Death Knight Hero Talents - The War Within (11.0.2) (2024)

Last updated on Aug 21, 2024 at 18:20by Bicepspump73 comments

This guide will walk you through the best Hero Talents for Unholy Death Knight for Raiding and Mythic+, how they impact your gameplay, and more.

This page is specifically about Hero Talents in The War Within. Ifyou want to learn more about the best regular talents for UnholyDeath Knight, check out our Talents page:

Rider of the Apocalypse is generally the best hero talent for usin a raiding environment. It has very little impact on our actual rotationand does tend to provide the most throughput. The horsem*n themselves do greatdamage, and buff our burst windows. Furthermore, we get really solid mobilityvia Death Charge, which allows us to run around on a horse briefly andfight the raid boss.

San'layn lags behind Rider ever so slightly. The main negative aspectof the spec is that it requires you to forsake Clawing Shadows to take Plaguebringer. This sacrifices a lot of flexibility as we do not becomenearly as effective at dealing damage from range. Furthermore, San'layn alsoalters the gameplay, requiring high uptime during Dark Transformationwindows and punishing any downtime that leads to a loss of the Essence of the Blood Queenbuff.

Rider of the Apocalypse is your go-to Mythic+ Hero Talents. It providesquite a lot more damage, primarily from the raw damage of the Riders themselves.Optimising the value of the Riders is also easy, requiring no real thoughts exceptthrough the effective usage of our Cooldowns. Finally, Death Chargeprovides nice mobility ( On a Paler Horse unfortunately does not work in Mythic+or Raid).

San'layn unfortunately falls a bit short in Mythic+ scenarios. Itrelies quite heavily on good procs of Blood Beast timed with your burstto do great damage. Furthermore, Infliction of Sorrow heavily delaysa large portion of your burst since your saved-up Disease damage only burstsafter Dark Transformation finishes, a point where the damage mightnot even matter anymore.

Rider of the Apocalypse does not present a significant change to yourrotation. The effects of the Riders themselves are passive and do not requireyou to react to them. The one exception is Mograine, who will cast Death and Decayand enable your cleave. When he does this, you do not need to use Death and Decayyourself!

San'layn alters your rotation quite significantly due to the strongfeedback loop with Infliction of Sorrow as well as the maintenanceof your Essence of the Blood Queen buff. During Dark Transformation, yousimply ignore Festering Strike altogether, instead spamming Scourge Strike and Death Coil. Scourge Striketurns into Vampiric Strike during Dark Transformation (adding damage)as well as gaining a ton of damage via the Infliction of Sorrow Disease aspect,making it worthwhile to spam. Death Coil helps us generate Runes, as wellas prolong the window via Eternal Agony.

Outside of your big Dark Transformation windows, you fish for procsof Vampiric Strike to extend your Essence of the Blood Queen buff. Weuse Death and Decay on Cooldown to leverage Blood-Soaked Groundas well as prioritising Death Coil to hopefully get a proc of VampiricStrike and extend the Gift of the San'layn buff until our next Dark Transformationwindow.