Welcome to Skill Capped’s Guide on the Best PvP Talents & Hero Talents for Unholy Death Knights in The War Within 11.0

All sections for Unholy Death Knight PvP have been divided into corresponding sections for the most optimal hero talents, class talents, spec talents, race, stats, gear, enchants, gems, and macros. This will help you have a good understanding of Unholy Death Knights in PvP for The War Within, the strengths and weaknesses associated with this specialization, and help you conquer the arena. This section will guide you on the best Unholy Death Knight PvP Talents in The War Within.

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Hero Talents: Rider of the Apocalypse
Class Talents
Spec Talents
PvP Talents

The War Within expands our arsenal of talent options, which include our new talent hero talent trees, Rider of the Apocalypse and San’layn. Let’s go more into detail on what build is best suitable for you depending on the composition faced or played.

Hero Talents: Rider of the Apocalypse

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Starting off with our Rider of the Apocalypse hero talents, let’s look at the core talents chosen that make up this build.

Death Charge enhances our Death’s Advance for a huge boost to our movement speed, and allows us to break free from any root effect.
Mograine’s Might not only provides us a 5% damage increase, but benefits from Unholy Ground and Cleaving Strikes while under Mograine’s Death and Decay. This adds onto our sustain and cleave damage without having to stay still.

However, we have some opportunities for customization here, which involve selecting either Horsemen’s Aid or Pact of the Apocalypse.

After the nerf to Horsemen’s Aid, Pact of the Apocalypse is the best overall pick in almost every matchup. This talent transfers 5% of damage taken to an active Horseman, and if you have 4 up at the same time, expect to reduce damage taken up to 20%.

Onto our capstone node, we have Apocalypse Now. Whenever we use Army of the Dead or Raise Abomination, we summon all 4 horsemen at once to reek havoc onto your opponents.

Death Knight Class Talents

In the Death Knight Class talent tree, most of your talent choices will be mandatory when advancing onto each tier. Some of most noteworthy talents are:

Blinding Sleet as an AoE blind effect, allowing us to easily set up burst windows or to peel for your allies by pairing this with Death Grip.
Cleaving Strikes in combination with Unholy Ground to land some massive cleave on targets while in Death and Decay.
Anti-Magic Zone to negate a solid portion of magic damage whenever you or allies stay inside of it.
Death’s Echo for an additional charge on our primary utility spells, as well as Death and Decay for more cleave action.

There’s also the selection between Osmosis and Insidious Chill.

Osmosis is our default pickup, as we already have so many core talents selected that buff Anti-Magic Shell. This allows us to help our team recover a bit easier after applying Anti-Magic Shell on yourself or allies with Spellwarden.
Insidious Chill is selected against specific melees, especially into other Death Knights to reduce their Sudden Doom procs. This is because Sudden Doom‘s proc rate is dependent on attack speed.

There will then be a few points which can be moved around depending on the composition that you are facing.

For your flexible class talents, Icy Talons, Proliferating Chill, and Wraith Walk can be more swapped around with other talents offered to us, depending on what makes the most sense.

Unyielding Will to dispel you or your ally from all magic effects affected by your Anti-Magic Shell. In order to dispel magic debuffs off your allies, make sure to select Spellwarden in your PvP talents.
Gloom Ward is great if you end up playing with a Disc Priest to buff their Power Word: Shield whenever it is applied to you.
Blood Draw for some additional survivability in cases where you are focused down as the primary target.
Subduing Grasp in combination with Abomination Limb to have more uptime on your target without having to use Death Grip, while also reducing their damage to you in the process. This also does some passive damage to targets in your Abomination Limb‘s radius.
Coldthirst specifically against caster comps that heavily rely on casting.

Unholy Spec Talents

For our spec talents, most of these will be mandatory as you advance onto each tier. One important topic worth covering is the amount of disease talents we have that heavily supplement our overall damage.

Superstrain, giving access to all three of our primary diseases.
Ebon Fever, as it reduces our diseases by half while also maintaining its damage profile.
Plaguebringer to make our diseases tick 100% faster after using Scourge Strike.
Morbidity, which scales your disease damage based on how many are active.
Unholy Blight acts as an passive ability, and becomes active whenever we use Dark Transformation.

We also have some talents worth noting here that are necessary for your success in the arena.

Raise Abomination allows us to summon all 4 Horsemen every 90 seconds, which is one of the reasons why this ability is great for our burst.
Reaping grants us more execute power from Festering Strike and Death Coil when the target is below 35% Health. This talent shouldn’t convince you to hold your Sudden Doom procs in order to benefit off of it and should naturally come into effect during your rotation.
Death Rot makes it important to constantly consume Sudden Doom procs on your main target, granting you 2 stacks of Death Rot instead of 1. You also want to make sure you’re stacking this debuff up on the target as quickly as possible.

Unholy Death Knight PvP Talents

Unholy PvP talents have become a lot more flexible due to the removal of Necrotic Aura, as well as Strangulate now replacing our Asphyxiate stun.

For our default loadout, we recommend selecting Necrotic Wounds, Doomburst, and Strangulate.

Necrotic Wounds is more of a psuedo mortal strike effect, as this can also stack its effect on other mortal strike effects.
Doomburst buffs our Death Coil furthermore whenever we proc Sudden Doom. This allows us to explode 2 additional wounds on the selected target, while also reducing their movement speed by 90% for 3 seconds.
Strangulate is a promising option if your team already provides enough stuns, granting you access to a separate CC located on the Silence DR. Be mindful, as this replaces Asphyxiate, causing you to lose out on your primary stun.

Finally, you can swap to/from Strangulate depending on the matchup at hand, including some of these optional talents:

Dark Simulacrum can be a complete game-changer of a spell if you are more of an experienced player, as you can end up stealing some important defensives or CC from enemy casters.
Bloodforged Armor is recommended against melee cleaves that prioritize you as a target, adding some variance in your toolkit as this provides you with some solid damage reduction whenever you use Death Strike.
Necromancer’s Bargain reduces the cooldown on our Apocalypse by 15 seconds, and applies Crypt Fever on the target. This disease refreshes whenever your target is affected by direct healing.
Spellwarden is a promising pick as our toolkit synergizes quite nicely with Anti-Magic Shell, and is commonly picked if you’re facing a comp that is comprised of a lot of Crowd Control or heavy magic damage. This gives you the opportunity to prevent incoming control and burst by applying it on your teammate, while also having it on a reduced cooldown.