This guide will get right down to business showing you theStat Priorityyou should take as anUnholy DK in WotLK. After breaking down the basic priorities, we will go into more specifics on caps and other situations that may require more finesse of your stat choices. If you are looking for our fullUnholy DK Guide for Wrath, go here.
1
Hit Rating
Aim For 263 Cap/ 32.8 Hit Rating = 1% Hit Chance
2
3
4
5
32.8 Expertise Rating = 1% Decrease to Parry or Dodge
6
7
8
62 Agility = 1% Crit Chance
1. Unholy DK Hit Rating Cap
For the Unholy DK in WotLK, the main thing you need to know is you want to achieve at least an additional 8% to hit. This is where the 263 Hit Rating comes in, you can use the calculation below:
The 32.8 in the equation represents the fact that it takes32.8 Hit Rating to convert to 1% of Hit.
Additional Hit Rating beyond 263 is still very good for the Unholy DK and should still be sought after. The more you stack, the more likely your dual wield hits are to land, as well as your AoE spells:Death and DecayandBlood Boil. The more likely these are to hit, the better your AoE game will be!
2. Strength Priority
Strength will be the main primary statyou want to stack as much of, with no cap at all. Agility also helps, but it does not give any attack power for a Death Knight. We’ll go over Agility more in the last section of the priorities.
Strength converts to Attack Power at the following rate:
3. Haste Priority Explained
Haste is the third most important stat for a Death Knight.It will decrease the time between attacks, making you hit much more often. Having a high Hit Rating from our previous discussion will power up Haste even more, as you willhit more often and swing more often.As an Unholy Death Knight, you benefit from haste even more than other DKs as it willincrease all of your Pet Hasteas well!
It will take 25.21 Haste Rating to achieve a 1% faster attack speed.
4. Critical Strike Rating Cap
Although Critical Strike Rating is usually seen as a great stat, it lacks in comparison to the Hit and Haste stats for DKs in WotLK.When you land a Crit, you will do double the damage, but it does take a lot more of the stat to convert to 1% Crit Rating compared to the other previously explained stats.
You will need to gather 45.91 Critical Strike Rating to convert to 1% additional chance to crit as a Death Knight.
5. Expertise Explained
The Expertise stat willdecrease the chances that your enemies will Parry or Dodge your attacks. You can think of this like a Hit Rating almost. Hit Rating will allow you swings to make it to the enemy, but they will still have a chance to parry that hit, or to dodge it completely. If you increase your expertise, those likelihoods will decrease and more of your hits will actually damage the enemy.
Level 83 Enemies will have a 6.5% chance to Dodge or Parry your attacks.Therefore you need about 214 Expertise Rating to hit the capand make sure no attacks are Dodged or Parried.
It is worth noting that other buffs and talents will reduce this rating requirement.
If you use ourUnholy DK Guide for WotLK, you will be using theRage of Rivendaretalent which increases your Expertise by 5. As noted above, each Expertise point is worth 8.2 Expertise Rating.Therefore with this talent you will only need 173 Expertise Rating to hit cap.
Other Considerations of Expertise are if your race hasSword, Axe, or Mace Specialization Racial Abilities. For the full set of Expertise Rating Cap depending on your scenario, see below. For this example we will assume you use the required Rage of Rivendare talent.
173
157
156
140
Human w/ Sword or Mace
148
132
116
99
83
6. Armor Penetration
Armor penetration is beneficial against enemies with high armor values. This will allow you to ignore a portion of their armor and thus do more damage.It is much lower in priority compared to any of the other stats listed previously, but still worth mentioning. Here is how it is calculated:
If you had exactly 13.8 Armor Penetration Rating, it would mean your attacks ignore 1% of the enemy’s armor; That 1% will deal its full damage.
7. Attack Power & Agility for Death Knights
Both Attack Power and Agility are very straight forward.They are the least important of all the statslisted and should only be taken if no other options from above exist.Strength will be a much better stat to convert to Attack Power, andCritical Strike Rating is a much better stat to stack Crit than Agility. Agility gives no benefit to any stat other than Crit Chance for Death Knight; it does not even grant Attack Power.
