Unholy wasn’t changed all that much in the last patch. Scourge Strike has been altered so that it now deals 70% weapon damage plus 12% physical damage dealt as shadow damage, per disease on the target. According to the notes, this change was made to allow Scourge Strike to hit a little harder in Pvp. Also, now Unholy Blight prevents diseases from being dispelled. This change is intended to make Unholy a more attractive Pvp option.

Unholy spec focuses on disease damage, with strikes as a backup. These mechanics make Unholy the ultimate AoE spec; but a little less ideal for single-target battles. The primary specs are these:

Unholy AoE [17/0/54]

Glyphs: Death and Decay, Icy Touch, Disease

Rotation Openner:       

Rotation 1:     Dump(   )

Rotation 2:      

Unholy Single-Target [14/0/57]

Glyphs: Dark Death, Ghoul, Icy Touch

Rotation 1:        

Rotation 2:     Dump(   )

Now that the 3.3 DPS Specs are all but done, let’s talk a little about tanking. I was surprised that I pretty much like my tanking specs from 3.2, with the exception of Unholy. There’ve been some changes to Scourge Strike and some other abilities in Unholy, so it warrants a second look at the spec I picked out.

Blood
53/8/10

Blood hasn’t changed at all since I looked at it in 3.2. This spec provides strong regeneration and mitigation as well as nice utility talents in the top of the other two trees. I think Blood is a superior raid-boss tanking spec.

Perks
Health Regeneration via Imp Death Strike, Imp Blood Pres, and Vampiric Blood
Enhanced mitigation via added Stamina, Armor, and Parry
Hysteria and Might of Mograine raid buffs
Improved Runic Power generation

Frost
10/51/10

From my experience, Frost is the superior Aggro spec. Along with other abilities; you get stronger initial threat thanks to Howling Blast. I use Frost the most for Heroic tanking and on raid trash, due to its snap-aggro on the pull.

Perks
Improved Avoidance and Mitigation via Frigid Dreadplate and Unbreakable Armor
Improved AoE threat via Howling Blast and Morbidity

Unholy
13/8/50

This unholy spec focuses more on raid tanking. It drops talents for magic immunity because they’re pretty much useless in a raid situation. Unholy focuses more on AoE threat and avoidance. I’d imagine it would be great for trash tanking, but I think it falls short on aggro generation for raid bosses.

Perks
Superior AoE Threat via improved diseases and wandering\ebon plague
Improved Avoidance via Bone Shield

I tried out Unholy in ICC this past week. I was really impressed with the results. Keep in mind that my 2-hander is pretty crappy. Despite having the worst 2-hander in the guild, I was still very competitive on dps, hitting as high as #2 on bosses.

To raid, I chose a heavy AoE build which favors multi-targetting over single-target damage. I expected it to fare well on trash, but not so well on bosses. My previous DW-Frost build did exactly the opposite. My hope was that this spec would make me at least competitive with the consecrate-batteries on the trash packs.

You will notice that this build does not take Reaping, so you will not get Death Runes. At this point, especially with lower gear level (I don’t really have much from ICC) Reaping is not recommended.

Strengths
High, Sustained AoE Damage, the highest possible for a Death Knight, doesn’t rely on procs.
Raid Utility – Ebon Plague provides great raid utility and a nearly unduplicated raid buff.
Perma-Ghoul, Bone Shield – Enhanced survivability and damage

Weaknesses
This spec suffers some in Single-target dps. While competitive, it won’t get you the highest possible numbers because the spec is geared specifically toward AoE damage. It might be a good idea to set a decent single-target spec as your alternate spec.

17/0/54 Rotation

Multiple Target AoE – Opening Rotation ONLY
     

Rotation 1
    Dump(   )

Rotation 2
    

Single Target

Rotation 1
       

Rotation 2
    Dump(   )

Glyphs

Glyph of Disease
Glyph of Icy Touch
Glyph of Death and Decay

Stat Weights

Stat weights are how you compare the benefit of one stat over another for a given spec. Stat weights are different from spec to spec, so if you are not unholy, these stat weights will not apply to you and will be different for your spec. So after getting 8% melee hit (also called "Hit Capped") your best stats are Strength > Crit Rating > Armor Penetration. Strength has a stat weight of 3.02, while Armor Pen has a stat weight of 2.01. This means that Strength is just about 50% better for you, per point than Armor Pen. For a more detailed explanation of how to work with stat weights, please see my BiS (Best in Slot) post.

Please be aware that as you start getting more ICC gear especially Tier 10 Armor Pen starts to scale more than Crit Rating. Keep this in mind as you get better gear from Icecrown Citadel.

The current stat weights for Unholy are:


WeaponDPS: 6.67
MeleeHit (<8%): 3.62
Strength: 3.06
Crit Rating: 2.16
ArP Rating: 2.01
Haste Rating: 1.75
Expertise Rating: 1.63
Agility: 1.55
Attack Power: 1
Armor: 0.028

Stat Weights via ElitistJerks

I like to comment on original thinking. When I see a Death Knight that has a non-standard spec, I’m interested. Usually random Death Knights are using a spec that they’ve found on my site, or on the Elitist Jerks forums. When I see something totally different, I like to take the time to consider it.

This latest tidbit comes from Faine of Aerie Peak. In PvE, there aren’t many hybrid specs, but his spec is about as hybrid as you can get. He’s running with 24/8/39. It takes Blood down to VotTW and Unholy down to CF.

I’m trying to figure out this build’s rotation, and the relative benefits of splitting your points up to heavily between the two outer trees. I guess this gives you some versatility between magic and melee damage, and some regeneration via rune tap; and of course the ghoul; Bone Shield is nice too.

This build lacks either Death Rune Mastery or Reaping, so it’s not going to generate Death Runes. This limits the rotation possibilities. Seeing as it doesn’t have Scourge Strike, it’s going to be either Obliterate or Death Strike-based. He’s taken Glyph of Death Strike, so I’m guessing he tries to use Death Strike.

This build doesn’t take any of the raid buff or improvement talents in the lower end of the Blood tree, so it’s almost a waste to use Death Strike. He’s also forgone points in Necrosis and BCB, which will lower overall melee dps.

As advantages, I could maybe see this build as a decent OT \AoE build. It seems to balance between melee and spell-based dps. It has some avoidance; in the form of Bone Shield. It also benefits from perma-ghoul.

However, I think that this build is going to suffer in both dps and threat by not having Death Runes and because it doesn’t delve deeply enough into the bottom of any of the trees. I’d compare this to an Unholy DPS no-DR build, but even that uses SS for DPS and threat. It also lacks much if any raid utility.

This appears to be a versatile build; it has its benefits, and also its problems. Every build has its strengths and weaknesses. It may not be something that I’d consider using in a bleeding-edge raid, but I like to reward individual thinking, and choosing not to just pick the token build from your favorite Death Knight blog.

What do you all think about this spec? Do you think that independence is important in the Death Knight community? As always, send me comments via email or post a comment right here on the site using our new comment feature.