Death Knight PvE Guides

Frost Death Knights were some of the strongest damage specializations in the game back in Wrath of the Lich King. It will be interesting to see how well they perform in WoW Classic: WotLK. Many tier lists out there rank them as number one or two just behind the other DPS spec available to Death Knights, Unholy.

This guide will give players an understanding of how to optimally play the Frost Death Knight in end-game PvE content at level 80, specifically how they can best contribute to group content such as Dungeons and Raids.

Best Talent Build For Frost Death Knight

There are two main talent builds for Frost Death Knights. The image below shows both of these builds.

Variations

• BloodTalents (Highlighted in Green)
  • In the early phases, extra skill points are placed into Blood Talents to improve Attack Power with Bladed Armor and improve Critical Rating with Dark Conviction.

• Unholy Talents (Highlighted in Orange)
  • In later phases, extra skill points are placed into Unholy Talents. This switch is often made in later phases when better equipment, particularly weapons, has been obtained. This is due to Necrosis and Blood-Caked Blade scaling with better weapons and Ravenous Dead with scaling higher strength.
  • Note that the second build requires 3 points removed from the Frost Talents (Black Ice) as well.

Best Glyphs For Frost Death Knight

Major Glyphs

The three best Major Glyphs for Frost Death Knights are Glyph of Frost Strike, Glyph of Obliterate, and Glyph of Disease. Each of these glyphs are very important to increasing overall damage.

Minor Glyphs

The two Minor Glyphs that are almost always seen for Frost Death Knights are Glyph of Raise Dead for a minor improvement in inventory management, and Glyph of Pestilence for a significant range increase to Pestilence.

The only variations that players should consider are:

• Replace Glyph of Blood Tap for Glyph of Horn of Winter.
  • The health cost for Blood Tap is rather insignificant, whereas the improvement in the duration of Horn of Winter could ease the need to refresh it mid-fight.

Stat Priority For Frost Death Knight

The stat priority listed below will help guide players to know which stats to look for on gear. In general, if a piece of gear has more stats overall it would be the better choice. Players need to make sure that they achieve specific stat thresholds, such as Hit Rating and Expertise, and then they can focus on increasing other stats.

1. 263 Hit Rating*
2. 26 Expertise
3. Strength
4. Critical Strike Rating
5. Armor Penetration
6. Haste
7. Attack Power
8. Agility

For Frost Death Knights 263 Hit Rating (8%) is the minimum amount required to ensure attacks with skills always hit. The talent Nerves of Cold Steel and the Draenei passive Heroic Presence reduce the hit rating needed from gear by 3% and 1% respectively.

Hit Rating is still an important stat above the special attack cap, increasing it to higher thresholds will also improve damage.

• 446 Hit Rating(17%) for more AoE spell damage from Howling Blast
• 885 Hit Rating(27%) for off-hand auto attacks.

The Expertise Cap that Frost Death Knights need in order to never have a skill be dodged or parried is 26 (6.5% or 214 Expertise Rating). Wielding the weapon that corresponds with the below racial traits will reduce the amount of expertise needed:

• Humans: Sword Specialization and Mace Specialization
• Orcs: Axe Specialization
• Dwarves: Mace Specialization

Critical Strike Rating, ArmorPenetration, and Haste Rating are all fairly equal in terms of power, with crit increasing spell and melee damage, ArPen increasing melee damage, and Haste improving melee damage and increasing the frequency of activating Killing Machine.

Agility does not provide Attack Power; it only increases Critical Strike Chance.

Skill Rotation For Frost Death Knight

To start, Frost Death Knights should be in Blood Presence for Single-Target encounters for a flat 15% damage boost.

1. Apply both diseases, Frost Fever and Blood Plague, on all targets with Icy Touch and Plague Strike and maintain them throughout the fight with Pestilence with Glyph of Disease equipped. Having these always on the target vastly improves the damage of Obliterate.
2. Cast Obliterate to generate Runic Power
3. Cast Frost Strike when Killing Machine activates or to spend extra Runic Power.
4. Cast Howling Blast when Rime activates.
5. Cast Blood Strike or Pestilence to convert Blood Runes into Death Runes with the talent Blood of the North.
6. Cast Horn of Winter to generate Runic Power

Burst Damage

When the situation calls for burst damage or to maximize damage at the beginning of an encounter players can cast Blood Tap to use Unbreakable Armor and then cast Empower Rune Weapon followed by casting Obliterate 3 times (preferably after diseases have been applied and are active on the target).

Using trinkets, Potion of Speed, and racial traits like Blood Fury or Berserking at the same time as well as casting Raise Dead to benefit from all the buffs will offer a significant period of burst damage.

Multi-Target

For Multi-Target (greater than 3) encounters, use Howling Blast when Killing Machine activates instead of Frost Strike. Players may also want to be in Unholy Presence in order to spread diseases faster and to activate Killing Machine and Rime more often.

Consumables For Raids

Flask:

1. Flask of Endless Rage
2. Alternatives: Elixir of Mighty Strength or Elixir of Protection with the talent Bladed Armor (provides effectively +22 AP)

Food Buff:

1. Dragonfin Filet
2. Alternatives: Snapper Extreme, Worg Tartare

Potions:

1. Potion of Speed
2. Using Indestructible Potion with the talent Bladed Armor (+97 AP) before combat. Then a Potion of Speed during combat. They share a 1-minute cooldown, but Indestructible Potion provides a 2-minute buff.

Scrolls:

1. Scroll of Strength VII

Best In Slot Pre-Raid BiS Gear For Frost Death Knight

The gear that is often sought after for both of the Death Knight DPS specializations, Frost and Unholy, is largely the same. The exception is that sometimes Unholy can have flexibility by wielding a 2-handed weapon. For this reason, we've chosen to place the BiS Gear options for both specs on one page: