Frost or Unholy

Classes Death Knight
1

I’m new to DK and just rolled one.

I’m torn between frost or unholy and not sure which one to spec to?

2

Very subjective question, depends on what you like more.

  • Frost is more direct damage with strikes and spells being the bulk of damage, Unholy is more indirect damage with diseases, debuffs and pets being the bulk of the damage. Think of it like Destro Lock vs Affliction Lock, with Frost being more like Destro and Unholy being more like Affliction.
  • Unholy relies more on Cooldowns to deal it’s damage than Frost, but both are very Cooldown dependent.
  • Frost relies more on random auto attack procs to deal it’s damage than Unholy, but both have some degree of RNG to their damage.
  • Both specs are great at AoE, but prefer different amounts of targets.
  • Unholy has a permanent pet, Frost does not.
5 Likes
4

Thank you for this! Makes total sense. I like your analogy besides play what you want. I decided to go with Unholy.

2 Likes
5

Thematically I love Unholy, but Frost is also alot of fun. Personally I find Frost’s gameplay easier, but I find Unholy’s more rewarding. Visually I absolutely love seeing all my minions on the screen at once just going to work on my target.

6

But what does more damage tho

7

I think unholy is killing it in pve right now

8

Unholy is more direct damage now tbh. The majority of your damage overall comes from spamming Death Coil and Vamp Strike or Clawing Shadows.

1 Like
9

I would still argue that most of Unholy’s damage is indirect atm. Taking a look at some of the top M+ logs Death Coil + Vampiric Strike + Scourge Strike less than 50% of the damage. Furthermore it gets more indirect, Death Coil and Vampiric Strike are both ~21% of the damage, yet 5% from each of those is actually Coil of Devastation and Infliction of Sorrow respectively. 11% Blood Beast, 8% Virulent Plague, 7% Festering wound, 5% Timmy, 3% Defile, 3% Frost Fever, 2% Unholy Blight, 2% Blood Plague, 2% Magnus, 1% Abom limb, 1% Soul Reaper, throw on the two 5%s from above and you got ~55%.

Unholy is currently, and afaik has always been a “drown them in numbers” spec :slight_smile:

1 Like