Frost Death Knight DPS Gear and Best in Slot — Dragonflight 10.2

Welcome to our Gear and BiS Page for Frost Death Knight for Dragonflight 10.2. Check this page learn everything you need to know about gearing a Frost Death Knight, including the BiS Gear from all sources, Raiding, and Mythic+, information on the best Trinkets, Tier Sets, and much more.

The BiS lists below run Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch on a Vibrant Wildercloth Shawl. However, Elemental Lariat is the true BiS second embellishment. It becomes stronger after you have picked up a couple of sockets, so make sure to sim yourself to know when to switch.

If you have a new piece of gear for which you need gems and enchant advice, you can find everything on our dedicated page below.

While gearing up, item level will be your primary target. Strength is our best stat, and you shouldn't focus too much on your secondaries at first. Once you start to receive gear pieces with the same ilvl but different stats, that is when you want to start optimizing your stat distribution. Generally, Frost Death Knights want to prioritize Crit and then Mastery and Haste! We recommend simming your character to determine what upgrade is best for you! For a more detailed explanation, you can read the Simulations page.

Simming your character is far and beyond the best way to determine if a piece of gear is, in fact, an upgrade. The trick is knowing how to do it in a way that produces reliable results. If you follow the Simulations guide page, you can use this to have a more practical gearing guide than simply following a BiS list.

Dragonflight Season 3 has two currencies that can upgrade items all the way to 489 (for Mythic track items). This requires two currencies: Flightstones and Shadowflame Crests that can be obtained from pretty much all content!

For more information on the Gear Upgrades system, check out our dedicated page for it below.

We want to upgrade our most valuable slots at first, since it provides the best DPS per unit of currency. This includes the Weapon, as well as our trinkets. After this point, aim to upgrade slots with as many stats as possible, such as Helm, Shoulder, Chest, and Legs.

1. Weapon (unless you have Legendary)
2. Cataclysmic Signet Brand
3. Pip's Emerald Friendship Badge or Accelerating Sandglass
4. Helm, Shoulder, Chest and Legs

Weapon and Trinkets are just great for upgrading since they provide a lot of power for the price you pay. After this point, make sure to simulate your character to find the upgrade that gives the most DPS per unit of upgrade currency possible.

You can make an argument for upgrading your embellishments as a high priority as well. Once at their max ilvl, you will simply never replace them, reducing the risk of wasting crests down to 0. However, since we get free Enchanted Wyrm's Dreaming Crest , you will reach 476 ilvl already (10 ilvls lower than max). The 60 crests that it takes to craft to 486 therefore only give you 10 more ilvls. Even if these items are embellishments that will scale with ilvl, the DPS per crest is generally much less than what you could get elsewhere (2-7x more DPS by upgrading other pieces). It is up to you how much you value a guaranteed gain vs a gain that you might replace shortly in the future!

Frost generally favors two passive trinkets in a raiding environment due due to our flat damage profile. The one exception is Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows that works relatively well with Breath of Sindragosa, boosting the opening burst. Proccing Crit is also something Breath loves!

The best passives are Pip's Emerald Friendship Badge and Cataclysmic Signet Brand. The Signet Brand does deal a significant amount of self-damage and can be changed for Accelerating Sandglass for a trinket that deals good damage but without the negative aspect. Other really good passive trinkets are Rezan's Gleaming Eye and Porcelain Crab.

For Mythic+, we really want passive trinkets that actually give secondary stats. Porcelain Crab, Accelerating Sandglass and Gore-Crusted Butcher's Block are your primary alternatives. Might of the Ocean is a potential on-use option that synergise really well with Absolute Zero if you pick up this talent!

I have listed the best trinkets below

1. Cataclysmic Signet Brand
2. Pip's Emerald Friendship Badge
3. Accelerating Sandglass

1. Porcelain Crab
2. Coiled Serpent Idol
3. Branch of the Tormented Ancient
4. Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows
5. Might of the Ocean
6. Gore-Crusted Butcher's Block

Many people overthink the distribution of their secondary stats. An important thing to remember is that a higher quantity of stats is nearly always better than a better quality of stats. Because of this, wearing higher item-level gear with worse stats tends to be better than lower item-level gear with great stats. Keep this in mind when considering gear. For more stats information, please refer to our dedicated page.

For neck and ring pieces, you can afford to drop 5-10 ilevels in most cases to get our preferred stat: Crit. That said, you should always sim yourself to see what is better as the secondary stat diminishing returns can still change your ideal setup. Remember that you aim for a balance in stats; just stacking Crit above else, for instance, is a bad idea!

For Season 2, the Legendary will most likely be our best Weapon by far! Once you obtain this Weapon, you are likely to run Obliteration in all content. Until then, Gholak, the Final Conflagration and Volcoross's Barbed Fang are great Dual-Wield weapons. For our 2H Weapon, anything at the highest ilvl is best until you get your Legendary, Gnarlroot's Bonecrusher being good because it is relatively easy to obtain at a high ilvl.

With Season 3, we have a Forst Death Knight Tier set bonus that buffs how we play.

• 2-piece set bonus: Death Knight Frost 10.2 Class Set 2pc
• 4-piece set bonus: Death Knight Frost 10.2 Class Set 4pc

The ideal 4 items to use here are Head, Shoulder, Legs, and Hands. Any combination of the 4 is very much viable however, you can always just swap around your gems and enchants to balance out your stats! You want to break your old set as soon as you get 2-set on your old one, as 2p-2p is an upgrade compared to old 4p!

The tier set impacts our rotation since it forces us to pick up the Chill Streak talent. We will use this ability as much as possible, sending it on Cooldown to get as much value as possible! For more information on how to use it, see the dedicated Rotation Page.

Crafting in Season 3 is slightly different compared to Season 2. The max ilvl is 3 ilvls lower than max mythic (486 vs 489). This means that you are much less likely to be wearing multiple crafted pieces! Furthermore, our embellishments are best on slots with low stat budget to not lose out on DPS due to the ilvl difference. We want to equip two embellishment pieces, and then fill in any gaps in our current gear where we get the best temporary upgrade!

The best embellishments in Season 3 are Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch and Allied Wristguard of Companionship. Blue Silken Lining is a very strong alternative that is better than Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch at between 20 and 30% uptime. They are also is distinctly better in Mythic+ since you are at max HP quite a lot of the time. However, in Raid, you will not always be able to keep enough uptime on the buff. For Farm kills with low damage intake, or specific bosses with little damage intake you could justify it. It is simply safer to run Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch in the majority of cases, though!

With multiple sockets in your gear, Elemental Lariat becomes your best choice in combination with the Allied Wristguard of Companionship. To figure out when the switch is best for you, simply simulate yourself! Allied Chestplate of Generosity is another alternative to consider. It provides solid group DPS gain and can be better than your other embellishments. However, it does occupy a tier slot, making it difficult to justify early in progression when you do not have a lot of available tier items to choose from.

Finally, crafting a weapon is generally always a solid idea. The Weapon provides the most "bang for your buck" and will be your best DPS upgrade early on. However, you will replace it eventually once you get a better weapon , making the investment "wasted" in a sense. Still, if you need that extra DPS early to meet a DPS check for a particularly difficult boss, do consider it!