In the forthcoming Wrath Classic, we've been granted access to a new class as Death Knights appear. We have introduced the Unholy Death Knight and Blood Death Knight before. Today we will introduce the Frost Death Knight for the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King Classic.
This guide will help you and your Frost Death Knight class face the toughest raids and dungeons and improve your knowledge, role, and class.
Why Play as Frost Death Knight?
Frost Death Knights are one of the most powerful as they afflict enemies with powerful diseases while also rendering their flesh with cold Runeblades.
Frost Death Knight Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
Frost Death Knights are fun to play. Throughout the game, they are one of the most powerful when it comes to single target damage. Although they are slightly be hung their Unholy counterpart when it comes to AoE damage, their Howling Blast still makes them one of the strongest AoE damage dealers in the game.
Weakness
The Death Knight class's general weakness of low mobility also applies to Frosts. Death Knights need items like Nitro Boosts boot Enchant from Engineering to move quickly around. Also, Frost Death Knights can be difficult to play, as they need good gear to get stronger; and may not be well suited to beginners. However, if you get enough WoW WotLK gold, you can easily play any class you want.
The goal of the spec
Like other Death Knights, your goal will be to spend Runes to generate Runic Power and spend your Runic Power on powerful frost attacks or healing. Your main Runic Power generating ability that consumes Rune will be Obliterate. You can also generate Runic Power from Frost Fever, the DoT that will be applied to all enemies hit by your Howling Blast. You have some long recharging spells known as cooldowns. Empower Rune Weapon will be one of such cooldowns, which will take 2 minutes to recharge, increase your Haste, and generate Runes and Runic Power.
Your main Runic Power spenders will be Frost Strike, a strong single target damage ability that strikes with both weapons if you are dual wielding and dealing great frost damage. The other main Runic Power spender is Death Strike, and although it does not increase your DPS, it heals you. You can also use the Death Coil to dump Runic Power.
Frost Death Knight DPS Talent Build
While leveling, you'll unlock your talents rapidly. But this is our recommendation for a Frost Death Knight DPS in a PVE situation to maximize your damage.
Frost Death Knight DPS Glyphs
Glyphs are a new feature in Wrath of the Lich King Classic, allowing you to augment your spell abilities with major and minor glyphs. These are slowly unlocked as you level and at Lvl. 80, you'll have access to all 6. The best glyphs for you will depend on what spec you have, regardless if you're still leveling or looking for a BiS guide.
Best Glyph for Frost Death Knight
These are the best glyphs available for you to run based on our recommendations, and you can change them when doing different things such as focusing on a single target, moving quickly, fighting mobs, etc.
The major glyphs are:
Glyph of Frost Strike - This reduces the cost of Frost Strike by 8 Runic Power. Many people who favor Frost Strike prefer to use this over the Glyph of Icy Touch.
Glyph of Obliterate - It's great and mandatory as it increases the damage of your Obliterate by 25%. It does a lot of damage since Obliterate is your highest damage dealing ability.
Glyph of Disease - This refreshes your disease with just a Blood Rune using Pestilence instead of using both Unholy and Frost Runes to keep up your disease on the target. This will be crucial in longer fights and is important for DPS.
For minor glyphs, we have:
Glyph of Pestilence - This increases the range of Pestilence by 5 yards. It's a great quality of life improvement, and you'll notice it immediately.
Glyph of Raise Dead - Your Raise Dead will no longer require Corpse Dust as the reagent. You will also have more space in your bag.
Glyph of Horn of Winter - Increases the duration of Horn of Winter by 1 minute. It's important because you'll be using Horn of Winter much more frequently than 2 minutes, which with this glyph, it'll be 3 minutes cooldown and 3 minutes duration. It also grants 10 Runic Power.
Frost Death Knight Stats Priorities
Hit Rating - Hit is your most important stat if you are dual wielding. So you'll want to get more and more of it. Without it, you miss out on spell and melee attacks, greatly reducing your attack and damage. Death Knights are a hybrid class of caster and melee, so they need both ranged and melee Hit caps.
You want to have 2 slow one-handed weapons, both of them slow because you want to hit really hard with your main abilities, which hits the target with both weapons. Then you need at least an 8% melee Hit rating for special abilities. You already get 5% from your talent, Nerves of Cold Steel.
You also need a 17% spell hit rating to make it complete, which will be used against raid bosses.
Expertise - The next important stat is Expertise. It makes it so your abilities can't be dodged or parried. You have 26 Expertise, and you'll want to Cap it. Your weapons, depending on the race you choose, can increase your Expertise as well. The Human's Mace Specialization and Sword Specialization increase it by 3, while the Orc's Axe specialization gives you 5 more.
Strength - Strength is the most important primary stat for Death Knights, and for Frost, it's even more important as your Unbreakable Armor increases your strength by 20% with just a 1-minute cooldown. You get 2 Attack Power per strength. So you'll want to stack up on strength early in the expansion as armor penetration will not be strong later.
Attack Power - Your attack power increases your basic and offensive attacks, and as we mentioned above, you can get Attack Power by stacking strength. Although, you also get it from items that give you Agility. You can also gain Attack Power from different class buffs, passive talents, food, flasks, etc., all of which you can get easily if you have surplus WotLK classic gold.
Haste - Haste increases your attack speed and reduces your General Cooldown.
Armor Penetration - This stat allows your attack to bypass your target's armor, thereby increasing your damage significantly. With a cap of 1400, you need specific trinket buffs and gems that specifically enhance AP to stack the stat. You might not want to prioritize this at the start of the expansion, but at later phases, you want to get equipment that offers you a large amount of AP.
Frost Death Knight Rotation
As Death Knight, you must deal with Runes and Runic Power, which requires a rather complex rotation. Rotation will maximize your DPS in AoE and Single target situations. Firstly, here is a little overview of the Frost Death Knight's abilities:
Offense
Obliterate - The most powerful and main ability for Frosts. Deals instant physical damage to your target, and this is increased by 12.5% per disease on the target.
Plague Strike - This ability deals with physical damage and places your disease, Blood Plague, on the target. It's also a core ability, most important to use at the beginning of your fights.
Frost Strike - This is another core ability and exclusive to Frost Death Knights. It deals hybrid damage, physical damage first, and then Frost damage on your target. Also, it uses Runic Power and can be considered as the true Runic Power Spender for Frost Death Knights.
Icy Touch - This is another useful ability that deals Frost damage to your target, reducing its attack speed by 20%. It also places your Frost Fever disease on the enemy. It's a ranged ability, so you might want to watch how you utilize this, and as long as you use your Pestilence properly to keep your disease up.
Pestilence - With this powerful ability, you can spread your disease to all targets within 15 yards of your primary target. It's even more powerful with the Glyph of Disease, as you can reset the duration of the disease you already have on your target, therefore keeping your disease up.
Rune Strike - This ability can only be used on special occasions when you dodge or parry an attack. So, a counterattack move. It's also a Runic Power Spender and is especially useful as it's not affected by the GCD.
Howling Blast - Another Frost Death Knight signature ability. It allows you to freeze your enemies to death. It's useful in both single target and AoE situations, but you shouldn't spam this ability as it can lead to damage loss.
Blood Strike - Deals physical damage while also dealing increased damage for every disease present on your enemies by 12.5%. Spending this ability transforms your Blood Rune to Death Runes, and Death Rune, being a replacement for any other Rune, allows you to use your Obliterate, for example, more.
Death Strike - This ability deals with physical damage and heals you for 5% of the disease on your targets.
Army of the Dead - This allows you to summon your ghouls to fight your battles. A burst ability that will be useful when you cast at the start of the battle as it has an extensive channel time.
Raise Dead - This allows you to assail your enemies by raising ghouls with Corpse Dust.
Defense
Death Pact - This ability sacrifices one of your ghouls to restore your health. You can use it with Army of the Dead, so it consumes one of the ghouls' presents.
Anti-Magic Shell - Puts up a magic absorption barrier and provides you with Runic Power the more it absorbs damage.
Icebound Fortitude - This reduces incoming damage by 30% and makes use immune to stun effects. You can use this ability when you're about to take heavy damage in raids or dungeons.
Others
Horn of Winter - This buffs all allies around you. It gives 155 Agility and Strength and provides you with 10 Runic Power. It has a short cooldown useful in rotations to gain Runic Power, especially when your Runes are on cooldown.
Blood Tap - With this, you can change your Blood Runes to Death Runes within 20 seconds, although at the cost of your health. It's useful in rotations to gain Death Strike without having to cast Blood Strike. You want to use a glyph with this ability to remove the health penalty.
Presences
Frost Presence - Help you gain 60% armor value contribution from your items, increase your stamina by 8%, and reduces damage by 8%. Although not great against magical damage, it boosts your defense against physical damage.
Blood Presence - Increase damage by 10% and heals you of 4% of damage done. Will be your default presence later in the expansion.
Unholy Presence - Increases movement and attack speed by 15% and reduces your GCD by 0.5 seconds. As Frost Death Knight, this might not be too useful for you as the only benefit you gain from this is the cooldown reduction.
Frost Death Knight Standard Rotation
Use your Burst abilities like Empower Rune Weapon and Army of the Dead to early use
Always cast Unbreakable Armor whenever it's available to you
Apply Frost Fever with Icy Touch
Apply Blood Plague with Plague Strike
Refresh your DoTs with Pestilence
When you have the necessary Rune, cast Obliterate
Transform Blood Runes to Death Runes with Pestilence or Blood Strike
Always dump your Runic Power with Frost Strike whenever it's possible.
Frost Death Knight DPS Rotation
Icy Touch > Plague Strike > Obliterate > Frost Strike > Blood Strike > Pestilence > Horn of Winter > Frost Strike > Obliterate > Obliterate > Frost Strike >>> Repeat without Icy Touch and Plague Strike.
Explanation
As a DPS, you'll want to start with Icy Touch to apply Frost Fever, followed by Plague Strike to put on Blood Plague. Next, you want to use Obliterate, which will do a lot of damage, and because you have the Annihilation talent, Obliterate will do its damage without consuming disease. Use Frost Strike, followed by Blood Stike, and then cast your Pestilence, and because we have the Glyph of Disease, Pestilence will refresh the duration of disease on your target.
Use Horn of Winter to gain additional Runic Power. Cast another Frost Strike, followed by two more Obliterate and then another Frost strike. Repeat the process without Icy Touch and Plague Strike because you already have Frost Fever and Blood Plague disease up. All you have to o is keep them up with your Pestilence.
Note - Never use your last Blood Rune if your diseases are about to expire. You must save that for Pestilence. You don't want your disease falling off.
Class mechanics for Frost death knight DPS
If you haven't played the Death Knight class yet, know that two resources are the core of the Death Knight class: Runes and Runic Power. You have six runes in total; 2 Blood Runes, 2 Frost Runes, and 2 Frost Runes. Runic power works like rage; you stack up and spend it on abilities. Every ability you use requires some combination of these runes.
Best Frost Death Knight DPS Professions
Professions are the core of the WoW world as they greatly boost your survivability, damage, and healing. Players craft goods and trade different services to generate different equipment to help along their journey or get lots of WotLK classic gold. So here are the best professions for the Frost Death Knight.
Engineering
For PvE content, this is the best profession. The most crucial benefit is the Hyperspeed Accelerators glove Enchant that produces a +340 Haste rating for 12 seconds, which means an increase in attack power by 10%.
Also, the Nitro Boosts boot Enchant gives a +24 Crit rating which increases your speed, allowing you to move away from dangerous situations or catch up to enemies quickly.
Jewelcrafting
Like most other classes, this profession is amazing. It offers access to powerful gems you can sell to others for a steady income. The Dragon's Eye gems, especially Bold Dragon's Eye and Fractured Dragon's Eye, will give you a +42 strength and +42 Armor Penetration rating, unlike regular gems.
Other Useful Professions
Blacksmithing - Blacksmiths have the ability to add two more gem sockets to their gears on the hand and wrist. Adding two Fractured Cardinal Ruby or two Bold Cardinal Ruby will give you +40 Armor Pen. and +40 Strength.
Tailoring - Use the Swordguard Embroidery cloak enchantment to get +400 attack power for 15 seconds.
Alchemy - Increase the effectiveness of elixirs and flasks you craft yourself and consume with the Mixology passive effect, to gain +64 attack power.
Enchanting - gain access to special ring enchantments like the Enchant Ring - Assault that gives +80 attack power
Frost Death Knight Consumables, Gems, and Enchants
Apart from talents and gears, there are three more ways to improve your overall performance. With Gems, Consumables, and Enchants, you'll be able to do that and guarantee yourself raid spots.
Consumables
Gems
For Gems, you have a couple of options that are going to depend on what stats you need but generally speaking, you want to go for these:
Meta - Relentless Earthsiege Diamond
Red gem - You want the Bold Cardinal Ruby, Fractured Cardinal Ruby, or the Etched Ametrine if you are not Hit capped.
Yellow gem - Fierce Ametrine and Rigid King's Amber if you are not Hit capped
Blue gem - You want to use the Nightmare Tear.
Enchants
Head - Arcanum of Torment
Shoulder - Greater Inscription of the Axe
Cloak - Scroll of Enchant Cloak - Greater speed or the Scroll of Enchant Cloak - Major Agility
Chest - Scroll of Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats
Bracers - The Scroll of Enchant Bracers - Greater Assault gives you 50 attack power
Gloves - Scroll of Enchant Gloves - Crusher gives you 44 attack power.
Waist - For your belt, get that extra gem socket from Eternal Belt Buckle
Leg - Get 75 attack power and 22 Crit from the Icescale Leg Armor
Boots - For boots, get 32 attack power from the Scroll of Enchant Boots - Greater Assault or the Scroll of Enchant Boots - Tuskarr's Vitality
Weapons - You want the Rune of Razorice on your Main-hand weapon for more damage, and on your Off-hand weapon, you want the Rune of the Fallen Crusader, which is one of the stronger weapons enchantments in the game.
That's our ultimate guide on the Frost Death Knight. Although this concentrates on PvE Frost Death Knight DPS, you can be sure that we will continue to bring you other useful wotlk classic guides on your way to the Icecrown Citadel.