1
Plague Leech: This gives you the most runes in a fight, as well as helping with downtime immensely.
Plaguebearer doesn't really help out Unholy at all in ST - in a constant sustained AoE, it does edge out ahead of PL however.
Unholy Blight loses most of its use for UH due to how easy UH applies diseases.

Tier 2
Anti-Magic Zone: Useful for everyone you place it on top of, if there's magic damage incoming (e.g Tectus) it's worth taking this.
Lichborne: 2min CD 10% leech, combine it with Death Pact and it can save your life on a pretty low cooldown.
Purgatory: Take Death Pact with this to pop it as soon as Purgatory activates.
Lich/Purgatory is personal preference - whilst I'm of the opinion that a 2min CD you can control to not die is better than relying on Purgatory's 3min CD clutch, others are of the opinion that you can just pop Death Pact when Purgatory triggers. Try both out, see what you prefer to use.

Tier 3
Death's Advance: You go faster passively and actively.
Chilblains: If you have to kite indefinitely, Chilblains could be useful there - this doesn't come up that often though.
Asphyxiate will rarely, if ever, be used in PvE - very useful in PvP though.

Tier 4
Runic Corruption has great regen as UH uses all their runes constantly.
Blood Tap can cause rune desync, used perfectly is a very minor gain over RC. Whether it's worth it is up to you, but if you mess it up or desync at all then RC will win out more often.
Runic Empowerment goes directly against UHs playstyle.

Tier 5
Death Pact: Free on demand burst healing on a 2min CD.
Death Siphon's not without its merits as UH has a lot of Death runes, but the healing is fairly lackluster to be worth it.
Conversion just sucks.

Tier 6
Remorseless Winter: AoE stun on a low cooldown, great on anything stunnable.
Gorefiend's Grasp: Immensely useful for positioning, and no other class has this utility. Both are good choices.
Desecrated Ground's not as useful as it's too situational, and that situation doesn't come up often enough to warrant it.

Tier 7
Defile just outright does the most DPS, and fits into the rotation nicely.
Breath of Sindragosa isn't too bad - if you need burst AoE every 2min and can pool RP for it, it's very nice for that - but Defile wins for reliability.
Necrotic Plague is woefully undertuned and shouldn't be considered until it gets a significant buff, the exception to this is Ko'ragh -> NP works oddly with his shield, making it the outright strongest attack for this fight, you'll want to take it for this one.

How To Plague Leech

Plague Leech recharges 2 fully depleted runes as Death, whilst consuming both our diseases.

Within standard deviation, both methods of using PL are equal, so your options are:
- On cooldown to stop downtime
--or--
- When Outbreak is coming off cooldown, to immediately reapply your runes for free.
- When your diseases are about to fall off for whatever reason - then reapply with a Plague Strike.

If you're not sruggling at all for runes, save PL for when Outbreak/diseases require it to be used, but using it to stop downtime also works.

DK T17N with each method:

Standard APL (Outbreak <1s, or both diseases <1s): 30,575 DPS
Plague Leech on Cooldown: 30,553 DPS
Outbreak <1s, Diseases <1s, or no Death, Blood or Frost runes: 30,606 DPS

Bear in mind the DPS range is around 2~3k, so they are all essentially dead equal performers.

Change your 3 Plague Leech lines in the APL to these for your own sims:
Cooldown changed APL:

Spoiler: 

    plague_leech

No runes changed APL:

Spoiler: 

    plague_leech,if=cooldown.outbreak.remains<1
    plague_leech,if=!talent.necrotic_plague.enabled&(dot.blood_plague.remains<1&dot.frost_fever.remains<1)
    plague_leech,if=talent.necrotic_plague.enabled&(dot.necrotic_plague.remains<1)
    plague_leech,if=(death=0&blood=0&frost=0)

For AoE situations, as you'll be pretty much permanently swamped with Death runes, PL drops in priority - you'll use it as a last case priority to never rune starve, simply because applying and spreading diseases is part of the normal AoE rotation anyway.


How to Timmy

As Dark Transformation is about to wear off, pool some RP. As soon as it wears off, spam Death Coil to reapply Dark Transformation ASAP.

How to Empower Rune Weapon

ERW refreshes ALL runes, and gives 25 RP. Expend everything you can, then pop ERW to get the most benefit out of it. This can give it some pretty nice burst, and due to its cooldown could be cast twice a fight - on the opening burst, and near the end are both good choices.

Stats Explained

Strength makes you hit hard, you want lots of this.

Multistrike: Due to Necrosis both buffing MS gains, and having an amazing secondary effect, you want this and lots of it.

Mastery: Increases all our Shadow damage. As Soul Reaper is our most damaging ability, not to mention Defile, Garry and Death Coil, this gives us our second largest increase. Mastery and Multistrike are both very close in damage gained.

Crit: Crits do more damage, we like more damage.

Versatility: An overall "do more" stat, but the bonus it gives isn't as much as the other stats. Still nice to have.

Haste: You don't really have much downtime as unholy - any passive haste you gain should be enough. If you outright feel like you're two slow, getting even a few pieces of Haste gear though will smooth out gameplay - albeit at the cost of some DPS.

---

If there's anything that should be added, do say and I'll put it in.

[Stacie]

If SR was more effective with say more mastery than MS (not sure if this is true) and the boss was at say 40% hp or less most of the fight (or many adds to SR off). Would mastery not pull ahead of MS?

I am finding a few fights i am able to SR a fair amount be that from swapping to adds or on a boss. This is why i ask .

[TyrantWave]

SR is a huge part of our damage yes, but Necrosis effects SR and other abilities. It's *very* close between the two stats - MS edges out just ahead of Mastery in sims.

[Varmin]

For Talents:

I'm not sure why you think Purgatory is "doing something wrong". It's an incredibly useful talent to have. It can either save your life because you made a mistake, or simply because the fight's going crazy and you got a burst of raid damage.

AMZ is useless on fights like Butcher, but can be pretty good for fights like Brackenspore so AMZ should probably still be used on a couple of fights.


For Glyphs:

I think the new Empowerment and Raise Ally glyphs are pretty good and worth mentioning.

[Nayami]

I f**king hate Defile.. so much.

It feels so awkward having to use Defile in our single-target rotation, not to mention that I forget to use it on cooldown most of the time.

I prefer how NP works, hopefully won't be too long before it gets buffed.

OT: Overall well structured and easy to follow guide.

[TyrantWave]

For Talents:

I'm not sure why you think Purgatory is "doing something wrong". It's an incredibly useful talent to have. It can either save your life because you made a mistake, or simply because the fight's going crazy and you got a burst of raid damage.

AMZ is useless on fights like Butcher, but can be pretty good for fights like Brackenspore so AMZ should probably still be used on a couple of fights.


For Glyphs:

I think the new Empowerment and Raise Ally glyphs are pretty good and worth mentioning.

For Blood, Purgatory is great. For DPS though, I don't find it as useful - in theory it can be good in a pinch, in practice I find if you go down and purgatory is saving you, you're gonna go down hard right again. Lichbornes self healing is better for DPS in that regard. Again, IMO.


Good one on those glyphs, I forgot they existed, will add 'em to the post

[Deleted]

I f**king hate Defile.. so much.

It feels so awkward having to use Defile in our single-target rotation, not to mention that I forget to use it on cooldown most of the time.

I prefer how NP works, hopefully won't be too long before it gets buffed.

OT: Overall well structured and easy to follow guide.

I've actually found NP to be somewhat useful on Ko'ragh since he likes to charge about the place a lot and you can miss ticks, unless you're timing it perfectly by delaying using it etc.

[Maxweii]

For Blood, Purgatory is great. For DPS though, I don't find it as useful - in theory it can be good in a pinch, in practice I find if you go down and purgatory is saving you, you're gonna go down hard right again. Lichbornes self healing is better for DPS in that regard. Again, IMO.

I agree on the Purgatory vs Lichborne points you made. For example on Butcher, I would take Lichborne hands down as is it a slight healing CD on top of the healing talent you choose to take. Purgatory would save me if I went below 0%, but then the dot would likely kill me right after I break above the healing absorb and then I would be dead anyways. Lichborne provides a small healing CD and is more of a proactive preventative measure compared to Purgatory which is a passive death "prevention" mechanic which can easily work against you for that intended affect of saving your life.

Blood Boil's glyph pretty much is "mandatory" for Unholy. Having a 30 yard (15 yards each way) range on your BB is just too strong to pass up. Regenerative magic on a fight with low pulsing magic damage I would also say is mandatory, as it will prevent you from taking such a huge amount of damage that it really adds up in usefulness.
Another glyph that is situationally useful would be Glyph of Runic Power. While obviously it wouldn't work on every fight, the free runic just because you get slowed would be nice. For example on Mar'gok if you get the Slow debuff from the mages, there's some free runic from an unavoidable mechanic!

[Deleted]

I think threads like these should be purely objective information, instead of opinions like "Purgatory is for noobs" or "Chilblains has no use outside PvP".

[Maxweii]

I think threads like these should be purely objective information, instead of opinions like "Purgatory is for noobs" or "Chilblains has no use outside PvP".

Seeing as this isn't a super into depth guide compared to say Spoony's simcraft work for gear/rotations or the guides on Wowhead I think it's okay to have a kinda TLDR sense to it as long as the information isn't just plain not correct.

[TyrantWave]

Seeing as this isn't a super into depth guide compared to say Spoony's simcraft work for gear/rotations or the guides on Wowhead I think it's okay to have a kinda TLDR sense to it as long as the information isn't just plain not correct.

Pretty much this. This is a PvE guide of how to do UH, nothing more or less.

re: Purgatory: It's really not as good in practice as it is in theory, simply because if you get that low, and you're a dps, odds are you're not gonna be healed in time. If there ARE situations you'll need it, that would have been discussed with your guild.

And Chilblains really doesn't have a use outside of PvP.


Whilst I have put my reasoning for each choice, I've tried to keep it fairly neutral as far as PvE goes.

[Saiyendra]

I f**king hate Defile.. so much.

It feels so awkward having to use Defile in our single-target rotation, not to mention that I forget to use it on cooldown most of the time.

I prefer how NP works, hopefully won't be too long before it gets buffed.

OT: Overall well structured and easy to follow guide.

I feel that Defile fits into the Unholy, Blood, and even DW Frost (when using Mastersimple) rotation naturally. This is not the case for 2H Frost, though.

You should note that Lichborne allows for Death Coil healing as well, by the way. It can be useful if you're in a group with a questionable healer.

[Maxweii]

re: Purgatory: It's really not as good in practice as it is in theory, simply because if you get that low, and you're a dps, odds are you're not gonna be healed in time. If there ARE situations you'll need it, that would have been discussed with your guild.

And Chilblains really doesn't have a use outside of PvP.

Yeah any time I will be taking Purgatory over Lichborne will be because of a strat mechanic my guild is using.

Chiliblains does have limited application in PvE if there's scary adds that need to be kited, yet killed. You can stay ~15 yards away and still be damaging them, as well as slowing them. Very handy!

[Deleted]

straight to the point, no fucking about, i like it. ty for your contribution.

[ParanoiD84]

You should note that Lichborne allows for Death Coil healing as well, by the way. It can be useful if you're in a group with a questionable healer.

I thought that Lichborne no longer made you undead, therefore no coil healing anymore.

[Maxweii]

I thought that Lichborne no longer made you undead, therefore no coil healing anymore.

It still does, just they pruned that part of the tooltip so unless you look it up on an external site, or knew about it before, you won't know about it. Frost DK's lack DC now too, so they can't even benefit from that part of it anymore.

[ParanoiD84]

It still does, just they pruned that part of the tooltip so unless you look it up on an external site, or knew about it before, you won't know about it. Frost DK's lack DC now too, so they can't even benefit from that part of it anymore.

Ah fair one, thanks for clarifying

[cashballer]

re: Purgatory: It's really not as good in practice as it is in theory, simply because if you get that low, and you're a dps, odds are you're not gonna be healed in time.

That's what you use Death Pact for, and it works quite well. Lichborne just assists your healers when they don't have enough throughput to deal with predictable raid damage, while Purgatory actually prevents deaths (predictable or not). Even at its worst, Purgatory is not necessarily the "wrong" choice, and I strongly disagree with marking it as such.

[Uspoonybard]

It's a gain to PL whenever you have downtime, not just when diseases are about to fall off/outbreak is up.

[Maxweii]

That's what you use Death Pact for, and it works quite well. Lichborne just assists your healers when they don't have enough throughput to deal with predictable raid damage, while Purgatory actually prevents deaths (predictable or not). Even at its worst, Purgatory is not necessarily the "wrong" choice, and I strongly disagree with marking it as such.

Due to the nature of how Purgatory works, it's argueably worse then taking a healing CD (Lichborne). Death prevention is always better then a cheat death mechanic (if the death prevention is in the form of something that does not conflict with your damage).