Frost Death Knight DPS Easy Mode — Midnight Season 1

We recommend the Breath of Sindragosa with Deathbringer and a 2-handed weapon for Single Target.

We recommend the Breath of Sindragosa with Deathbringer and a 2-handed weapon for Mythic+ and Delves.

Your main goal throughout fights will be to maximize your Killing Machine consumption while also keeping an eye out for procs of Rime.

Note that the rotations listed below are not fully optimized for the highest possible output, instead making some sacrifices to ensure their ease of use. If you wish to put out the most DPS you possibly can, you should check out our dedicated Rotation page instead.

• AoE (3+ targets)
• Frostbane talented

1. Use Pillar of Frost on Cooldown. Combine it with Reaper's Mark when running Deathbringer and Frostwyrm's Fury.
2. Spend your procs of Killing Machine on Obliterate.
3. Spend your procs of Killing Machine on Frostscythe.
4. Spend your Empower Rune Weapon charges to generate procs of Killing Machine.
5. Spend your procs of Rime on Howling Blast.
6. Use Frostbane when you get a proc of it and the target has 5 stacks of Razorice.
7. Spend your Runic Power on Frost Strike.
8. Spend your Runic Power on Glacial Advance.
9. Spend leftover Runes on Obliterate.
10. Spend leftover Runes on Frostscythe.

Our Season 1 tier focus on Empower Rune Weapon. The 2-set increases the damage of the next Obliterate/ Frostscythe by 20%. The 4-set makes Empower Rune Weapon recharge 20% faster and Pillar of Frost grants 1 additional charge. The main impact to our rotation comes from avoiding the overcapping of Empower Rune Weapon charges. We now gain a charge from Pillar as well as Breath of Sindragosa. This means that we need to either start with 0 charges before using these abilities, or macroing a use after Pillar but before Breath to ensure we do not overcap.

Frost Death Knight gets access to Chosen of Frostbrood Apex Talents as you level up from 80 to 90 in Midnight. The first rank buffs Frostwyrm's Fury by 100% and provides a Haste buff when you use the ability. The second rank Chosen of Frostbrood extends your active Pillar of Frost by 2/4 seconds when you cast Frostwyrm's Fury in it, and improves the power of Enduring Strength. The final rank Chosen of Frostbrood provides a flat 10% Frost damage buff, an additional 100% increase to Frostwyrm's Fury damage and allows you to recast the ability at 50% effectiveness for 45 seconds after the first use.

The Apex Talents significantly incentivise picking up Frostwyrm's Fury and additionally using it in our Pillar of Frost windows. We send both charges in our first window to avoid missing the next one, making sure to spread them out to not overlap the buffs.

As a Frost Death Knight, you have potentially 6 total cooldowns. Below, we explain how they are best used.

• Reaper's Mark should be used on cooldown with each Pillar of Frost window, macro them together.
• Pillar of Frost should be used on cooldown, stacking it with potions or any on-use trinkets you have. Since we run Obliteration, spend the window generating Killing Machine with Frost Strike/ Glacial Advance/ Howling Blast and consume with Obliterate/ Frostscythe.
• Frostwyrm's Fury should be used in synergy with Pillar of Frost. Use your first charge at the start of the Pillar of Frost and the re-cast after 12 seconds while still in your Pillar window.
• Breath of Sindragosa should be used on cooldown in synergy with your other cooldowns. Macro it with Pillar of Frost.
• Empower Rune Weapon should be used whenever you have two charges or when you have no Runic Power and no Killing Machine to use on Obliterate. In your Pillar of Frost, use it to get free Obliterate/ Frostscythe when you are out of Runes.
• Remorseless Winter should be used on cooldown. We often pick up Frozen Dominion which handles Remorseless automatically and completely removes the button for us.

Patch 11.7 introduced the Combat Assistant functionality for all specs in the game. This comes in the form of two tools that you can use to assist your rotation. The Assisted Highlight feature will light up the spell that you are supposed to use next, helping you determine what button you need to press. The Single-Button Assistant will provide you with a single button that automatically pressed the appropriate spell. Importantly the Single-Button Assistant has a GCD penalty of 0.2 seconds every time you press it, artificially slowing down your rotation. This penalty means that you will always do less DPS when using the Single-Button Assistant compared to what you could have done with a perfectly executed rotation.

One major aspect to consider here is the lack of major Cooldowns in the Combat Assistant. The Assisted Highlight and Single-Button Assistant will not highlight/use your major offensive Cooldowns. Instead it is on you to ensure that you use those appropriately.

One question you might ask yourself now is: how good is the rotation I can get from these assistants? If we assume that you handle your Cooldown usage perfectly, the Assisted Highlight is roughly 5-10% less DPS and the Single-Button Assistant is about 15% less DPS. Do bear in mind that this is compared to absolutely optimal play. A player with less experience with the rotation might see a significantly smaller loss, or even a gain when using the assistants.