Mists of Pandaria Classic Frost Death Knight Talent Builds

Frost Death Knight has considerably less talents than past expansions though the simplification of the talent tree still leaves us with several choices to make. As a Frost Death Knight your goal is simple, deal as much damage as possible while keeping yourself alive. The talents highlighted below not only bolster our personal DPS but offer a ton of utility that can help trivialize encounters.

Below is a rough breakdown of each choice available for each tier of Talents. Death Knight is a bit unique in that the first 4 tiers of talents come at level 56, 57, 58, and 60 and then follow the traditional route of a new tier of talents every 15 levels.

This tier of talents offers unique interactions with your Diseases, how they are spread and even how to gain back Runes from your Diseases.

• Roiling Blood causes your Blood Boil ability to trigger Pestilence. This is a great choice in a situation where you find yourself fighting large groups of enemies to spread Blood Plague but as Frost loses a bit of its value due to the fact Howling Blast applies Frost Fever
• Unholy Blight grants you a buff that applies your Blood Plague debuff to any target within 10 yards for 10 seconds. This is another great way to spread Blood Plague but its longer cooldown makes it a very niche ability.
• Plague Leech removes your diseases from the target and activates two inactive Runes as Death Runes. This is the default choice in a single target situation but make sure to use this when your diseases are close to expiring or you find yourself with a way to refresh your diseases quickly like with Outbreak.

This tier of talents is focused on survivability.

• Purgatory causes otherwise deadly damage to send you into a state of purgatory which absorbs incoming healing until the healing taken equals the amount of fatal damage taken. You have 3 seconds to receive this healing or you will die. This is an incredible niche ability as it is likely difficult to heal back that damage on your own but can be helpful in specific PvE scenarios where you have a healer ready to try and clear the effect.
• Anti-Magic Zone summons a bubble that reduces all incoming Magic damage to anyone within it by 40% for 3 seconds. This is a great way to not only increase your personal survivability but make your entire group more resistant to Magic damage.
• Lichborne causes you to become Undead, making you immune to Charm, Fear and Sleep effects. This also makes it so your Death Coil ability can now be used to heal yourself, we often times want to be spending our Runic Power on Frost Strike but this can be a solid choice if you know you will not have any other incoming healing.

This tier of talents focuses on crowd controlling abilities, both your ability to crowd control and ways to reduce the effectiveness of crowd control on yourself.

• Chilblains causes your Frost Fever disease to be slowed by 50% for 10 seconds after it is applied and your Chains of Ice ability to root your target for 3 seconds. This is a great tool to help kite especially dangerous enemies but other tools in the game exist that offer considerably stronger forms of crowd control so this talent will only be useful in very specific situations.
• Asphyxiate turns your Strangulate ability into a stun. This can still be used as an interrupt on targets that are immune to stuns.
• Death's Advance passively increases your movement speed by 10% and movement impairing effects may not reduce your movement speed below 70% of normal movement speed. It can also be activated for 30% movement speed and movement impairing effects may not reduce your movement speed below 100% of normal movement speed for 6 seconds. This will often be the default choice in this tier due to the strength of the passive movement speed increase and the on demand increase from the activation effect.

This tier of talents is all about ways to self-heal.

• Death Pact drains the vitality from an undead minion healing you for 50% of your maximum health while dealing 50% of your minions maximum health in damage to it. This is an incredibly strong personal cooldown that can help you survive what would otherwise be deadly incoming damage or just to help keep your healers ahead of the game.
• Death Siphon deals Shadowfrost damage to the target and heals you for 150% of the damage dealt. This is a great way to heal yourself throughout the duration of an encounter but unless you are in an encounter where you are taking constant pulsing damage it will often be out done by a well timed Death Pact. We also want to ideally spend our Runes on higher damaging abilities.
• Conversion converts your Runic Power to health restoring of 3% of your maximum health back per second. Similar to Death Siphon the sustained healing would rarely outperform a well timed Death Pact and more importantly Runic Power is a massive part of our damage output as a Frost Death Knight, losing out on Frost Strike casts will greatly impact your damage output.

This tier focuses entirely on maximizing your ability to regenerate Runes.

• Blood Tap each time you cast a Death Coil, Frost Strike, or Rune Strike you generate 2 stacks of Blood Tap. You can consume 5 stacks to refresh a random currently inactive Rune as a Death Rune. This stacks up to 12 times so you do not need to worry about pressing the button as soon as you are at 5 stacks. This is a great way to control your incoming Runes and allowing you more casts of some of your hardest hitting abilities like Howling Blast or Obliterate.
• Runic Corruption whenever you deal damage with a Death Coil, Frost Strike, or Rune Strike you have a 45% chance of activating Runic Corruption increasing your Rune regeneration rate by 100% for 3 seconds. This greatly increases the availability of our Runes though it can be a bit more difficult to predict since we only have a chance to proc this.
• Runic Empowerment whenever you deal damage with a Death Coil, Frost Strike, or Rune Strike you have a 45% chance to reactivate a currently inactive Rune. This has the highest variance of the talents in this tier due to the fact it returns a random Rune and can possibly return a Rune that is already very close to being reactivated.

The final tier of talents offers a ton of utility and new and exciting ways to handle various situations.

• Gorefiend's Grasp pulls all enemies within 20 yards to the location of the Death Knight's target (frinedly or hostile). This effectively acts as an AoE Death Grip making it considerably easier to group large amounts of enemies either to be AoEd down or crowd controlled.
• Remorseless Winter enemies within 8 yards of the Death Knight will start to gain a stacking debuff slowing their movement speed by 15% per stack for 3 seconds, up to 5 stacks. Upon reaching 5 stacks the target will be stunned for 6 seconds. This is another great way to crowd control large groups of enemies as long as you can stay within melee range of them.
• Desecrated Ground summons a corrupted patch of ground that causes the Death Knight to become immune to all crowd controlling effects for 10 seconds. This can be used to free yourself from an already existing crowd control. This talent allows you to stay active in a situation where your character would otherwise be crowd controlled. It is important to know that some specific mechanics may ignore this.

Glyphs in Mists of Pandaria have had their power scaled down considerably, Prime Glyphs have been removed and we will now only have to focus on Major and Minor Glyphs. Major Glyphs now focus on bolstering abilities you will already be using but are balanced in a way you will be able to switch between them depending on the specific encounter and how you choose to handle it.

As a Frost Death Knight, or really Death Knight in general Major Glyphs are heavily focused on increasing your personal survivability and ability to contribute utility to your group. While there may be no massive increase to your personal DPS found in these Glyphs they can still have a massive impact on your output.

• Glyph of Death and Decay causes your Death and Decay ability to slow enemies inside of its radius by 50%. With Chilblains being made into a talent this is another great way to slow groups of enemies if you decide to choose another talent.
• Glyph of Death Grip increases the range of your Death Grip ability by 5 yards. This makes it even easier to reposition enemies that are at range.
• Glyph of Festering Blood causes your Blood Boil ability to behave as if all targets have Frost Fever and Blood Plague active on them. This is a great way to increase your damage dealt in a situation where the mobs are unlikely to live long enough to make Pestilence spreading your diseases worth it. It is important to note that as Frost we will be primarily using Howling Blast with those Runes so this Glyph is a very niche pick.
• Glyph of Regenerative Magic If your Anti-Magic Shell ability expires without being fully consumed its cooldown is reduced based off of how much Magic damage was taken. This is a great way to gain Runic Power throughout a fight if you find yourself in a situation where you do not need Anti-Magic Shell for a large burst of damage.
• Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell increases the amount of damage absorbed by Anti-Magic Shell up to 100% from 75%. This can be a great way to mitigate incoming Magic damage but it is important to consider that it is still limited to 50% of your maximum health.
• Glyph of the Loud Horn causes your Horn of Winter to generate 10 additional Runic Power but doubles its cooldown. This is a solid choice as we will rarely be using Horn of Winter on cooldown.
• Glyph of Dark Simulacrum reduces the cooldown of your Dark Simulacrum ability by 30 seconds and increases its duration by 4 seconds.
• Glyph of Icebound Fortitude reduces the cooldown of your Icebound Fortitude ability by 50% but also reduces its duration by 75%. This is a great choice in any encounter where you are taking large amounts of damage in a single hit or short windows of burst.
• Glyph of Shifting Presences allows you to keep 70% of your Runic Power when switching presences. This is an incredibly niche use as we will spend almost all of our time in Frost Presence as a Frost Death Knight, but the added movement speed from Unholy Presence can help in specific situations.

Minor Glyphs as mentioned above only really offer you quality of life or cosmetic benefits in Mists of Pandaria so listed below are the only two options that may actually impact your game play.

• Glyph of Army of the Dead causes your Army of the Dead ghouls to no longer taunt. It is rare that you do want them to taunt so this glyph removes any possibility of error.
• Glyph of Tranquil Grip causes your Death Grip ability to no longer taunt the target.