Why ppl not playing dual weild unholy dks?

Hi everyone,

I’ve been noticing that a lot of players are running two-handed Unholy DK for DPS, and I wanted to get some clarity on this.

I’ve personally tested both setups:

Two-handed Unholy (using Bryntroll and gloren)
Dual-wield Unholy (with Havoc’s Call in both hands)

With the same gear, same itemization, and same trinkets (DBW and Sharpened Twilight Scale), I’m consistently seeing higher DPS with dual-wield compared to the two-handed setup.

This got me wondering — if dual-wield is performing better (at least from what I’ve observed), why is the majority of the player base still sticking to two-handed Unholy?

Is it:

Scaling issues at higher gear levels?
Rotation complexity or consistency?
Better synergy with certain procs or abilities?
Or is there something I might be missing in my testing?

Would really appreciate insights from experienced DK players or anyone who’s tested both builds in depth.

I believe the reasons are far simpler.

1. Most people you see barely read their talents or get into anything beyond "guide says so". They simply won't put in the effort.
2. Most guides promote 2h play. Talents don't include dual wield ones. Shadowmourne is a 2h. There's lots of DKs with Shadowmourne.
3. You'll face a lot of backlash for trying to get 1h weapons as uh dk. Same issue like spellhance. Most pug leaders would question or outright kick you upon inspection.

So yeah. It's a tough spot to be in. Most dual wield uh dks I encounter run in established raids when their performance doesn't really matter and they do well. For the rest points 1-3 are probably the main reasons.

ell, I think @Blind summarized it quite well. I'll just add some thoughts from my own experience on Warmane Icecrown.

First, it's important to understand that people playing a 20+ year old game on a 16 year old patch are not the kind of players looking for novelty, challenge, or new ideas. If anything, they're kinda allergic to all of the above, if I dare to call a 5 year old build "new" idea. It's a legit experience to get kicked as a DW unholy from a pug raid, even a ToC25. The same applies to FDK, which after bug fixes is in decent shape on Warmane and provides top 2–3 single target damage in the game. Yet you'd still have difficulties joining raids and guilds, even with objective evidence for your performance.

To your questions: there are scaling issues with dual wield unholy compared to other melees, mainly ArP classes, but it's still better than 2H unholy on any boss, on any timer, prior to Shadowmourne. There are no better proc synergies for 2H either, so you're likely not missing anything.

DW unholy has a more complex rotation, but it's still relatively easy to grasp. The real issue is that there aren't enough rotation guides adapted for Warmane Icecrown. The old Whitewolf video and, if I may say so, my FAQ provide a base for understanding the spec, but it's still much less material than what's available for 2H, including Gnimo's guide.

Finally, it's a very old server with an open shop, so a lot of people are focused on gearing and playing BiS. A 284 Gloren costs less than 2x Havoc's and provides the same GS for inflated pug requirements. There's no healthy progression, and most people aren't interested in optimizing intermediate steps since they plan to get or donate Shadowmourne soon anyway.

Tagging on to what @dzianis said, even on Lordaeron where gs fudging to join raids isn't as prevalent and dps-maxxing is more relevant due to the lack of the 30% ICC dmg buff, the wider community still doesn't play dw unholy, mainly due to the "20 year old game is figured out" syndrome. So many people out there believe every bit of optimization in this game has been figured out years ago, yet even today you see people finding new ways to play the game incrementally better in both pve and pvp.

One thing I don't quite agree with is the difficulty of dual wield's rotation. Imho, it is actually pretty hard to keep a perfect rotation as you have to actively manage a bunch of buffs and debuffs in addition to your DnD cd, unlike "conventional" 2H unholy where most of these are automatically taken care of in the standard scourge + blood strike rotation.