Frost Death Knight PvE Guide 5.4.8

[battlesnake]

Hello, here you can discover a very detailed guide about your specialization.
We'll start with:
►Talents ◄

Red - Enhancer
Orange - Mobility
Blue - Survival
Yellow - Utility
Cyan - Crowd Control
Uncolored - Situational
If you just came here for quick advices about your talents and glyph click the next spoiler:

Spoiler:

with this build you have the best dps choices, raid utilities and survivability

Plague Leech - free death runes
Anti-Magic Zone - gives time for those guys in skirts to heal.
Death's Advance - because your insatiable desire to be first in line.
Death Pact - he-s already dead, he doesn't mind, right?
Blood Tap - u want to abuse this, bind it.
Remorseless Winter because raids have trash. And you hate trash.

WAIT, you wanna create a death knight and you dont know what class to choose? click the spoiler! :)

Spoiler:

Death knight is a class that has 3 specialization like the majority of the classes.
The first one is the blood specialization, A dark guardian who manipulates and corrupts life energy to sustain yourself in the face of an enemy onslaught. It's a tank spec able to take a lot of punishment.
The second one is the unholy specialization. A master of death and decay, spreading disease and controlling undead minions to do your bidding. It's a dps spec that specializes in damage over time more ore less.
The third one is the one i'm going to talk about. The Frost specialization. An icy harbinger of doom, channeling runic power and delivering vicious weapon strikes. You rely on powerful direct damage that's amplified by the diseases you infected the enemy. You can wield two one handed weapons or wield a two-handed weapon, by your preference, they have different playstyles about which you will read in the next few sections

If you just started, and your thinking, what race should i play to do more dps, you are in the right place.
Your class wouldn't make too much of a difference of your damage output, you should make the one that you are feeling comfortable with or the one you feel associated.
If you don't feel associated with any class or it doesn't bother you what you play, i'll make a list of all races with their pros and their cons.
Humans
► Every Man for Himself an ability that removes anything that makes your character not responding (stuns, saps, freezes, etc), does not unstuck you from some boss mechanics
► Mace Specialization bonus 1% expertise when using a mace.
► Sword Specialization bonus 1% expertise when using a sword.

Dwarf
► Stoneform morphs into your stoneform, immune to poison, diseases and bleeds
► Mace Specialization bonus 1% expertise when using a mace.

Night Elf
► Shadowmeld makes you invisible as long as you don't move.
► Quickness makes you harder to be hit.

Gnome
► Escape Artist removes everything that would slow you down or keep you in place.

Draenai
► Heroic Presence bonus 1% hit rating.
► Gift of the Naaru 20% of your health is restored over the span of 15 seconds.

Worgen
► Darkflight increased movement speed by 40 for 10 seconds.
► Viciousness bonus 1% crit chance.

Orc
► Command Increase pet damage by 2%
► Hardiness Reduces stun duration by 15%
► Blood Fury grants attack power for 15 seconds.
► Axe Specialization 1% bonus expertise when using axes.

Undead
► Will of the Forsaken removes effects like fears, charms.
► Touch of the Grave a passive that gives you a chance to do some shadow damage when you attack.

Troll
► Berserking increases your haste by 20% for 10 seconds.
► Da Voodoo Shuffle reduces the duration of slows and roots by 15%

Tauren
► War Stomp stuns up to five targets in the neighboring 8 yards for 2 seconds.

Blood Elf
► Arcane Torrent silences all the enemies within 8 yards

Goblin
► Time is Money bonus 1% attack speed.
► Rocket Barrage hurls a rocket at the enemy dealing low fire damage.
► Rocket Jump rocket jumps in the direction you are walking, cooldown shared with Rocket Barrage

1.0 Tiers
1.1 Tier 1 Talents
► Roiling Blood causes your Blood Boil to spread the diseases.
► Plague Leech eats the diseases from your target and converts two of any depleted runes into death runes.
► Unholy Blight Infects the neighboring enemies up to ten yards.

What to choose? The best talent here is Plague Leech The ability to gain two death runes with such a short cooldown is very good in single target fights.
To ease up your disease spreading in aoe fights, use Unholy Blight

1.2 Tier 2 Talents

► Lichborne Ability which makes you immune to Charm/ Fear/ Sleep and allows Death Coil to be casted on you.
► Anti-Magic Zone Everyone who's in the bubble receives 40% less damage.
► Purgatory Will allow you to survive a killing blow for another 3 seconds, time in which a healer can outheal the negative damage and lets you live to see another day, if not, you die.

What to choose? Anti-Magic Zone should be taken to if there's raid-wide damage in the script.
Take Lichborne if you want on demand self-heal that may cause you to stay alive or if you want to bypass some boss mechanics (stoping your disorientation, fear, so you can do damage like you should)
Take Purgatory if you want a passive way to make sure those pesky healers will keep you allive, but the boss your about to encounter doesn't have raid wide damage or a way to stop you doing dps that can be countered with Lichborne

1.3 Tier 3 Talents
► Death's Advance Permanently increases your movement speed by 10% and gives you the ability to get 30% bonus of movement speed for 6 seconds with a 30 seconds cooldown.
► Chilblains Very situational, slows enemies strucked by Frost Fever and immobilizes targets hit by chains of ice for 3 seconds.
► Asphyxiate Situational, stuns target for 5 seconds with a cooldown of 30 seconds.

What to choose? I recommend overall usage of Death's Advance and switch to Chilblains if there's adds you want to slow.

1.4 Tier 4 Talents

► Death Pact Sacrifices 50% of maximum health from your ghoul to heal you 50% of your maximum health.
► Death Siphon One death rune, deals some shadowfrost damage to your enemy, healing you of 150% of damage done.
► Conversion Toggling this ability costs 5 runic power, and keeping it on costs 5 runic power a second, gaining 3% of your health per second.

What to choose? Death Pact, it has the highest amount of healing with no resource cost, thus not substracting from your dps.

1.5 Tier 5 Talents

► Blood Tap Each Death Coil and Frost Strike gives you 2 Blood charges, and when you have 5 charges, you can use this ability to convert one fully depleted rune into a restored death rune.
► Runic Empowerment Passive chance of 45% when you hit with Death Coil or Frost Strike to restore a fully depleted rune to a death rune.
► Runic Corruption Passive chance of 45% percent when you hit with Death Coil or Frost Strike to gain Corruption, increasing your rune regeneration for 100% for 3 seconds.

What to choose? Blood Tap is the best choice for both dual-wielding and two-handed.
Runic Empowerment being the next choice if you don't want managing charges, but outputs a bit less dps.

1.6 Tier 6 Talents
► Gorefiend's Grasp Casts a buff on the target, pulling all your enemies to the target.
► Remorseless Winter Slows nearby enemies 15% of moving speed per second, if slowed five times, targets are stunned for 6 seconds.
► Desecrated Ground Creates a circle around you, in which your immune to loss of character spells.

What to choose? Really depends on your preferences, Remorseless Winter seems the most useful as you can make trash mobs do no damage for a few seconds.

2.0 Glyphs

The thing with glyphs nowadays, is that they are very preference based, and aren't game changers.

2.1 Major
► Shifting Presences Saves up to 70% of your runic power when you change presence, you never change presence, only when you need unholy to move a bit faster between bosses and blood to benefit of survivability.
► Regenerative Magic While in the Anti-Magic Shell you gain runic power of the damage it aborbs, if the shell expires, based on the remaining absorbtion, it's cooldown it's reduced, using the AMS more > more runic > more DPS.
► Icebound Fortitude With this glyph you can use Fortitude more often, for less time. In most raids you wanna defend against huge spikes of damage not against pressure.

2.2 Minor
► Army of The Dead your minions no longer taunts their target.
► Tranquil Grip Your Death Grip no longer taunts the target.

3.0 Rotation/ Priority
This patch, frost death knight is always played in Frost Presence
There are two ways of playing the frost specialization, their priorities differ a bit, here it is:

3.1 Dual Wielding
Click the

Spoiler:

▼ Cast Frost Strike
- if you are near 90 runic power. You don't want Obliterate to cause excess runic.
- if Killing Machine buff is up.
▼ Cast Howling Blast only when both death runes or both frost runes are up
▼ Cast Soul Reaper only when target is under 35% health.
▼ Keep Diseases on target:
- Apply Frost Fever with Howling Blast
- Apply Blood Plague with Plague Strike (ONLY use Plague Strike if you have an Unholy Rune available, if you don't wait for it)
▼ Cast Howling Blast when you have Rime buff.
▼ Cast Obliterate
- when you have 1 unholy rune available (when using Blood Tap)
- when you have both unholy runes available (Runic Empowerment)

3.2 Two Handed
The two-handed priority system is more obliterate dependent.
Click the

Spoiler:

▼ Diseases on target: Obliterate does 12.5% more damage for each disease on target.
- try to keep your diseases up on your target at all times, apply and refresh them with Outbreak
- if outbreak is not ready, apply Frost Fever with Howling Blast and Blood Plague with Plague Strike
▼ Cast Soul Reaper only when target is under 35% health.
▼ Cast Howling Blast if you have Rime.
▼ Cast Obliterate
- if you have Killing Machine up.
- if you do it, you will not have 100 runic power
▼ Cast Frost Strike

This system is based on your choice of Blood Tap in the talents.
A summary, you Outbreak them, then you hit them with Obliterate, and with the generated runic you hit them with Frost Strike, hit them with Howling Blast if it Rimes or if your Frost Fever expired. Hit them with Plague Strike if Blood Plague is about to expire.
If you observe that your gameplay is too slow and you have a lot of downtime, with no action to play, it seems you forgot about Blood Taps

3.3 AOE priorities
This is good for both styles of play.

▼ Use Howling Blast when you can. It inflicts Frost Fever to every enemy in 10 yards.
▼ Use Death and Decay
▼ Use Plague Strike if both unholy runes are up.
▼ Use Frost Strike so you don't reach full runic power.
▼ Use Pestilence on your Blood Plague afflicted target to spread the disease.
- or use Unholy Blight if you chose it
- if all targets are infected with blood plague, Pestilence will only be used again after Plagues have expired and you want to spread them again

3.4 Burst

► Pillar Of Frost 20% strength for 20 seconds with a 1 minute cooldown, you should use this everytime it's ready.
► Empower Rune Weapon Refreshes all your runes and gives you 25 runic power. Once every five minutes. That means you can do a short burst at the start of the fight, and then having it ready by the time your raid will use Time Warp/ Bloodlust/ Heroism
► Army of the Dead The Ghouls it summons scale up with your stats, before you pop this up, use your trinket, Pillar Of Frost, and any potions you might have.
► Raise Dead You get a ghoul like your Unholy friend, that leaves you after a minute. Two minutes Cooldown, that means half the fight he should be with you. Scales up with your stats, summon him after you cast Pillar Of Frost.
► Anti-Magic Shell "defensive cd for burst wtf" Remember, the shell gives you runic power when it absorbs damage, that means more Frost Strikes, and it also protects you, you can sync this up with some damaging abilities from the boss.

4.0 Stats/Reforging/Gems/Enchants
You just have to reforge from haste, crit, mastery to make sure you have the required Hit and Expertize

4.1 Dual-Wielding

Stats
▼ Strength - most needed, gives you attack power
▼ Expertize 7.5% - makes sure the boss won't dodge your attacks.
▼ Hit Rating 7.5% - is enough that your special attacks won't miss. (if you want that your autoattacks would never miss on raid bosses, 26.5% rating is needed, because, you are dual-wielding)
▼ Mastery Frozen Heart, increases your Frost damage.
▼ Critical Strike Rating We want to exclude as much as we can the RNG from our DPS
▼ Haste More haste, you will autoattack more often, that means there would be a larger amount of Killing Machine

Gems

Meta: Reverberating Primal Diamond
Red: You don't have the necessary Hit/Expertise ? Precise Primordial Ruby
You have the necessary Hit/Expertise? Skillful Vermilion Onyx
Yellow: Fractured Sun's Radiance
Blue: Sensei's Wild Jade


4.2 Two Handed

▼ Strength - most needed, gives you attack power
▼ Expertize 7.5% - makes sure the boss won't dodge your attacks.
▼ Hit Rating 7.5% - is enough that your special attacks won't miss.
Critical Strike Rating or Mastery - the professional way, would be mastery, because Crit is RNG.
▼ Haste The last stat, not too much of a use. rune regeneration and larger attack speed

Gems

Meta: Reverberating Primal Diamond
Red: Skillful Vermilion Onyx
Yellow: Fractured Sun's Radiance
Blue: Sensei's Wild Jade

4.3 Enchants

► Head: Greater Tiger Fang Inscription/ Tiger Fang Inscription (way cheaper)
► Back: Enchant Cloak - Superior Critical Strike
► Chest: Enchant Chest - Glorious Stats
► Wrist: Enchant Bracer - Exceptional Strength
► Hands: Enchant Gloves - Super Strength
► Waist: Living Steel Belt Buckle]
► Legs: Angerhide Leg Armor / Brutal Leg Armor (way cheaper)
► Feet: Enchant Boots - Pandaren's Step

Dual-wielding:
Rune of the Fallen Crusader - MAIN hand
Rune Of Razorice - offhand

Two Handed: Rune of the Fallen Crusader

Outro
Astept critici, sfaturi, corectari, realizez ca nu e un ghid complet si nici macar unul 100% autentic, m-am inspirat din numeroasele ghiduri de pe acest site, din multe cautari pe google ca sa obtin un unghi de observatie asupra clasei cat mai putin partinit. Death Knight-ul nu e doar obliterate spam si am facut acest guide ca sa am unde arata cu degetul cand oricine altcineva ma intreaba "cum joc dk". wow.freakz.ro/tutorials.php nu are nici macar un ghid PVE de Frost, si m-am gandit ca dupa mai multe imbunatatiri pe care am sa le adaug in timp poate isi castiga locul pe acolo.

[gygyorggy]

nice guide

[Arrabu]

Nice Guide ! Thanks

[Gogumen]

Nice Guide!