Skill Breakdown: Beta Unholy Death Knight

Hello and welcome to my Mists of Pandarian Unholy Death Knight Skill Breakdown.
In this video I'm going to try to explain the active and passive spells of an Unholy
Death Knight, as implemented in the Mists beta.
Now remember, beta is beta, and subject to major changes at any time.
In the background, my DK will be going through the rotation described later in the video.
I haven't spent too much time in front of the target dummies, so as always, the rotation
is sloppy and could use some practice.
Up on the screen are tooltips of the main spells and effects of an Unholy Death Knight,
taken directly from the beta client.
These will not be up throughout the explanation, but feel free to pause the video to read through
them.
First, your mastery increases all of your Shadow Damage done to a target.
Ebon Plaguebringer ties stacks with this effect, and buffs your damage dealt with diseases
by 60%, as well as causing Blood Plague to increase all physical damage done to the target
by 4%.
Sudden Doom reduces the cost of Death Coil by 20%, and gives your auto attacks a chance
to make your next Death Coil free. Note that this effect only applies to your main-hand
weapon.
Shadow Infusion causes your Death Coils, whether it is used for healing or damaging a target,
to give your Ghoul a stacking buff that increases its damage dealt by 10%. This effect stacks
up to 5 times.
Unholy Presence now increases attack speed and rune regeneration by 20% and movement
speed by 15%.
Rounding out your passive effects, every Death Knight has a talented Rune regeneration effect
that works off of your spec's main Runic Power dump.
I've chosen Runic Corruption for this video, which gives your Death Coil, Frost Strike,
or Rune Strike a 45% chance to speed up run regeneration for about 2 seconds, affected
by haste.
Outbreak is still the same spell as in Cataclysm, and applies your diseases to a target for
no cost. This has a 1 minute cooldown.
Scourge Strike is a mainstay of Unholy, and hasn't changed from its previous incarnation.
This melee attack deals physical damage as well as dealing an additional 18% of that
as Shadow Damage for each disease you have on a target. This spell costs a single Unholy
Rune.
Death Coil has also changed little, and can either deal damage to an enemy or heal a friendly
undead target in exchange for Runic Power. Remember that the range on the spell changes
depending on if you're damaging or healing your target.
Festering Strike is your other melee ability as an Unholy Death Knight, costing 1 Blood
and 1 Frost rune. This attack deals damage, but also increases the duration of Blood Plague,
Frost fever, and Chains of Ice on your target by up to 6 seconds.
Horn of Winter is the same spell it's always been, and generates 10 Runic Power and buffs
party and raid memebers with increased attack power.
Finally, Dark Transformation has also not changed, and consumes 5 charges of the Shadow
Infusion effect on your ghoul and 1 Unholy rune to transform your pet for 30 sseconds.
Your pet has different abilities and deals more damage while transformed.
Now on to the rotation I've been able to puzzle out.
Please note that this may not be the most effective rotation, and should be considered
a starting point for people new to the class.
Before the fight, make sure that your pet summoned. As you run into melee range, pop
Outbreak and Horn of Winter.
Once in melee range, alternate casting Scourge Strike and Festering Strike until you are
out of runes, then cast Death Coil until you are out of Runic Power. Casting Festering
Strike causes your Blood and Frost Runes to become Death Runes, which can be used as any
type.
Once you have runes again, spam Scourge Strike like your life depends on it, then go back
to spamming Death Coil.
Once your Ghoul has 5 stacks of Shadow Infusion, use your next Unholy Rune to pop Dark Transformation.
From here, you basically have two phases in your rotation. The first is when you have
no Death Runes- use Festering Strike to convert all of your Blood and Frost runes into Death
Runes.
The second phase is when you have a full set of Death and Unholy Runes- this is where you
spam Scourge Strike until all your Runes are on cooldown.
Remember to pop both Outbreak and Horn of Winter on cooldown, as Horn of Winter gives
you free Runic Power, and Outbreak applies the physical damage debuff back to the target.
Overall, Unholy DKs have changed little in this expansion, still bringing hard-hitting
diseases and terrifyingly powerful pets to a fight.
Please thumbs up if you liked this video, and subscribe to my channel to be notified
when I release more content. My name is VorpalStick, and this has been my Unholy Death Knight skill
breakdown.