Frost Death Knight: Midnight Expansion Preview

Welcome to our Midnight expansion guide for Frost Death Knight. Ahead of launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about Frost Death Knight in the forthcoming Midnight expansion, including changes, Hero Talent Trees, and some light predictions on the state of the spec going forward.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regular changes expected as updates hit the Midnight Alpha. This is not meant to be a launch guide for Frost Death Knight, but instead serves as a resource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving on Alpha and what you can expect from its playstyle and feel at launch.

Frost Death Knight has not received a significant number of changes in the Midnight Alpha. Frost Death Knights received a rework in the middle of The War Within and it seems the developers are happy with this new iteration. We did receive some new Apex talents and Hero Talents, focusing a lot on our Frostwyrm's Fury ability, indicating that Blizzard wants us to use this more. Furthermore, we saw some minor changes within the talents, buffing Shattering Blade and adding a frost-damage component to baseline Obliterate.

Midnight brings three new talents in our spec tree that we can (optionally) talent into as we level up to 80. Chosen of Frostbrood initially increases Frostwyrm's damage on the first target by 100% and grants us 15% haste, making the button feel a lot better to use in single-target. The second talent generates 25/50 Runic Power and 1/2 stacks of Killing Machine when we use the Wyrm, making it feel a lot better to press in your Pillar of Frost window. It would previously very much feel like an empty GCD with its zero cost and no procs/resource generation. The final node increases the damage of Frostwyrm's Fury by 100% and allows you to press the button again to call it back at 50% effectiveness. A 300% total damage buff, and a really cool effect with the callback mechanic.

We have also received a new talent in our Deathbringer tree that interacts with Frostwyrm's Fury— Echoing Fury. You get two stacks of Exterminate when casting Frostwyrm's Fury, both at 100% effectiveness. This provides a really nice burst setup where you Wyrm (generates two Killing Machine stacks from the Apex talent), Obliterate (with Exterminate so it costs a single Rune, generates another stack of Killing Machine), Obliterate (again with Exterminate so single Rune and another Killing Machine generation), Obliterate. Wyrm into triple Obliterate results in some really powerful burst.

The rest of the new Hero Talents (we get three new in each tree) do not have a big impact on our rotation. Rider of the Apocalypse talents replicate the Season 3 tier set. The new Deathbringer talents (outside of the Wyrm one) buff our Permafrost talent and provides some generic Frost Strike/ Glacial Advance damage.

Obliterate now deals a portion of its damage as Frost Damage by default. This provides a nice tuning knob for Blizzard to help bridge the huge gap between raw Obliterates and Killing Machine Obliterates. It will have a greater impact at the start of the expansion where our lack of stacks will likely lead to some naked casts. In The War Within Season 3, we essentially get zero naked casts throughout a fight.

Frostbane now also deals 300% additional damage to the main target when it consumes stacks of Razorice. This is a significant single-target buff to the ability that previously struggled in that scenario. It is an interesting playstyle and the hope is that this buff is sufficient to make it more competitive in Midnight.

Empower Rune Weapon is now instant and no longer has a projectile. This is a very useful change to an otherwise great ability. Currently, the projectile aspect of Empower Rune Weapon causes issues on certain bosses where we see up to 0.5 seconds delay before we actually get our Runic Power and Killing Machine proc. This makes the rotation feel a bit more laggy and disrupts your otherwise practiced flow. We can now always reliably expect the Killing Machine to come at a specific time and we can even Macro the ability if we want to:

• /cast Empower Rune Weapon
• /cast Obliterate

This macro will generate the proc and immediately consume it. I think we will still want to manually control exactly when we want to cast it, but it is still nice that this works.

The Death Knight class tree has also seen some minor changes. Blood Bond, Death Defiance, and Death Notes have all been added. Some nice defensives and a hook to talent into Death Pact (which is very much needed, we never pick this talent otherwise). Death Notes would have been a nice addition back in the day, when Breath of Sindragosa drained Runic Power. It is still nice to get but not as impactful anymore. Soul Reaper is gone as it has been moved to the Unholy talent tree and Sacrificial Pact has been simply removed. For Frost this really does not matter since we did not pick either talent anyway.

We have also had some movement of nodes around the tree. Death's Reach is in a much better spot as a choice node with Asphyxiate. Wraith Walk has moved further up the tree and is now a choice with March of Darkness. Unholy Momentum is now a 2-point talent as well. Overall we get a bit more access to certain talents and some more options in the tree. Death Strike and Unholy Endurance were nerfed a bit so we also lost some defensive power, but not that much in the grand scheme of things.

The Frost Death Knight has a Season 1 tier set focuses on Empower Rune Weapon (ERW). The 2-set gives a 20% damage increase to Obliterate/ Frostscythe after you press ERW. The 4-set gives a 20% buff to the recharge rate of ERW and makes the first ERW used in Pillar of Frost ignore its Cooldown. Some nice buffs to an already great ability that will both make it feel more impactful to use, as well as providing more opportunities to use it overall. We will be able to use it more aggressively in Pillar of Frost to get some sweet back-to-back Obliterate chains going.