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Frost Death Knight DPS Starter Guide - Shadowlands 9.0.5
By Bicepspump
Last updated
2021/05/07 at 12:06 PM
View Changelog
Table of Contents
Quick Facts
Table of Contents
Guide Navigation
Welcome to our Frost Death Knight starter guide, which covers everything you need to start playing a new character in Shadowlands. While our other guide pages go into more individual detail, this simple starter guide covers all the basics in one place, whether you're a new Frost Death Knight, a returning player to Shadowlands, hardcore, or casual alike, it's the best place to get a beginners overview on the class. Included are basic talent builds, simplified rotations, stats, legendary recommendations, and more to get you started as quickly as possible.
Please keep in mind that this page is meant to get players started quickly as an introduction, and does not contain much in the way of detailed explanations, mechanics, competitive options, gearing, simulation comparisons, or nuance. For more in-depth information, including all those optimizations and more, check out the complete Frost Death Knight Guide pages linked in the navigation on the left-hand side of the page, and if you're leveling up in Shadowlands, you can take a look at our
leveling tips
.
Overview
NEW
NEW Best Covenant
Gear
Talent Builds
NEW Legendaries
NEW Twisting Corridors
NEW Conduits
NEW Kyrian
NEW Necrolord
NEW Night Fae
NEW Venthyr
Pre-Patch
Starter Guide
Rotation, Priority, and Abilities
Advanced Concepts
Stats
Consumables
Macros & Addons
WeakAuras
Common Terms
NEW Castle Nathria Tips
NEW Mythic+
Common Questions
NEW Simulations
About the Author
I'm Bicepspump, a semi-hardcore player currently playing on Kazzak. You can often find me on the
Death Knight discord
discussing rotations and builds, on my stream (
B1cepspump
), running some juicy Mythic +, or on my
youtube channel
where I've started doing video guides. Big shoutout to everyone on the Acherus discord that have given me valuable insight through numerous discussions. I take part in writing and optimizing the action priority list for SimulationCraft and continuously test different hypotheses using the SimulationCraft program. Furthermore, I work with the WoWAnalyzer website where I develop modules for the Death Knight specs. Please feel free to contact me on
Discord
as Bicepspump#6318, I'm always happy to have a healthy discussion! Outside of playing WoW, I work as a data scientist and enjoy playing other games such as Dota 2!
Best Frost Death Knight Covenant
As a quick recap, we've created the table below to highlight the notable differences between Covenants. Don't hesitate to click the headers to go to their respective guides! Different builds favor different Covenants so I've made sure to create tabs for you to look through!
Raid
Covenant
Rating
Best Soulbind
Necrolord
Good
Emini Build (Low Renown)
Bonesmith Build (High Renown)
Venthyr
Good
Nadjia
Night Fae
Good
Niya
Kyrian
Good
Pelagos
Mythic+
Covenant
Rating
Best Soulbind
Necrolord
Good
Emini Build (Low Renown)
Bonesmith Build (High Renown)
Venthyr
Great
Nadjia
Night Fae
Good
Niya
Kyrian
Good
Pelagos
Raid
Covenant
Rating
Best Soulbind
Necrolord
Good
Emini Build (Low Renown)
Bonesmith Build (High Renown)
Venthyr
Okay
Nadjia
Night Fae
Good
Niya
Kyrian
Good
Pelagos
Mythic+
Covenant
Rating
Best Soulbind
Necrolord
Good
Emini Build (Low Renown)
Bonesmith Build (High Renown)
Venthyr
Okay
Nadjia
Night Fae
Great
Niya
Kyrian
Okay
Pelagos
Raid
Covenant
Rating
Best Soulbind
Necrolord
Good
Emini Build (Low Renown)
Bonesmith Build (High Renown)
Venthyr
Okay
Nadjia
Night Fae
Good
Niya
Kyrian
Great
Pelagos
Mythic+
Covenant
Rating
Best Soulbind
Necrolord
Good
Emini Build (Low Renown)
Bonesmith Build (High Renown)
Venthyr
Okay
Nadjia
Night Fae
Great
Niya
Kyrian
Okay
Pelagos
Best Frost Death Knight Covenant
Kyrian Frost Death Knight GuideNecrolord Frost Death KnightGuide
Night Fae Frost Death Knight GuideVenthyr Frost Death Knight Guide
Best Frost Death Knight Legendaries
I recommend using different legendaries depending on content and build:
Koltira's Favor
for raids with all builds.
Rage of the Frozen Champion
for Mythic+ with
Breath of Sindragosa
.
Biting Cold
for Mythic+ with
Obliteration
.
When it comes to crafting order, it depends heavily on the content that you're focusing on. If you are pushing raid seriously, do craft
Koltira's Favor
to the highest ilvl etc. Take a look at our
legendary guide
to learn more about the legendaries available to Frost Death Knights, or our
crafting guide
to find all the materials you need to craft them.
Frost Death Knight Legendaries Guide
Best Frost Death Knight Talents
The talents a Frost Death Knight chooses depends heavily on weapon choice. Below are solid builds that work well with dual-wielding as well as 2-handed gameplay.
Frost Death Knight Talents Guide
Frost Death Knight Stat Priority
Unlike previous expansions, primary stats such as Strength are much more important than they used to be, and secondary stats are close enough together that item level is usually more important factor when it comes to choosing gear. You can find out more about how stats work in the full
Frost Death Knight Gear
and
Stat Priority
guides.
Strength >> Mastery > Crit = Haste = Vers
Strength
: Increases all damage done by native class spells, abilities, and auto attacks. Previously one of the weakest stats, but now much more impactful, making raw item level much more important again.
Haste
: Compresses the rotation by reducing both the GCD as well as increasing the proc rate of most spells and trinkets.
Critical Strike
: Increases damage done by abilities, auto attacks, and trinkets. Also increases the proc rate of
Killing Machine
through the increased rate of critical hit autos.
Mastery
: Increases the frost damage you do. Importantly, this is only spells and abilities specific to the frost death knight, not trinkets or potions or other sources of potential frost damage.
Versatility
: Increases damage done and reduces damage taken by half the amount. Unlike Mastery, however, it affects all damage done including trinkets, potions, and enchantments.
Frost Death Knight Stats Guide
Frost Death Knight Enchants and Consumables
Cloak:
Enchant Cloak - Fortified Speed
Chest:
Enchant Chest - Eternal Stats
+
Heavy Desolate Armor Kit
Gloves:
Enchant Gloves - Eternal Strength
Rings:
Enchant Ring - Tenet of Mastery
Weapon:
DW
-
Razorice
mainhand,
Rune of the Fallen Crusader
offhand in all situations.
2H
-
Razorice
for Raids,
Rune of the Fallen Crusader
for Mythic +
Levelling
-
Rune of the Fallen Crusader
mainhand,
Rune of Unending Thirst
offhand (if you have one)
Frost Death Knight Enchants and Consumables Guide
Best Frost Death Knight Rotation
This is a very simplified Frost Death Knight rotation. For the full rotation including talent variations, you can consult the
Frost Death Knight Rotation Guide
.
Remorseless Winter
.
Howling Blast
if you have a proc of
Rime
.
Frost Strike
if you are about to cap Runic Power. (80+ Runic Power)
Obliterate
.
Frost Strike
.
Remorseless Winter
Howling Blast
if you have a proc of
Rime
.
Glacial Advance
if you're about to cap Runic Power (80+). Skip this step if you haven't talented into
Glacial Advance
.
Frostscythe
. Use
Obliterate
if you haven't specced into
Frostscythe
.
Glacial Advance
. Use
Frost Strike
if you haven't specced into
Glacial Advance
.
Frost Death Knight Rotation Guide
Conduits for Frost Death Knights in Shadowlands
S-tier
Everfrost
A-tier
Accelerated Cold
Frost Death Knight Conduit Guide
Our Frost Death Knight guides are always updated with the latest information from in-game experience, simulations, and logs; make sure to check our changelog to this page, by clicking on
View Changelog
at the top of the page. If you are interested in more in-depth Frost Death Knight guides for , make sure to browse the
Navigation Bar
below, and our list of
Related Guides
just beneath the
Table of Contents
.
Would you like to quickly find this guide using Discord? You can do it easily using
Jeeves Bot
! Click
here to add Jeeves
to your Discord server.
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