Additional Unholy Tuning and Bugfixes - March 18

#1 - March 18, 2026, 8:25 p.m.

With yesterday’s tuning pass, it’s clear that Unholy performance dropped further than intended. Today, we’re working on a series of adjustments and bugfixes for the spec.

This includes reverting a portion of the baseline aura nerf and also adjusting individual abilities to increase damage a bit more outside of burst windows. We’ve also identified a several bugs that had a negative impact on tuning, so today’s changes will include fixes for those. We’ll post a full, final list of today’s changes once we’re ready to apply them to the game.

After we’re done today, we expect Unholy to be in a better spot overall, with the sum of all changes putting UDKs in a much more reasonable space that makes them competitive in raiding and mythic dungeons.

#89 - March 18, 2026, 11:07 p.m.

We’re finished with design and testing, and the following will go live to all realms soon^TM.

• Death Knight
  • Unholy
    • All ability damage increased by 8%. Not applied to PvP combat.
    • All minion damage increased by 8%.
    • Death Coil damage increased by 30%. Not applied to PvP combat.
    • Magus of the Dead damage increased by 15%. Not applied to PvP combat.
    • Dread Plague damage increased by 50%. Not applied to PvP combat.
    • Soul Reaper damage increased by 100%. Not applied to PvP combat.
    • Melee damage increased by 30%.
    • Scourge Strike and Vampiric Strike damage increased by 25%. Not applied to PvP combat.
    • Festering Strike and Festering Scythe damage increased by 35%. Not applied to PvP combat.
    • Resolved an issue allowing Necrotic Coil to be parried, dodged or blocked.
    • Resolved an issue causing Sudden Doom to reduce the effectiveness of abilities that function with the amount of Runic Power spent.
    • Resolved an issue causing Plague Mastery to not interface with eruption effects of Virulent Plague and Dread Plague.
    • Resolved an issue causing Scourge Strike to sometimes not spread Virulent Plague.
    • Putrefy has been updated to be more consistent in its targeting and now takes target radius into account.

All of these changes will also appear in todays Hotfixes Update.