Frost Death Knight Best Covenants, Soulbinds, and Conduits — Shadowlands 9.2
Covenants, Soulbinds, and Conduits are the most important character customization options in Shadowlands. They have a substantial impact on your toolkit and performance as Frost Death Knight. This page's purpose is to help you pick the right options according to the content you intend to do in Shadowlands.
Introduction: Prerequisites
This page assumes that you are already familiar with Covenants, Soulbinds, and Conduits. If that is not the case, we have a number of pages that can help you get up to speed:
- Covenants Guide, which explains what Covenants are, what perks they bring, and how you can join one;
- Death Knight Covenant Abilities, which lists all the abilities that Death Knights gain by joining each Covenant;
- How To Change Covenant?, which tells you how you can switch Covenant (rejoining a former Covenant will require you to perform a number of tasks to regain their trusts);
- General Soulbind Guide, which explains what Soulbinds are and how you can pledge yourself to them to open up their Soulbind tree;
- Death Knight Conduits, which lists all of the Conduits available to Death Knights.
Summary of the Best Covenants, Soulbinds, and Conduits
Important Information
The recommendations below are meant to maximize your performance for Sepulcher of the First Ones, Mythic+, and Torghast. This page's recommendations are subject to change, so make sure to keep yourself updated.
You can be very successful in all forms of content as any Covenant. In this section we will go over the recommended builds using the recommended Covenant for Frost Death Knights.
Raid Covenant for Frost Death Knight
Your covenant choice in raids depends on the specific build you choose to run for
any given encounter. Necrolord is your best option when running
Breath of Sindragosa in raids. It is really versatile, brings some nice
grip utility, and
Abomination Limb syncs up nicely with your Breath every
2 minutes. We recommend running Plague Deviser Marileth all the time. The buff
from
Volatile Solvent is really nice and you get a nice single-target
damage boost with
Kevin's Oozeling. For
Obliteration, Night Fae
is your best choice. It brings great single-target by aligning every second
Death's Due with your
Obliteration windows. Furthermore, the
Obliterate cleave from Death's Due really works wonders in any
cleave scenario! We recommend running Dreamweaver generally, opting for
Korayn for fights where you can gain a lot of value from
First Strike.
(Anduin Wrynn and Rygelon generally).
Mythic+ Covenant for Frost Death Knight
For Mythic+, Night Fae is strongest with any build. The Obliterate
cleave and strength gain you get from
Death's Due just brings so much AoE.
This becomes even more powerful with the
Rampant Transference Legendary.
20% strength boost every 30 seconds is huge in AoE scenarios! We
recommend Dreamweaver for
Obliteration and
Korayn (with
First Strike) for
Breath of Sindragosa.
Best Conduits for Frost Death Knight
This is a brief overview of the Conduits for each different category and how good they are, according to a tier system.
S-tier Conduits
Everfrost — Big single-target and AoE, best Potency Conduit by far.
Accelerated Cold — Picked for its Haste boost, our secondary choice in all scenarios.
Brutal Grasp — Adds a significant boost to our
Abomination Limb damage. Also picks up a ton of value once we obtain the second Legendary,
Abomination's Frenzy.
Condensed Anima Sphere — Best Endurance Conduit, provides a good amount of heals throughout any encounter.
Spirit Drain — Only Finesse conduit that provides a DPS boost, therefore becoming our best option. Especially good with
Breath of Sindragosa builds.
A-tier Conduits
Unleashed Frenzy — A solid third Potency pick for any non-Necrolord
Obliteration build. Mostly valuable in single-target but alsjo useful in AoE.
Adaptive Armor Fragment — The generic third Potency pick for non-Necrolord
Breath of Sindragosa builds. Quite bland but does provide consistent damage throughput.
Withering Ground — Solid AoE Potency Conduit that is a viable alternative as your third Potency Conduit in Mythic+.
Hardened Bones — Converts
Lichborne into a proper defensive cooldown. Second best Endurance Conduit.
Fleeting Wind — A nice speed boost to our
Death's Advance ability. Since DKs are so slow, this is a nice addition. Second-best Finesse Conduit.
B-tier Conduits
Proliferation — Solid third Potency alternative for Mythic+.
Impenetrable Gloom — Solid third Potency alternative for Mythic+.
Reinforced Shell — Niche use-cases where your group takes low magical damage for a long duration. Generally does not find much value.
Covenants for Frost Death Knight
Kyrian: Shackle the Unworthy
Kyrian provides high single-target damage that syncs well
with the cooldowns for Frost Death Knights. Unfortunately, the Covenant-specific
Legendary Final Sentence finds very little value in single-target. It is
still a viable Covenant in all content, especially with the
Obliteration
build.
Necrolord: Abomination Limb
Necrolord is a strong Covenant for Frost Death Knights,
providing great single-target as well as solid utility. Abomination Limb
can be used to grip together adds and deal big AoE burst.
Fleshcraft
is a very strong personal defensive cooldown that can be used to survive most
mechanics.
Night Fae: Death's Due
Night Fae is a great Covenant for Frost Death Knights
for Mythic+. It provides fantastic cleave damage on a very short
cooldown. Once you pick up Rampant Transference, your Strength gain
will be 20% for pretty much every pull in a dungeon!
Venthyr: Swarming Mist
Venthyr synergises well with Breath of Sindragosa, due to
the Runic Power gain you can leverage to extend its duration. Unfortunately,
the Frost Death Knight already achieves long-duration breaths without Venthyr, and
the additional duration you can achieve is not necessarily worth it. Mythic+ pulls
generally do not last long enough, and Raid encounters often force you to break
your Breath if it is too long.
Insatiable Hunger is primarily
an AoE Legendary, seeing little value in raid.
Soulbinds for Frost Death Knight
These Soulbinds are always subject to change, but we will keep updating so you can have an accurate ranking of your options. This page is for maximizing your performance in Sanctum of Domination and Mythic+.
Kyrian Soulbinds
- Pelagos is generally the best choice for single-target,
thanks to
Combat Meditation,
Better Together, and
Newfound Resolve. Synergises especially well with
Obliteration but does force you to play a kind of mini-game, running around to pick up orbs.
- Kleia does offer multiple Soulbind traits that increase damage
throughput, mainly focused on critical strikes. She is especially viable
when running
Breath of Sindragosa, due to the build favouring a lot of crit.
- Forgelite Prime Mikanikos is a strong option for any AoE content, like Mythic+. He is the recommended Soulbind for Kyrian Mythic+!
Necrolord Soulbinds
- Emeni does provide a nice buff to your teammates as well as
good single-target DPS, especially with
Breath of Sindragosa. It is a solid all-around Soulbind. It does force you to channel
Fleshcraft on cooldown to take full advantage of
Pustule Eruption. This is unfortunate since you then cannot use Fleshcraft as a proper defensive anymore.
- Bonesmith Heirmir is a solid option, providing a lot of stats, especially in Mythic+ scenarios. She does fall a bit behind the other two options as our Conduits outscale the Soulbind spell options.
- Plague Deviser Marileth is the go-to Necrolord Soulbind pick.
He provides a good amount of Mastery though
Volatile Solvent, as well as a single-target boost with
Kevin's Oozeling. He scales well in Mythic+ as well since we pick up a variety of useful buffs with
Volatile Solvent.
Venthyr Soulbinds
- Theotar the Mad Duke is solid overall, but can lose value during heavy movement.
Soothing Shade is a ground-based ability that you can lose uptime on if you move too much. I still recommend running Theotar in Mythic+!
- Nadjia the Mistblade is a very consistent option that is competitive with Theotar. She is generally the recommended Soulbind for Venthyr raid builds.
- General Draven is simply a weaker choice than the other two options, so you will rarely ever see him used in Mythic+ or Raid content.
Night Fae Soulbinds
- Korayn is an okay option to pick, especially in Mythic+.
First Strike can be leveraged a lot in any AoE add scenario!
- Niya is a good option overall that does not quite bring enough throughput to be a solid pick.
- Dreamweaver Is the best Night Fae Soulbind in both Mythic+ and Raids. A cheat-death mechanic combined with superiour throughput makes it the best!
Changelog
- 09 Mar. 2022: Updated raid Covenant recommendation.
- 20 Feb. 2022: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.2.
- 11 Dec. 2021: Updated some Covenant Soulbind trees.
- 01 Nov. 2021: Updated and reviewed for Patch 9.1.5.
- 29 Jun. 2021: Updated and reviewed for Patch 9.1.
- 09 Mar. 2021: Updated the recommended Covenants for Raiding, Torghast and what Soulbinds are best.
- 24 Jan. 2021: Guide reviewed and completely updated.
- 24 Nov. 2020: Updated recommended Covenants with a Dual Wield Breath of Sindragosa build.
- 22 Nov. 2020: Added a section on Renown.
- 20 Nov. 2020: Page added.
More Death Knight Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Bicepspump, a semi-hardcore player raiding with Wicked Vigilantes on Kazzak. He is heavily involved in the DK DPS theorycrafting community, testing hyoptheses and investigating the correct priority to use. He is also a useful-minion in the Acherus discord, frequently answering questions and discussing optimisations (do not hesitate to reach out). He produces guide-content on YouTube and frequently streams on Twitch.
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