Is unholy viable for serious raiding?

[Monkiy]

With the recent buffs Unholy is not only viable but more or less the best dk dps spec right now. Prebuffs UH was actually ahead of frost in many of encounters I believe.

No, this is wrong. Unholy has stronger prolonged AoE, but not by a grand margin, and it needs to be fairly consistent AoE (Galakras/Spoils). Frost still takes the cake in single target, varied cleave, burst, and target swapping. They are close enough now though, that if you're having trouble with an execute phase you may want to favor Unholy if you can spare the DPS earlier in the fight.

Unholy was never ahead of Frost prior to the hotfix, unless you want to consider high end raiders going back after gearing up to pad and get lucky streaks (both things that Unholy has a higher capacity for).

[Vereesa]

No, this is wrong. Unholy has stronger prolonged AoE, but not by a grand margin, and it needs to be fairly consistent AoE (Galakras/Spoils). Frost still takes the cake in single target, varied cleave, burst, and target swapping. They are close enough now though, that if you're having trouble with an execute phase you may want to favor Unholy if you can spare the DPS earlier in the fight.

Unholy was never ahead of Frost prior to the hotfix, unless you want to consider high end raiders going back after gearing up to pad and get lucky streaks (both things that Unholy has a higher capacity for).

Would you mind expanding on the bolded part? I tried Unholy for the first time last week on our first night farm bosses (10m heroic up to spoils) and the only fight I did more dps was on Iron Juggernaut and Malkorok. I didn't get to do Shamans or Nazgrim, but I am usually on bitch duty for those anyways.

I was finding that for UH to actually pull ahead you need to have your raid strat tailored to it, otherwise frost seems better.

My guild is almost done H: paragons and while I do see Unholy doing quite well on H: Garrosh 25m, I'm hesitant to switch to it for 10m.

Aerdil's parses in the posts below are pretty good examples of what Unholy's capable of.

Yep, Unholy is even more than just viable for serious raiding
On single target dps is just really great
For example:
Unholy, Juggernaut
Frost, Juggernaut
So, unholy's dps on jugg is on par with BM hunters, Fury warrs, boomkins,a little below than fire mages. Thats why unholy's dps is just fine I pressume

I'm kinda really happy to get this hotfix for unholy, but it's just too late. Well, great for farm although. Finally got an opportunity to dps on ferals/enh shamas level on single target. Some logs after hotfixes:
Iron Juggernaut (Top2 unholy)
Kor'kron Dark Shaman(Top1 unholy)
Malkorok(Top2 unholy)
Thok the Bloodthirsty(Top1 unholy)
Garrosh Hellscream(Top1 unholy)
And kinda competitive dps on Garrosh only (Heroic ofc) - Log

Raidbots also ranks Unholy a fair bit higher on most 25H encounters, granted there's slight sampling bias in there with Frost having a bunch more parses.

@Equalizer: In 10-mans I'd say there are a few encounters (as opposed to none in 25) that slightly favor Frost:

• Dark Shaman: If you're tanking the bosses together, Frost's cleave, mouseover Howling Blast and Dark Simmed Froststorm Bolt are ridiculously good
• (Nazgrim): Superior quick cleave and generally better for adds if they're problematic for your raid
• Siegecrafter: especially if you're on the belt
• Garrosh: MCs can be a bitch

Outside (and sometimes inside) of the aforementioned, however, Unholy played right can handily give DW Frost a run for its money.

[Equalizer]

@Equalizer: In 10-mans I'd say there are a few encounters (as opposed to none in 25) that slightly favor Frost:

• Dark Shaman: If you're tanking the bosses together, Frost's cleave, mouseover Howling Blast and Dark Simmed Froststorm Bolt are ridiculously good
• (Nazgrim): Superior quick cleave and generally better for adds if they're problematic for your raid
• Siegecrafter: especially if you're on the belt
• Garrosh: MCs can be a bitch

Outside (and sometimes inside) of the aforementioned, however, Unholy played right can handily give DW Frost a run for its money.

Thanks for linking those parses. Maybe it's just lack of playing Unholy for a few months is why it feels behind when I play it. I know it definitely gives frost a run for it's money. I definintely go frost for Siegecrafter, we keep mines up so I use my chilblains to slow / burst AoE / grip etc.

Unfortunately for fights like Nazgrim and Dark Shamans I am usually on bitch duty so I off tank or have to sit on adds the entire fight for sake of keeping them under control. I think I'll give UH one more try next week and try to push myself a bit more hehe.

[Monkiy]

Aerdil's parses in the posts below are pretty good examples of what Unholy's capable of.

Capable =/= better. The thing about parses is that you can't just look at the top ranks. Those are players who pad or aim to rank for the sake of ranking, and/or get lucky streaks in one or more aspects of the RNG in any given fight, be it your crit rate, boss mechanics, soaking, so on and so forth. You have to look at a more mid-level ranks, and take into account a range of them.

It's absolutely viable, but it's not exactly better.

[Deleted]

Infeh(Methods DK) mainly plays as unholy. I too play as unholy and my guild is currently 11/14Heroic. Totaly viable, beating a lot of other classes on dps in our raids.

By the way, the crit build mr.robot asks you to use is not the best. Balanced is best. Let me give you the weights, im ranked on many fights, not just for the sake of ranking


Infeh: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...r/Infeh/simple
Me: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...aj/Kanj/simple

Weighs for mr.robot

Str : 5
Crit : 2.8
Master : 2.7
Haste : 2.6

http://www.wow-heroes.com/character/eu/Ahn'Qiraj/Kanj/

In the end of the day, the one you feel most comfortable with is prolly best fitting for you.

[Raikh]

Capable =/= better. The thing about parses is that you can't just look at the top ranks. Those are players who pad or aim to rank for the sake of ranking, and/or get lucky streaks in one or more aspects of the RNG in any given fight, be it your crit rate, boss mechanics, soaking, so on and so forth. You have to look at a more mid-level ranks, and take into account a range of them.

It's absolutely viable, but it's not exactly better.

Potential is really important in making out the relative strength of a spec. Top ranks are for sure no absolute answer to which is the better spec question but its an indication.
If Frost is superior in a situation is heavily tactic dependant, not even padding/rng as much. If you share your AoE position on Gala with a destro/ele frost will win, because the adds just collapse leaving not much room for unholy AoE. If you have a similar spec not focussed on burst AoE and more constant you will see unholy dealing ridiculous dmg while being capable of dealing almost full ST dmg, which is very good versatility and highly effective, not even padding.

Just one example, many situations it is like that, its no matter of padding, its a matter of basic tactic as frost and unholy take another AoE niche.

Further taking mid-range ranks you won't get any better results. Mid-range ranks can easily be full of players which have made mistakes in the fight, or even generally medicore players carried by proc luck, good players downgraded by having no luck at all, vastly mutilating tactics allowing now full use of the class and so on.
The dk is a pretty straightforward class (no special mechanics favoring mechanic xy thorugh procs and stuff), for warlocks/warriors for example their roles are pretty much defined and what they take on, for a dk which can basically fill every roll, maybe not just as good it can vary really much.



I see way more potential in unholy than in frost, but as unholy is still a bit more rare we will have to wait a bit until that settled a bit. On fights like norushen, siegecrafter and garrosh, frost feels atleast in 10 man better. Simply because of burst cleave being favored.
Also, many unholy players, partly including me, don't get the absolute most out of the spec. For example, malko hc, dotting little adds + SRing them, either it explodes or you get the haste buff, this gets you really amazing resources and impacts really good on bursts as the 30% are true haste and affecting garg/army/timmy. Sam for norushen, maybe Sha, galakras, spoils(dependant on tactic) and so on. Also when to festerblight and when not and how long?

As Frost dw you really can't do much wrong, ST? spam HB and FS, AoE? Spam HB and FS, cleave? Spam HB and FS. You can't make much out of the SR haste buff, even the dmg isn't really much worth, on cleave its even a loss to use it. oblit only very very rare use, and you can even let BP drop for some time without it making much of a difference.

Not necessarily saying that unholy is much harder to play or anything, but you definetly have to vary your playstyle for the maximum, frost dw has a standard best solution to a situation.

[Vereesa]

Capable =/= better. The thing about parses is that you can't just look at the top ranks. Those are players who pad or aim to rank for the sake of ranking, and/or get lucky streaks in one or more aspects of the RNG in any given fight, be it your crit rate, boss mechanics, soaking, so on and so forth. You have to look at a more mid-level ranks, and take into account a range of them.

It's absolutely viable, but it's not exactly better.

When looking at a spec's viability and competitiveness for 'serious raiding', as the OP put it, specs should always be approached from what they can do, and not so much what DPS 3-year-old Thomas spamming Icy Touch can do. But for the sake of the argument, raidbots.com ranks Unholy higher than Frost overall in 25H SoO. (raidbots should be taken with a mountain of salt due to issues with WoL's heroic parsing, as well as sampling bias, but on average Unholy is doing better than Frost currently)

None of this is to say Unholy or Frost is always better, but Unholy certainly can surpass Frost.

[Varyk]

I have to disagree. Unholy might be good on single-target fights, but with fights that demand target-switching and instant burst, frost is by far better. Unholy is viable, sure. But i'm convinced that Frost, DW admittedly, will outshine it at higher gear levels.

Unholy is a better AOE spec than even DW Frost.

[Nnyco]

wouldnt you already be past progress since weeks in a serious progress guild?

[Deleted]

wouldnt you already be past progress since weeks in a serious progress guild?

Think this is regarding semi-hardcore. People who just wants to raid 3-4 hours some days a week

[Monkiy]

If Frost is superior in a situation is heavily tactic dependant, not even padding/rng as much. If you share your AoE position on Gala with a destro/ele frost will win, because the adds just collapse leaving not much room for unholy AoE. If you have a similar spec not focussed on burst AoE and more constant you will see unholy dealing ridiculous dmg while being capable of dealing almost full ST dmg, which is very good versatility and highly effective, not even padding.

This is partially what I was referring to when I mentioned players that aim to rank. They set up or coincidentally have a situation that is more favorable to their spec than normal or more regular play. This can also extend to a player being healed through fire, or some other mechanic you would typically avoid, or having all the Rogues specifically use Tricks only on you, and more.

Further taking mid-range ranks you won't get any better results. Mid-range ranks can easily be full of players which have made mistakes in the fight, or even generally medicore players carried by proc luck, good players downgraded by having no luck at all, vastly mutilating tactics allowing now full use of the class and so on.

That's absolutely a better range to gauge by. Those ranks are going to be far more reflective of regular play, assuming a few mistakes, or unfavorable circumstances.

[Deleted]

It's certainly viable enough for me in a 25man heroic raid guild, currently progressing on paragons heroic. Dunno if you consider that "serious raiding" or not though.

[Deleted]

The issue with looking at mid-range logs is that there are still far more people playing Frost than Unholy. This is likely to mean that there is much more strength in depth in Frost logs, so comparing similar ranked parses is likely to lead to comparing better players playing Frost than Unholy. Certainly the very top logs on certain fights can often be discounted (eg. my rank 1 on Nazgrim) due to dumb tactics. However, I feel that on the majority of fights, you are far better off comparing the top logs logs of each spec to get a better idea of the relative balance between the two specs.

[Skarssen]

However, I feel that on the majority of fights, you are far better off comparing the top logs logs of each spec to get a better idea of the relative balance between the two specs.

That is absolutely the worst possible way to evaluate balance.

[Kikazz]

Death knights have the option of respeccing frost and using strength one handers, a weapon type that no other dps in the game wants right now.

Apart from the casters that can use maces the rest are stuck with the same weapons that warlocks want.

Weapon upgrades mean a hell of a lot less for casters than they do for melee anyway.

our warrior is SMF, and he seems to be fine with his one handers... its down to the choice of the person and what they excel at.

- - - Updated - - -

That is absolutely the worst possible way to evaluate balance.

i agreee, as it is near on impossible to see in the logs the skill level of the player, and compare it to your own, as well as trying to factor in the rng the person had.


and most of the top ranking logs are glitched logs of people doing 30 second fights.

[Shiira]

Sure, warriors are capable of equipping one handed weapons if they don't care about sacrificing the numbers they would have as tg.

What's your point?

[Darkfriend]

It's certainly viable enough for me in a 25man heroic raid guild, currently progressing on paragons heroic. Dunno if you consider that "serious raiding" or not though.

For this point in the tier, ye. Basically thok-paragaons progression are what "semi-hardcore" guilds are going to be on right now.

[Deleted]

Unholy is a better AOE spec than even DW Frost.

Then how come the #1 parse for Spoils is a DW Frost DK?

[Shiira]

Frost doesn't have ramp up time and everything dies before unholy aoe becomes relevant.

[Iysdexia]

Unholy is viable, DW is better. That's how it was before the buffs, and that's how it is after the buffs.

Why anybody is still playing a DK this tier is beyond me.