Spell Spotlight will be a series of posts that will cover in depth all of the Death Knight spells based off of Alpha information. (keep in mind that this information is subject to and most likely will change)

Unholy

Last up in the starting spells is the Unholy tree. Here is a view of the Unholy section of your spell book upon creation:

First we’ll hit the highly anticipated Death Coil. The Death Knight version doesn’t have a fear mechanic but it will certainly become the “finishing move” of choice for most Death Knights. Here is the tooltip:

I’m not going to cover every talent that can improve Death Coil’s damage to save the length of this post, however, I will mention the obvious talent Improved Death Coil:

Improved Death Coil scales 5/10/15% per point.

We have a thread dedicated to breaking down Death Coil from about every angle. We’ve seen tests to find out base damage, how it scales with RP, talents, etc. etc. Here is a sample from the thread:

72 damage / 332 AP = ~0.2168, or 5 AP = 1 point of damage.
206 AP / 5 = ~42 bonus damage
523 – 42 = 481 base on Death coil at 100RP

The amount of Runic power affects the bonus damage, it looks like, so if you’re at 90 RP, 0.9 * 72 = 64.5.
80 RP = 0.8*72 = 57
70 RP = 0.7*72 = 50
Etc.

The Death Knight version has the same animation as the Warlock version, here is a shot of it in action:

Next up is Death Grip. Here is a shot of Death Grip in action as well as its tool tip:

You can see what a great tanking spell this will be. The only draw back is the 45 sec. cooldown which can be reduced to 35 sec with the talent Unholy Command:

Plague Strike is another good way to apply diseases for disease happy unholy specced DKs:

I’m going to stop this now and just get it posted for the sake of finishing the 3 part series, but as I finish this a new Alpha patch just hit and it looks like many spells and talents have changed!

Stay tuned for that info plus more spell info! Including a new mount change!