Unholy Death Knight DPS Stat Priority — 12.0.5

For raiding and Mythic+, the secondary stat priority for Unholy Death Knight is as follows:

Unholy mainly aims for Mastery and Critical Strike. These two stats synergise well with each other and generally have more value than the rest.

Usually, a higher item level piece of gear will be a bigger upgrade than a lower item level piece of gear, even with better stats.

Optimization

Simulations and Tools

While a generalized stat priority will assist new players, there really is no substitute for simming your character. Learn more with this guide!

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Strength is your primary statistic. You should look for it in all of your upgrades. It provides you with Attack Power, which determines the damage your abilities do.

Mastery, through Mastery: Dreadblade, increases your Shadow and minion damage. Furthermore, it increases the Critical Strike damage of your Diseases and Minions and your minion duration when talented into Commander of the Dead. We get some higher-order scaling with Mastery both due to the Critical Strike damage interaction as well as the commander pet increase (you get both duration and damage which double-dips). This helps making Mastery as well as Crit strong stats.

Haste will increase your attack speed and Rune regeneration rate. It also reduces your Global Cooldown. For you pets, it increases their attack speed as well as the rate at which they generate energy, making them use their abilities more frequently.

Critical Strike increases your chance to critically hit with all spells and abilities. Crits deal double damage by default, but several effects can increase your crit damage, and make crits even stronger.

Versatility increases all your damage and healing done, and decreases all damage taken.

For Unholy, your pets and minions inherit your stats. Increasing your Haste will make them hit faster and regenerate Energy faster. Critical strike will increase their Critical Strike chance, etc. Stats are dynamically updated for the pets, meaning a new buff you receive will then also be applied to any pets you currently have. This means that you do not need to worry about applying buffs before summoning any minions! However, it is important to recognize the fact that this inheritance is not instantaneous! It takes anywhere between 0 and 5 seconds for the pets to actually inherit the stats from us (both when we gain and lose the stats).

Every stat has a limit where they will begin to offer less increase per point gained, which are known as the points of diminishing return. Once you have reached these amounts, stats will become progressively less valuable and may fall behind other options. The current breakpoints are:

Itemization

Gearing and Enchants

Your stat priority extends to enchants, consumables, and gear. Take what you learned on this page and apply it to your gameplay with these two guides!

GearEnchants

Bicepspump

Guide Author

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This guide has been written by Bicepspump, a semi-hardcore player raiding with Pixelbased Lifeforms on Kazzak. He is heavily involved in the DK DPS theorycrafting community, testing hyoptheses and investigating the correct priority to use. He produces guide content on YouTube and frequently streams on Twitch.