Personally I’m a big fan of the Unholy talent tree. I’ve tried them all, but always come back to Unholy. Each one of the trees has pros and cons when leveling. A big con with an Unholy build is that you don’t get a lot of the self healing that you’d get from the Blood tree or that sexy burst damage from the Frost tree. Nope, leveling Unholy is all about steadily killing anything dumb enough to aggro. Oh I love that!
So here’s the benefit of Unholy leveling – Area of Effect (AoE) baby! This tree is all about bringing the pain to anything in range. Sometimes this even includes frogs, Eleks, Clefthoof, the random Elite mob… I think you get my drift. The downside of an AoE build is that sometimes you’ll end up pulling one more mob than you’d planned. The thing about the Unholy is that you can pull that one extra mob AND NOT DIE. (Insert evil laugh – here)
The Spec: 19/0/52
Some things you’ll notice about this build are that it skips Summon Gargoyle and picks up talents like On A Pale Horse and Anticipation. This spec also runs over into … bum bum buuuuuuum… the Blood Tree. Why? Well let’s start with the Unholy side and then get back to the Blood.
Ok, so in the last build for Dual Wielding we picked up Summon Gargoyle, but this spec doesn’t. It’s really more of a gimme talent because while leveling you will tend to not use it. In this spec you want to stick with 2 Handers, Axe, Sword, Mace, whichever. You want it to be slow and you want it to hit *hard*.
By dipping into the blood tree, we’re also hitting the Two-Handed Weapon Specialization talent. That adds a little extra oomph to your white hits and your Strikes. So if you miss a rotation because a guildy is asking a question, you can still kill pretty efficiently. We’re also grabbing a little self healing via Vendetta, and we’re getting more chances to land a critical hit (ie more damage) by grabbing Dark Conviction.
So now on to the talents that were picked. On A Pale Horse and tanking talents? Why? Ok, so yes you can get from place to place a lot faster, but read the description for On A Pale Horse a little more closely. This talent also reduces the effects of Stun and Fear effects. So when you’re doing Ring of Blood in Nagrand to pick up the very sweet Honed Voidaxe, you can do just a little more damage because you don’t spend as much time knocked out by the stuns some of those elites throw at you. !@#$!@#$!!
But realize that OaPH and Unholy Aura will make you level faster than any Blood or Frost build simply because you will get everywhere a million times faster. Call it your running shoes! And those tanking talents? AoE means lots of mobs. Standing in one place to AoE them means they have to be hitting you. Not taking damage long enough to kill them = well, you get it now right?
Paving a Swath of Destruction
Since this is an AoE build, its not only easier to take care of that extra mob you might have pulled, it’s also easier to just tag and bag more mobs at a time without having to slow down. So just like last time, the quicker you kill, the quicker you turn in, the quicker you ding.
You’d get the most out of this build by taking on more than one mob at a time. I’m usually able to take on at least three mobs at any one time, and rotate one in as soon as I knock one off. If you practice at it, you should be able to take on 5-8 mobs.
Rotation
If you’re AoE’ing you’ll want to use Pestilence and DnD are up to help add more damage like so:
Don’t forget to use Corpse Explosion as soon as a mob dies off to give you a little added AoE Damage. Now you can repeat this until you run out of mobs. Once you hit 66 you can train for and use Death Pact to sacrifice your Ghoul for a quick heal. You can also swap out the DS for the AoE rotation with SS if you do not need self healing.
From the Starting Line
Ok so now you’re probably thinking, ok, all of these talents are great, but where do I put what talents as I push though levels. Ok, I’ve got you covered there. I’d recommend starting out putting your talents in the Unholy Tree first and then working your way over to the Blood Talents as you go. I pretty much suggest this because you’ll be able to grab Master of Ghouls, Bone Shield, and Unholy Blight a little bit sooner. Then you’ll be able to work your way over into the Blood Talents to help out with the Elite quests as you finish up in the Outlands and on to Northrend.
Talents at 58: 0/0/51
Talents at 71: 11/0/51
Talents at 80: 19/0/52
Summing Up
Ok, so tying it all together. This is an AoE build that will make leveling a lot faster by letting you kill a lot of stuff quickly. It also takes advantage of the Unholy tree’s faster movement speeds. Starting out you’ll want to move up the Unholy tree first and then branch out from there. You’ll also want to take advantage of using your AoE abilities as you’re working though the mobs.
Next up I’ll give a run down on Blood Leveling, but I wanted to get this one up first because Malék asked for an Unholy leveling spec in the comments of my last post.
-Geist
Tags: Geistig, Power Leveling, Specs
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