PvE Unholy Death Knight Best Professions

Author: Nevermore
Date: July 16, 2022
Updated: July 21, 2022
Expansion: WotLK Classic

PvE Unholy Death Knight

Talents, Builds & Glyphs

Stat Priority

Best Races

Gems, Enchants & Consumables

Rotation & Cooldowns

Best Professions

Best in Slot (BiS) & Pre-Raid Gear

Addons & Macros

Professions are the core of WoW’s economy, relying on players crafting goods or trading a variety of services, all to generate equipment that will help them along their journey… or just fill their pockets with gold.

This section will cover some of your best options for professions as an Unholy Death Knight.

Best Professions

Among the best professions available, Engineering definitely is the strongest contender: it comes with damage-enhancing effects and gadgets that can significantly improve your overall performance. As a pair to this profession, we recommend Jewelcrafting, which not only allows you to craft valuable goods, but also enhances your overall stats.

Engineering can be considered the best profession there is when it comes to PvE content, offering you significant bonuses and a variety of gadgets that can improve your overall damage, as well as give you several unique tools that come with both the survivability and defense mechanisms.

The main benefit of Engineering lies in the Hyperspeed Accelerators gloves enchant, which gives a +340 haste rating for 12 seconds, on a 1-minute cooldown. The use of this enchantment should always be prioritized with your trinket procs, since it massively empowers your overall damage.

Additionally, Engineering gets you a very powerful escape tool — Nitro Boosts, which provides a powerful boots enchantment offering +24 crit rating and the ability to vastly increase your movement speed for 5 seconds. This gadget allows you to escape dangerous raid mechanics or to quickly reposition yourself in case you are stuck behind.

Finally, just like in previous expansions, Engineers can use powerful explosives such as Saronite Bombs and Global Thermal Sapper Charges.

Jewelcrafting can be considered the second strongest profession that you can acquire, getting you the ability to create and sell different types of jewelry and rare gems, while also providing you with a strong stat boost.

Jewelcrafting offers a stat boost from using Dragon’s Eye, which represent special gems more powerful than regular gems — these are limited to 3 equipped at the same time. Generally, as an Unholy Death Knight, you will want to use Bold Dragon’s Eye and Fractured Dragon’s Eye, resulting in +42 strength or +42 armor penetration rating compared to using regular epic gems.

Useful Professions

Those professions come with several useful effects that can be considered viable for PvE performance. However, they do not represent the best possible combination, thus making them a worse fit for your character if you are trying to fully optimize it.

Blacksmithing allows you to craft different mail and plate items that you can either use yourself or sell in the auction house. Blacksmiths also have access to a special enchantment, which gets them increased stats.

Blacksmiths get the opportunity to add 2 extra sockets to their equipment — 1 on the wrists, and 1 on the hands. Socketing 2x Bold Cardinal Ruby or 2x Fractured Cardinal Ruby into these translates into a +40 strength or +40 armor penetration rating bonus.

Tailoring lets you create different sets of cloth items based on scavenged cloth material found throughout the world. While this profession is mainly used for casters, Death Knights can benefit from one extremely strong enchantment that Tailoring provides.

Tailors can utilize the Swordguard Embroidery cloak enchantment, a proc which gives you +400 attack power for 15 seconds with a 45-second internal cooldown. This enchantment can be considered the strongest enchantment you can acquire for your back slot in the entire game.

This translates into a possible +133 attack power bonus on average if it procs exactly every 45 seconds, or a +100 attack power bonus on average if it procs every 60 seconds, which is absolutely massive.

Enchanting allows you to place a multitude of weapon- and armor-enhancing effects for both yourself and other players, while also allowing you to create different magical essences by disenchanting rare items. You can also choose to sell enchanted scrolls at the auction house!

Enchanters gain access to special ring enchantments. In the case of an Unholy Death Knight, you can gain access to Enchant Ring – Assault. You can place this enchantment on both of your rings, resulting in +80 attack power. This bonus ties Inscription and Leatherworking, but is, strictly speaking, worse than the +40 strength bonus that Blacksmithing offers.

Inscription allows players to create various scrolls and glyphs for either personal use, or as pure trade goods to be sold at the Auction House. Inscription offers players a unique, convenient bonus that they can acquire early in the expansion.

As a Scribe, you gain access to the Master’s Inscription of the Axe shoulder enchant, which provides a +80 attack power increase over the standard enchant that is available to everyone, the Greater Inscription of the Axe.

Leatherworking allows you to craft several different types of equipment pieces for your own use, or to be sold on the Auction House. Sadly, as an Unholy Death Knight, you will not benefit from any of the armor crafted by Leatherworking, but you will still be able to generate decent amounts of income by selling your services.

As a Leatherworker, you gain access to the Fur Lining – Attack Power bracer enchant, which proves a +80 attack power increase over the standard enchant that’s available to everyone, Enchant Bracers – Greater Assault.

Alchemy allows you to create different potions and elixirs, either for personal use or just as consumables to be sold at the Auction House. This profession generates the highest amount of gold in the game, due to the ability to craft large amounts of flasks or potions through special perks, to sell them or to transmute additional materials.

As an Alchemist, you gain access to the Mixology passive effect, which increases the effectiveness of flasks and elixirs you consume, but only if you can craft them yourself. This results in a +64 attack power increase when using Flask of Endless Rage, our preferred flask. This is, sadly, a smaller boost compared to what other professions can offer, but not by much.

Skinning allows you to acquire the pelts of slain beasts throughout the whole world, offering you the opportunity to sell them in the Auction House or use them for Leatherworking. Depending on your server economy, Skinning can generate large amounts of profit.

Skinners gain access to the Master of Anatomy passive, which offers a +40 crit rating boost. While this bonus can seem generally weaker than the other bonuses on this list, Unholy Death Knights benefit a great deal from increased critical strike chance when the Wandering Plague is taken into consideration.

Sub-Par Professions

This section is represented by professions that do not get you any considerable performance-enhancing effects for PvE scenarios. However, they can still prove to offer strong income bonuses.

Herbalism is one of the strongest professions for gold generation, as herbs are used in Alchemy and Inscription, and will always be in high demand. While not offering any DPS-enhancing mechanics, Herbalism can be chosen solely for gold generation, especially because of On a Pale Horse.

Herbalists gain the Lifeblood active skill, which heals you for 3600 over 5 seconds, with a 3-minute cooldown. While this healing effect is not particularly powerful, it can provide a useful bonus for solo content.

Mining is one of the best gold-generating professions when it comes to the sheer number of raw materials you can acquire. Those materials can either be used as simple trade goods in the Auction House, or as crafting materials for Blacksmiths, Engineers, and Jewelcrafters.

Miners gain access to the Toughness passive, which offers a +60 stamina boost. This effect will help boost your overall survivability, however, it is far more suited for tanking specializations.

About the Author

Nevermore

Hey there folks, I am Nevermore and have been deeply passionate about WoW for more than a decade. Whether we talk about the hidden mysteries of Azeroth or the otherworldly Outland, my journey brought me here to share the things that I have experienced with you all.