Frost Death Knight DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — The War Within (11.2)

I have broken up the rotation into your core rotation as well as your cooldown usage. You can find the core rotation below and then details on how to use your Cooldowns further down!

• Shattering Blade Talented

1. Use Obliterate if you have 2 procs of Killing Machine.
2. Use Howling Blast if you have a proc of Rime.
3. Use Frost Strike if you have 5 stacks of Razorice.
4. Use Obliterate if you have a proc of Killing Machine
5. Use Frost Strike
6. Use Obliterate

Let's break down the core rotation with some additional context and words:

• Consume your procs of Killing Machine with Obliterate. There is a nuance on the priority here depending on the number of stacks of Killing Machine you have. With 2 stacks you should always hard prioritise using Obliterate. However, when you only have a single proc you can prioritise using both Rime and Frost Strike (with Shattering Blade and 5 stacks of Razorice) first.
• You consume your procs of Rime second. Since Rime is procced off your Frost Strike, you want to consume the procs before you use any Frost Strike!
• You use Frost Strike to consume your Runic Power, or with a higher priority with Shattering Blade and 5 stacks of Razorice. Due to how little damage a non-Killing Machine Obliterate does, and since it does not generate any procs either, we always use up our Runic Power before we consider pressing a naked Obliterate.
• The naked Obliterate is at the bottom of our priority list. It does very little damage and does not synergise with any other talent really. We primarily use it as a builder to gain Runic Power to spend on Frost Strike!

• Frostscythe Talented
• Frostbane Talented
• Frozen Dominion Talented

1. Use Frostscythe if you have 2 procs of Killing Machine.
2. Use Obliterate if you have 2 procs of Killing Machine.
3. Use Howling Blast if you have a proc of Rime.
4. Remorseless Winter.
5. Use Frost Strike if you have a proc of Frostbane.
6. Use Frostscythe if you a proc of Killing Machine.
7. Use Obliterate if you a proc of Killing Machine.
8. Use Glacial Advance
9. Use Frostscythe
10. Use Obliterate

The AoE/Mythic+ rotation is very similar to the Single Target rotation in many ways. Frostscythe becomes your Rune spender in most scenarios (as long as you pick up the talent) and Glacial Advance becomes your Runic Power spender. Frostbane does change things around as you use Frost Strike a lot more in AoE, but otherwise there are a lot of parallels!

Reaper's Mark is the active ability you gain from the Deathbringer tree. With a 45-second cooldown, you can align it with every Pillar of Frost window! Simply cast it with your Pillar macro every time.

Pillar of Frost grants you 30% Strength for 12 seconds. With a 45-seconds Cooldown it aligns well with Reaper's Mark, Frostwyrm's Fury and Breath of Sindragosa, whichever combination of the talents we pick up!

You should use this ability on cooldown and ideally couple it with any potions or on-use trinkets you may have. That said, it can sometimes be better to save it for a few seconds until a high-priority target becomes available.

Maximising the number of GCDs that you use within Pillar of Frost is important to maximise your DPS. Due to this, we leverage Macros whenever we use Pillar, combining the off-GCD ability with an on-GCD ability to instantly cast your first spell within the window. This requires you to start off on an empty GCD before you use the macro! You can read more about it in the Macro section of the guide.

Remorseless Winter deals damage and slows by 20% to all targets around you over 8 seconds. The value and usage of the talent changes significantly depending on the talent setup you use.

Frozen Dominion completely removes the active part of the talent, simply casting it automatically whenever you use Pillar of Frost. This is the most common situation, making a lot easier to deal with the usage.

Without Frozen Dominion, the situation becomes more complicated. In Single Target, we use Remorseless on Cooldown if we pick up the buffing talents starting with Gathering Storm. Ideally try and align it with ever Pillar of Frost, so hold it for 1-2 seconds after every use to get it on a 45 seconds Cooldown cycle. In this scenario, you should aim to extend your Everfrost debuff on enemies when possible. Furthermore, if you can refresh your Remorseless Winter while it is running still (extending it lots with Gathering Storm), you refresh its duration while keeping the buff stacks, a big DPS increase!

The final Single Target use-case is when you have only talented Cryogenic Chamber. In this case, make sure to use Remorseless Winter to consume the stacks whenever you reach 20!

For AoE, we always use this ability as much as possible (without Frozen Dominion) to deal AoE damage and buff your Frostscythe use with Cleaving Strikes.

Empower Rune Weapon is an off-gcd Killing Machine and Runic Power generator. It helps us reduce the number of naked Obliterates we cast in a fight, as well as providing a ton of resources. Furthermore, during Pillar of Frost with Obliteration, it gives a lot of free casts of Obliterate which is a lot of value.

We want to use this ability whenever we are about to reach 2 stacks of it, so we do not overcap. Otherwise we use it when we cannot use Frost Strike and we do not already have a proc of Killing Machine. Finally, we use it during Pillar of Frost to gain Killing Machines and help us maintain a healthy Resource level!

If you feel like the active usage of this ability is too hard, you can simply macro it to your core abilities and only lose around 1.5% DPS overall!

Breath of Sindragosa costs 60 Runic power and lasts for 8 seconds, dealing AoE damage in front of you. The duration can be increased by consuming procs of Killing Machine and Rime, extending it up to 30 seconds!

To maximise this ability, we use it in combination with Obliteration. Obliteration is all about the generation and consumption of Killing Machine, synergising very well with Breath of Sindragosa! As we already prioritise our procs at the top of our list, our rotation does not actively change during Breath, we just keep going with our standard Single Target rotation!

Make sure to pool Runic Power for every Pillar of Frost that you are planning to use Breath for, to make sure you have the required 60 to initiate the window!

Frostwyrm's Fury is either your primary Single Target burst cooldown (with Rider of the Apocalypse) or a big AoE burst Cooldown with Deathbringer. With Rider, we use it the GCD before our Pillar of Frost window to summon our Riders and buff the window. With Deathbringer we either use it just after our Pillar of Frost window, or during it if we can get a lot of cleave hits!

Obliteration is not a Cooldown on its own but it does significantly alter how Pillar of Frost works and deserves a mention. With this talent and when Pillar is active, Frost Strike, Glacial Advance and Howling Blast all generate procs of Killing Machine. Due to this, we end up in a "weaving" rotation where we generate and consume procs of Killing Machine every GCD.

The weaving nature enables you to easily predict your actions within the window, optimising your spell usage and GCD utilisation. You know that the Frost Strike/ Glacial Advance will geneate a Killing Machine that you then consume with Obliterate/ Frostscythe. If you got a proc of Rime you know that you then press Howling Blast followed by another Obliterate/ Frostscythe and so on. Leverage this deterministic nature of the Cooldown to maximise your ability use!

Finally, you want to enter the window with sufficient resources to execute it without any downtime. Empower Rune Weapon helps a lot to prevent this but you should still avoid consuming naked Obliterates within 5 seconds or so before the window starts (as long as you are below 4 Runes).