Frost Death Knight DPS Easy Mode — The War Within (11.2)

There are generally two distinct playstyles as a Frost Death Knight: Shattering Blade and Breath of Sindragosa. Out of these two, we recommend the Breath of Sindragosa with Deathbringer and a 2H weapon for Raid.

For Mythic+, we run a Breath of Sindragosa build with Deathbringer and a 2H weapon. This is identical to our Raid build as it brings both the best Single Target and AoE!

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

With Breath builds, your rotation does not change as you already want to prioritise the consumption of procs that extend Breath.

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)

1. Use Pillar of Frost on Cooldown. Combine it with Reaper's Mark when running Deathbringer or Frostwyrm's Fury (when available) when running Rider of the Apocalypse.
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. Spend your Runic Power on Frost Strike.
7. Spend your Runic Power on Glacial Advance.
8. Spend leftover Runes on Obliterate.
9. Spend leftover Runes on Frostscythe.

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 and on as many targets as possible. For Single Target, you ideally do not use it in Pillar, unless you cannot generate or consume a Killing Machine proc during the GCD. It is safe to wait until just after Pillar to send it. When using Rider of the Apocalypse, use just before your Pillar of Frost to summon your Riders for the duration of Pillar!
• 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, artifically slowing down your rotation. This penalty means that you always will 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 on Single Target and 15-25% worse in AoE. With the Single-Button Assistant, the numbers are 15-20% in Single Target and 25-30% in AoE. 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.