- Author: Nevermore
- Date: July 6, 2022
- Updated: July 21, 2022
- Expansion: WotLK Classic
Welcome to the Frost Death Knight DPS PvE guide for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King!
With the coming of Wrath of the Lich King, we have been granted a new class, the first Hero Class of the game. Death Knights make their appearance in WotLK, having a hybrid playstyle between a melee class and a spell caster. Their tool kit boasts powerful diseases, crowd control and utility, strong AoE, and Single-Target damage.
Frost Death Knights are among the cruelest beings that thread the frozen wastes of Northrend, mercilessly afflicting their foes with the most havoc-inducing diseases while also rending their flesh with cold and unforgiving runeblades. They can be considered among the most powerful melee specialists, not only having extreme proficiency while battling with a weapon in each hand but also entirely capable of summoning harsh and frightful icy blasts that completely ravage their foes, leaving them either dead, ridden with frostbites, or entirely infected with mind-wrecking fevers.
This Guide will teach you how to properly play and optimize a Frost Death Knight in PvE encounters, whether those might be difficult dungeons or terrifying raids. We will be covering everything from simple enchantments and consumables up to talents, rotations, macros, and addons. By the time you finish reading this guide, you will have the proper knowledge in order to complete any challenge laid before your path!
Frost Death Knight Strengths & Weaknesses
Strengths
- Powerful single target damage
Frost Death Knights have one of the most powerful Single-Target damage in the game, always maintaining their spot among the first 10 damage dealers in the entire game! When properly played, a Frost Death Knight can even rise to be among the top 5 damage dealers!
- Powerful AoE damage
While not as potent as an Unholy Death Knight, Frost Death Knights can boast about having access to strong AoE damaging tools, having spells in their kit such as Howling Blast which can damage every enemy in a 10-yard radius along with the main target.
- Engaging gameplay
Frost Death Knights are incredibly fun to play, thanks to a unique resource system (Runes & Runic Power) which creates a very dynamic rotation. Where other melee DPS may feel boring, Frost Death Knights will always keep you engaged.
- Consistently strong for the entire expansion
Frost Death Knights remain competitive on the damage meters for the entirety of Wrath of the Lich King — which isn’t something many specs can boast about. Many Frost DKs will switch to Unholy during the last phase of the expansion as it has a very small lead over us, but if you enjoy the Frost playstyle, you will always be welcome to a raid.
Weaknesses
- Difficult to master
A flipside of the fun & engaging gameplay that Frost DKs offer with their unique resource system and rotation, is that they’re significantly more difficult to play to their maximum potential than other melee DPS specializations. This might make Frost DKs unattractive to beginners, or people who don’t really want to “tryhard” in order to perform well.
- Highly gear reliant
Frost Death Knights can do incredible damage, but unlike some of the other top DPS specializations, they really need good gear in order to do so. This is further exacerbated by the fact that we share weapons with Rogues, another very popular class, and we need 2 weapons, as we dual-wield.
- Low mobility
An infamous weakness of Death Knights is their low mobility. We have no movement speed boosting effects of our own, so we’re entirely reliant on other items, such as the Nitro Boosts boot enchant from Engineering, in order to quickly move around when necessary.
Frost Death Knight Utility
Besides their damage, Frost Death Knights bring in the following utility tools to either dungeon or raid groups:
- Death Grip
All Death Knight specializations have access to this incredibly powerful spell that no other class has. It pulls a monster to you, which is very strong in PvE, allowing you to effortlessly re-position monsters as necessary — and particularly those pesky caster type monsters that don’t follow your tank.
- 20% melee haste (does not stack) – Improved Icy Talons
Frost Death Knights possess this must-have raid buff, boosting your raid’s melee damage by a large amount. It does not stack with a Shaman’s Windfury Totem buff, but only Enhancement Shamans offer the Improved Windfury Totem version that matches our buff, meaning you will be responsible for bringing this amazing buff — particularly if your raid doesn’t have an Enhancement Shaman.
- Strength & Agility buff (does not stack) – Horn of Winter
All Death Knight specs provide this must-have raid buff, improving your raid’s Strength & Agility by 155 — a huge bonus. This buff does not stack with a Shaman’s Strength of Earth Totem, and they have a slightly superior version thanks to an improvement talent easily accessible in the first tiers of the Enhancement spec, so very often your buff won’t be needed. It’s still great that if necessary, you can offer this buff, though!
- Combat Resurrection (Ghoul) – Raise Ally
Death Knights have access to a unique form of combat resurrection. They may resurrect a fallen ally, in the form of a Ghoul that they control, allowing them to keep fighting in a weaker state for 5 minutes. While this combat resurrection is not as powerful as a Druid or Warlock’s, it’s still a very handy tool.
Conclusion
We hope this guide has been able to help you decide if PvE Frost Death Knight is the class / spec for you. Make sure to check out our other sections, such as talents, gear, gems etc., to get more information on how to improve your performance as a Frost Death Knight in WotLK!
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About the Author
As mainly weapons what you prefer? two handed weapon or 2 one handed?
If you prefer two-handed weapons, check out Blood or Unholy specs 🙂
Frost is played with dual-wielding (2 one-handed weapons)
Just wondering, is frost dps the go-to spec in wrath all the way? or is unholy gonna be better later expansion?
Its always a very viable option.
But ofc with shadowmourn in endgame the Unholy spec will be slitely ahead. But there are quite view who can get to shadowmourn 😀
A lot of groups underestimate the dmg of frost dk and prefer a unholy dk. But in my opinion frost is at least on par with unholy and a lot of fun to olay.
Question:
I have a two axes equipped. One 2.6 speed and the other 1.5. Which one should be in the main hand? And what presence should you use for max dps?
Always put the stronger one in the main hand (most often that is the slower one)
Dumb question, all of the dps builds should go with blood pressence? Or which one shoul i go with for this build.
You want Blood Presence for fights with little movement and then Unholy Presence for fights with heavy movement.
For example, if running dungeons then it’s Unholy Pres for trash and Blood Pres for bosses.
That is just a bullshit. You never go for Unholy presence, like never.
If you’re going DPS you want to use Blood Presence, due to the increased damage, and Frost Presence is for tanking thanks to the increased Health and Defense, Unholy Presence is pretty much useless, as you wont be doing as much damage if you were using Blood Presence
Actually, I need to correct myself, you only ever need to go into Unholy Presence when summoning your Gargoyle as an Unh DK, as the Gargoyle scales with the extra attack speed, but only go into Unholy Presence when summoning your gargoyle, then switch back to Blood Presence
Question about chill of the Grave: if you only put one point into the talent, it says it gives you 2.5 RP. How does this actually happen? Can you have 0.5 runic power? Does this talent sometimes give you 2 RP and sometimes give you 3 RP? Thanks.
Why does everyone ignore frost tanking?
Wrath Classic is going to start directly from 3.3.5, where blizzard said that they want a clear identity for each spec of the class, so Blood became the go to spec for tanking,
Which presence to use?
Generally Blood Presence is your DPS presence, with Frost being the tanking presence and Unholy being more niche and unused as Frost.
Relentless Earthsiege Diamond is listed for Meta but Agility is not even in the Stat Prior list……. explain this please.
Short answer: the increased critical damage is insane.
The reason being at its base value the Agi will add just under 0.50 crit chance, and the 21 crit will add just barely over 0.50, however Agi will buff with raid buffs like kings which will end up being better. As well as Agi adds to armor and if Frost sub blood specced you gain AP from armor value. So in the grand scheme Agi on the meta outperforms the flat crit chance.