A vicious strike that deals (30% of Attack power) Plague damage, and converts 1 Festering Wound into a Necrotic Wound, absorbing up to 6% of the target's maximum health in healing received.
Necrotic Strike won't appear in the spellbook when granted by Conflict; to get it on your bars, you'll need to drag the Major Slot button from the [Heart of Azeroth] interface's center.
Targets with the Necrotic Wound debuff will not benefit from healing (including self-healing) until the debuff is fully absorbed or expires. It cannot be dispelled.
Although Necrotic Strike's damage can crit, the absorb effect is a fixed amount based on the target's maximum health and is not increased by critical strikes.
Applying Necrotic Wound to a target that already has your Necrotic Wound will refresh the duration and add the existing wound's absorb amount onto the new one. The absorb can be stacked this way repeatedly.
Tips and tactics[]
Healers playing against Unholy death knights should be particularly aware of Necrotic Strike, whether on themselves or their allies. One of the main dangers of the ability is that healers will leave healing until the last minute; with Necrotic Strike debuffs in place, this can spell disaster. The best answer to this is to be vigilant when facing death knights, and immediately heal targets in order to remove the debuff.
Hotfix (2014-01-10): Necrotic Strike now reduces player targets' casting speed by 10% (down from 25%).
Patch 5.4.0 (2013-09-10): Now deals 100% weapon damage (down from 150% weapon damage).
Patch 5.3.0 (2013-05-21): Healing absorption effect has been increased to 225% from attack power, up from 200%.
Hotfix (2013-04-29): Damage against players and pets should now be properly affected by base resilience and the amount of healing absorbed has been reduced.
Patch 5.0.4 (2012-08-28): Weapon damage increased from 100% to 150%, and healing absorbed increased from 70% to 100% of AP. Cast time reduction increased to 50% (25% on players) from 30%, and applied even if the healing is fully absorbed.
Hotfix (2011-05-19): AP coefficient reduced from 0.75 to 0.7.
Patch 4.0.6 (2011-02-08): Absorption effect is now reduced by the target's resilience. In addition, its debuff duration has been reduced to 10 seconds, down from 15.
Hotfix (2011-01-18): Necrotic Strike is now affected by resilience.