Unholy DK GuideMidnight Overview
The Midnight Alpha has arrived, and with it comes a lot of changes to existing classes and specializations. Today, we are taking a look at one of the most drastically changed specializations, Unholy Death Knight.
A New Core
Since Legion, Unholy's core rotational loop has revolved around Festering Wounds. This changes with Midnight, instead removing the mechanic entirely, and replacing it with Lesser Ghouls that can be summoned in similar ways to how we would previously pop Festering Wounds.
For those unfamiliar with Unholy and its rotational loop, previously we would press Festering Strike to apply 2-3 Festering Wounds to our target, then use Scourge Strike to pop them. Now instead we press Festering Strike, to cause the next 3-4 Scourge Strikes to summon a Lesser Ghoul for 8 seconds. This wasn't the only major change to these 2 abilities, though, with Scourge Strike also now being able to spread Virulent Plague to a nearby target that doesn't already have it applied. This really helps to reduce the requirement of constantly pressing Outbreak in AoE when new enemies join the fray. Finally, the last core rotational change we see comes with Death Coil and Epidemic. Instead of just being a pure Runic Power spender without much impact on our kit, these will now extend the duration of both our Virulent Plague and the all-new Dread Plague on the target hit.
Changes to existing abilities aren't the only thing we are seeing, though, as there is a new ability introduced to the core of our rotation: Putrefy. Which, combined with the previous changes to summon Lesser Ghouls, gives this new ability a lot of versatility in both single-target and AoE scenarios. Sadly, with all these changes, one of our core cooldowns has been removed, Apocalypse, which would have served as an incredibly thematic ability to summon more ghouls, but instead it was sidelined for Dark Transformation. Not sure I love this change, as having both Apocalypse and Dark Transformation was never really an issue.
While all these changes leave the gameplay loop feeling very familiar (at least in single-target), thematically, it meshes well with Unholy's identity being the harbinger of pestilence and the undead. The overall rotational simplification that Blizard has mentioned being a goal really didn't impact Unholy. This simplification almost entirely just came down to removing Apocalypse and taking Dark Transformation off the global cooldown. Alongside this, the requirement to track wounds on every target has been removed, with wounds being gone and all. Overall, just a bit less brain power required, but very, very familiar for those who have played Unholy at any point since Shadowlands.
That familiarity, I don't believe is a good thing. If the rework just leaves us doing the exact same thing as before, and arguably worse gameplay diversity wise, was there even a point to it? I'd really have liked to see the core rotation reimagined from the ground up, but this is just the same thing with a buff on the player instead of a debuff on the target.
The Apex
Along with changes to the core rotation in Midnight, we are seeing the introduction of a new talent system, the Apex Talents. For Unholy, the Apex Talents are already testable, and the first and last points are awesome. So, let's take a look at the 3 different nodes currently available.
While these are currently split up into 3 separate nodes, eventually the UI for it will be changed to be 1 point provides the first node's effect, points 2 and 3 provide the second node's effects, and the 4th and final point will provide the effects of node 3.
For Unholy, the initial point in our Apex Talent feels incredible to play, changing our Death Coil and Epidemic into Necrotic Coil and Graveyard respectively. Both of these get their Runic Power cost reduced to 20, and their base global cooldown changed from 1.5 seconds down to 1 second. With these minor changes in the cost, and GCD cost of these abilities, it really amps up the adrenaline after you cast Army of the Dead, serving as an incredible replacement for the previous nuclear launch sequence type cooldown sequences Unholy is used to seeing.
The second and third points, on the other hand, don't provide nearly the same impact. Generating Runic Power with Army is fine to help that adrenaline rush, but only giving us 1-2 ghouls from Scourge Strike feels like wasted potential; it's just not exciting when you can press Festering Strike to get 3-4. For being a 90-second cooldown on Army, it really feels like these 2 points should provide more.
The Final point, though, goes back to being awesome, extending the period of time where we can cast Necrotic Coil and Graveyard whenever we press Putrefy or summon a Lesser Ghoul with Scourge Strike. The only complaint I have with this is, it should probably also apply to those ghouls summoned from Doomed Bidding, to synergize further with the first point in Forbidden Knowledge, focusing on our Runic Power spenders.
The New Talent Tree
Unholy's Talent Tree has been entirely redesigned, with almost entirely new talents, though some familiar ones make their return. While almost all of these nodes are new, very few of them are interesting or exciting. The vast majority of them feel like filler nodes that just provide x% increased damage to Y ability. The worst offenders of the bunch come in the capstone nodes. These 3 nodes all boil down to the same thing: "X ability also does Y." These capstones just don't have any rotational impact, no variance in gameplay style. These just don't feel like capstone talents; instead, they feel like penultimate nodes at best, being equivalent in impact to Magus of the Dead and Unholy Devotion in the middle of the tree.
The other major complaint I have with the new talent tree is that it just feels a bit... empty by comparison to our previous tree. Not counting the Apex Talents, Unholy's new tree has 36 total nodes, while the tree in TWW had 39. While removing 3 nodes doesn't seem like much, it does feel like we just get everything we want, and there's no real choice taking place. I feel really like it needs 3-4 more nodes so there's more choice in talents, rather than getting basically everything you could want for whatever scenario easily.
Now that I'm done with complaints, though, let's take a look at the few standout talents in the tree.
Unholy Devotion provides some interesting min/max potential, where you utilize Putrefy just before a Lesser Ghoul is about to expire, extending its duration and getting some extra damage out of it. There is an issue with this, though, as with the death of WeakAuras, there's just no way to track how long your oldest ghoul has left before it expires. I would not be shocked to see external tools utilized, like speedrunning split trackers keybound to the same key as Scourge Strike to try to track the ghouls' duration... There really should be a UI element showing the remaining duration of your oldest ghoul if they want to keep Putrefy's current design.
Blightburst works a lot like San'layn's Infliction of Sorrow, which is one of the few aspects of San'layn I've really enjoyed for Unholy, the disease extension and consumption ability it has provides a very nice gameplay loop. This makes this talent just an instant win for me, even if it's a tad derivative of things we already had.
And now for the standouts in a bad way.
Sudden Doom has been reverted back to its original state, albeit with a boost to the damage Death Coil and Epidemic do. But, once again, suffers the same old issue of making our Runic Power spenders free, which gets very frustrating when we want to spend resources, but just can't. This issue becomes very apparent during Forbidden Knowledge windows, where we instantly generate a bunch of Runic Power, we need to spend it, but Sudden Doom procs just prevent us from doing so, leading to resource waste in both Runic Power and Runes if we have more than 3 at the time. This really should never make anything free; fix the resource situation in other ways, please.
Rapid Variant, this feels like it should just be a core part of Dread Plague; it's roughly equivalent to Virulent Eruption, which has been a core part of Virulent Plague for years. Plus, having to take a talent to not require us to Outbreak whenever our current target dies just feels bad. It's a required node that's just eating points in the tree to provide functional QOL that should just be baseline.
I've talked a bit about Putrefy above, but this talent just feels terrible to press. There's no feedback from pressing it. There's barely even a noticeable visual indication that it worked. Just... nothing. You press a button in hopes that 2-4 seconds later, it'll deal good damage, and that just doesn't feel great. It suffers a lot of the same issues that Soul Reaper did because of this. It REALLY needs another look and some polish to give this button some instant feedback, and remove the degenerate min/max potential it brings.
Army of the Dead, while a fine ability previously, had the duration of its ghouls cut from 30 seconds, down to 8 seconds in Midnight, while also reducing the damage these ghouls do. Its overall power, purely just comparing duration and attack power inheritance values, was reduced by more than 80% compared to The War Within, and even in TWW, it wasn't a notable cooldown. Now, I know tuning is far from done, but this needs to be said early: Army sucks, majorly. On top of this, being our major cooldown, with it being a required point spend for both Rider of the Apocalypse, and now our Apex talent, its position in the tree absolutely blows. This should be where Harbinger of Doom is, the spot previously occupied by Apocalypse, so that everyone can easily get it passively, rather than forcing people to path through either Unholy Devotion or All Will Serve to get this.
Ancient Runes, while I understand this is meant to be a direct replacement for Festermight, this talent is just a required point spent with no rotational impact, or even consideration around it. It's a passive strength buff that there's no way to optimize, unlike Festermight before it. It's more than a little bland, and where it is in the tree limits options, as any optimal build will likely run this due to the power it provides. This talent should just... not exist.
Superstrain just gives Dread Plague a chance to give us some Runic Power, something Frost DKs get entirely free with Frost Fever. This talent is terrible. On that note, Unholy's Diseases still don't have a baseline tick effect, unlike Blood's Blood Plague with its Leech effect, and Frost's aforementioned RP generation with Frost Fever. In Midnight, they even reduced the baseline functionality of our diseases by removing Virulent Eruption. It just feels weird to be a spec that's meant to be the disease spec, with mechanically worse diseases. Both Virulent Plague and Dread Plague should have something baseline to these Diseases, which makes them more interesting than just "apply this to your target for damage".
Resource generation talents in the tree generally suck for Unholy, because either the spec flows well baseline, making the talents useless, or the spec feels terrible to play baseline, making resource talents required. Festering Corruption falls directly into this trap. It's either going to be useless or a required talent node, no in between. Making talents like this is something I groan at every time I see them. IMHO, just make the spec flow well baseline, and get rid of the resource talents entirely. We really shouldn't have to take talents to make the spec flow properly.
Clawing Shadows is just... weird. Previously, we were able to cleave our Scourge Strike to up to 7 extra targets while standing in Death and Decay with Cleaving Strikes. Now, it's capped at 4 oddly, and requires you to hit Scourge Strike before it'll even start to cleave... and on top of that, deals reduced damage per target hit. While I absolutely hate standing in Death and Decay due to forcing you to stay within an area, I'd rather have that than this. Functionally, this just doesn't feel great. Mechanically, it's out of place compared to both Blood and Frost's cleave mechanics, and overall does not live up to the namesake it carries, with the old Clawing Shadows being loved by the community.
Unholy Aura Prior to the latest build, I really liked this talent. But, with the changes to it... I'm not as excited by it. This talent just conflicts with itself when also taking the capstone Reanimation. With Unholy Aura, you want to space out your Putrefy casts for the Haste buff, but with Reanimation, the mastery buff from magus' now instead of ghouls encourages you to try to save 2 charges, and use both charges simultaneously with cooldowns... It's just awkward.
Conclusions
Overall, there's a lot to love about the new iteration of Unholy in Midnight, but there's also a lot to be concerned about as it stands currently. The major pain points are almost entirely focused on the Talent Tree itself, which is a good thing; it gives them a really focused area to iterate on over Alpha and Beta. This overall makes me cautiously optimistic that Unholy could be one of the best specializations in the game when it comes to both executing on its core themes and feeling great to play. But if they fail to do this, it could be disastrous to Unholy, leading to a one-dimensional specialization. There's no gameplay variance, not even in single-target versus AoE anymore; it's pretty bland as it stands and will feel stale and repetitive very fast.
We are at a fork in the road for Unholy. It's either going to be incredible thematically, and rotationally... or fun for 2 weeks because "haha lots of undead!" before being something people just get bored with and play something else. It's a bit of a scary position to be in, to be honest, but for now, at least, I'll let my optimism from how well the themes were executed carry my hope for the specialization going into the future.
