Frost Death Knight DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — The War Within (11.1.7)

• Chill Streak Talented.
• Deathbringer Talented.

1. Use Abomination Limb.
2. Use Remorseless Winter.
3. Use Chill Streak.
4. Use Empower Rune Weapon + Pillar of Frost + Raise Dead + Reaper's Mark + Racial + Trinket.
5. Use Empower Rune Weapon + Pillar of Frost + Raise Dead + Frostwyrm's Fury + Racial + Trinket.
6. Follow the "rotation during Obliteration priority" (below).

You have a high priority to stack up Unleashed Frenzy and Icy Talons in your first Pillar of Frost window, essentially ignoring Rime until you have stacked up 5 stacks of the buff. This should not take long, however, as your Killing Machines will stack them up as well.

For AoE, the opener stays pretty much the same. The one difference is that you use Death and Decay after you have generated two stacks of Killing Machine in your Pillar of Frost window (when running The Long Winter)! Without The Long Winter, you Death and Decay before your Pillar! Death and Decay provides 14 seconds of Cleave and Pillar of Frost lasts for 12-18 seconds (with The Long Winter talented).

We will generally run two charges of Death and Decay in AoE. The way to use your second charge is right after a strong Death and Decay window! This often means you have left-over procs of Killing Machine to spend, as well as buffs such as Trinket, Potion, and Empower Rune Weapon! This second window also benefits from Enduring Strength, making it strong as well! As a final note, using your second Death and Decay right after the first one means you cannot end up in a situation where you do not have a charge ready for a Pillar of Frost window!

• Breath of Sindragosa Talented and Active
• Reaper of Souls Talented
• Shattering Blade Talented

1. Use Obliterate if you have a stack of Killing Machine.
2. Use Frost Strike to generate a Killing Machine proc if your Unleashed Frenzy/ Icy Talons will expire within the next GCD. Use Glacial Advance if using this talent and in AoE.
3. Use Frost Strike to generate a Killing Machine proc if you are at less than max stacks of Unleashed Frenzy/ Icy Talons Glacial Advance if using this talent and in AoE.
4. Use Frost Strike if you have 5 stacks of Razorice.
5. Use Soul Reaper to generate a Killing Machine proc if you have the Reaper of Souls buff up.
6. Use Howling Blast, if you have a Rime proc.
7. Use Frost Strike to generate a Killing Machine proc. Glacial Advance if using this talent and in AoE.
8. Use Howling Blast to generate a Killing Machine proc and you have 3 or more Runes.
9. Use Obliterate to generate Runic Power

The idea here is to weave your abilities to both generate and consume the maximum amount of Killing Machine procs! You can get procs of Killing Machine naturally, so make sure to be ready for when that happens to avoid overcapping on procs. It is important to ensure you have sufficient resources before entering the Obliteration window. This generally means saving some Runic Power and Runes ~5 seconds before the window. It is generally sufficient to enter with 2 or more Runes and 30 or more Runic Power. You can have less Runic Power if you have a proc of Rime. In practice, try and avoid using Obliterate without Killing Machine procs ~5 seconds before your pillar window.

Note that Frost Strike has a higher priority than Howling Blast when you need to either stack or refresh your Icy Talons and Unleashed Frenzy buffs! It is more important to maintain these buffs than to spend the proc of Rime. Furthermore, you should also use Frost Strike above Rime procs when low on Runes. Due to them spending Runic Power, you have a higher probability of generating a Rune when using a Frost Strike vs consuming a proc of Rime! Finally, with Shattering Blade, Frost Strike again takes priority over Howling Blast when at 5 stacks of Razorice. You end up with so many cases that Howling Blast rarely is prioritised.

The final Howling Blast is an edge case where you are unlucky with your procs of Rime. You might end up depleting your Runic Power but still have a lot of Runes. We then send a naked Howling Blast to trigger the next Killing Machine.

Breath of Sindragosa is a checkbox at the top due to it being a viable option to run in combination with Obliteration. When you do this, you essentially do not do your general weaving rotation. Instead, you continue with your Breath rotation and enjoy the increased number of Killing Machine procs you get from using up your Rimes.

Just like in the general AoE rotation, Glacial Advance becomes your Runic Power spender of choice within your Obliteration window as soon as you are fighting 2+ targets (and have picked up this talent, normally in 2H Obliteration builds)!

Finally, timing your Pillar with another GCD instantly is important to maximise the number of GCDs you can fit into your Pillar window. We do this by leveraging a macro, commonly using Pillar of Frost and Reaper's Mark/ Frostwyrm's Fury together during a free GCD. Read more about these Macros in the Macros and Addons section of the guide!

Breath of Sindragosa is a unique cooldown that offers a quite different play style from Obliteration. Currently, you will experience an average duration of 45+ seconds with Heroism / Bloodlust and 30+ seconds without Heroism / Bloodlust. There are outliers where you do not get sufficient Runic Empowerment or Murderous Efficiency procs that can cut it short. Furthermore, mechanics can force you out of range, which will ruin your uptime of Breath.

• Chill Streak Talented.
• Deathbringer Talented.

1. Use Abomination Limb.
2. Use Remorseless Winter
3. Use Chill Streak.
4. Use 2x Obliterate (use Howling Blast if you get a Rime proc).
5. Use Death and Decay if you have a spare Rune.
6. Breath of Sindragosa
7. Use Pillar of Frost + Reaper's Mark + Empower Rune Weapon + Raise Dead + Blood Fury if Orc, Berserking if Troll.
8. Use Pillar of Frost + Frostwyrm's Fury + Breath of Sindragosa + Empower Rune Weapon + Raise Dead + Blood Fury if Orc, Berserking if Troll.

A quick note on Breath of Sindragosa usage with Reaper's Mark. It provides 2 Runes on use so one might think that you can macro it with Reaper's Mark. You start at 0 Runes, gain 2 from Breath and then use those instantly on Reaper's Mark. However, the game does not have sufficient time to generate the 2 Runes so you cannot use both in a macro. Instead, use your Breath just before using your opener macro to allow the game to generate the 2 Runes beforehand.

1. Use Obliterate if you are low on Runic Power (less than 60 RP).
2. Use Remorseless Winter on cooldown.
3. Use Howling Blast, only if you have a Rime proc or Frost Fever is about to drop. Only use Howling Blast if you are above 60 Runic Power.
4. Use Obliterate.
5. Use Arcane Torrent if you are a Blood Elf, and it will not overcap your Runic Power.

The Breath of Sindragosa rotation is all about managing your Runic Power generation throughout your Breath. Your Runic Power drains at a rate of 17 per second, and you want to ensure this does not turn into a Runic Power deficit for long periods! The very first point to consider is the type of ability you use during your Breath. Never use an ability that costs Runic Power, as it will significantly reduce the duration of your Breath. Instead, you will pretty much only use Obliterate, Remorseless Winter, and Howling Blast with procs of Rime.

Before you initiate your Breath, you want to pool appropriate resources. For a Breath during Bloodlust, this will only be around 60 Runic Power. Non-lusted Breath requires more resources, and you should aim to go to 80+ and have 1-2 Runes before you enter the Breath.

The start of your Breath will generally be very easy to manage. You will pool resources beforehand and have all your cooldowns available to help with your resources. Furthermore, you use Empower Rune Weapon with your Breath to boost your initial Pillar window. Important to note here is to not blindly spam your Obliterate button. You can easily end up in scenarios where you have so many resources that you actually overcap on Runic Power and end up wasting it! Do not Obliterate if you are about to overcap on Runic Power and you have 3 or fewer Runes (in reality, we will overcap some Runic Power due to our very fast Rune recharge rate).

Once the initial resource-heavy phase is gone, you will start entering a region of potential Runic Power deficit. With good procs, you are fine and keep your Runic Power up, but with streaks of unlucky periods, your Runic Power will start to drop. This is the part where you want to actively manage your resource-generating cooldowns. Horn of Winter (when talented) and Anti-Magic Shell. Horn of Winter should be used quite aggressively, allowing for a potential second use during the Breath. Try to use it as soon as you run out of Runes, and it will not overcap your Runic Power. Anti-Magic Shell should be used when you can soak up magic damage. Again, be quite aggressive to enable a potential second use, but also make sure the magic damage you soak is significant. Try to space out your cooldowns appropriately, and do not use them all at the same time. If used all together, you risk wasting resources.

In the final part of Breath, you are dropping further and further down. No resources cooldowns are left to use, and you just hope for good procs. Here, you will distinctly prioritize using Obliterate over Howling Blast with Rime, as well as Remorseless Winter. You want to optimize your Runic Power in the next GCD in the hope of getting potential procs. You can also consider using Death and Decay, which gives you 10 Runic Power for one more tick and potentially more procs. Also, make sure to really spam your buttons here so that any Rune proc is used up ASAP!

Finally, let us consider the scenario when you are forced out of range due to mechanics. In this scenario, it can be viable to spam Howling Blast to keep up your Breath! Try and make use of Anti-Magic Shell and Horn of Winter (when talented) to avoid using Howling Blast since it is quite a waste of Runes to do it. Also, consider the extra Breath duration you gain by doing it. If your Breath is dropping 4-5 seconds after getting back to the boss anyway, using Howling Blast will end up being a waste. In short, if you are forced out of range early in your Breath window, use all the tools you can to keep it up. If it is late in the window, only use naked Howling Blasts if it will net you 5+ seconds or so of extra boss Breath uptime.

Reaper's Mark is the active ability you gain from the Deathbringer tree. With a 45-second cooldown, you can align it with every Pillar of Frost window! Simply cast it with your Pillar macro every time.

Pillar of Frost grants you 30% Strength for 12 seconds, with a 1-minute cooldown. The cooldown can be reduced to 45 seconds with Icecap, and the duration can be increased to 18 seconds with The Long Winter.

You should use this ability on cooldown and ideally couple it with any potions or on-use trinkets you may have. That said, it can sometimes be better to save it for a few seconds until a high-priority target becomes available.

Remorseless Winter deals damage and slows by 20% to all targets around you over 8 seconds. The damage and duration can be significantly increased with Gathering Storm, Biting Cold, and Everfrost.

Generally use this spell on cooldown. An important part of this cooldown, when talented into Gathering Storm, is that you can refresh its duration with the maximum of 10 stacks rolling. If you can spend enough Runes to increase the duration by 10 seconds, you can then recast Remorseless Winter and keep the 10 stacks. This is a huge damage increase and should always be aimed for. In some scenarios, you even have multiple seconds left on the buff once the cooldown comes off. In this case, make sure to recast it at least 20 seconds before your next Pillar window to avoid desyncing.

Everfrost works similarly, but you instead refresh a debuff on your enemies. It does not require quite as many Runes to be used as Gathering Storm to be extended.

Do not use Remorseless Winter inside of Pillar of Frost when running Obliteration builds, the GCD is not worth it.

There is further optimisation to be done with this talent if you really want to get into it. Since it has a 20 seconds cooldown, it does not quite line up with every Pillar of Frost window. When possible, delay your next cast every so slightly to help align it. During Bloodlust, you will extend it far enough that you can misalign it in the other direction. Try and make sure to not wait more than 5 seconds before your refresh Remorseless Winter, even if you could extend it a bit further! In most cases, delay 2-3 seconds both times so you don't drop your Everfrost stacks.

Empower Rune Weapon grants you 15% haste and generates 1 Rune and 5 Runic Power instantly and every 5 seconds for 20 seconds. It has a 120-second cooldown.

Empower Rune Weapon should generally be used in conjunction with Pillar of Frost. The extra haste and resources help to make the most of these damage windows. This means saving it for 15 seconds after it comes up to use with Pillar at 2min 15seconds.

If you are using the Breath of Sindragosa talent, Empower Rune Weapon is crucial to extending its duration. Generally, use it after 10-15 seconds, depending on how quickly you starve.

With Obliteration, it is ideal to use Empower Rune Weapon a couple of seconds before your Pillar window. With The Long Winter, wait until 0-2 seconds. Without, use it 2-7 seconds before. In AoE, always use it with Pillar of Frost to boost your damage after the Pillar window ends.

We have already covered the opener and priority when running this talent, but let us put it in words. Before using Breath of Sindragosa, you want to pool some Runic Power (60+ with Bloodlust, 80+ without). Do not worry too much about pooling any Runes. Breath of Sindragosa provides 2 Runes on activation, which is generally sufficient to get going. Once you have activated your Breath of Sindragosa, your highest priority is to prolong it as much as possible. This means using Obliterate to consume Runes and generate Runic Power. You should not simply mash this button as much as possible, though.

At the start of your Breath of Sindragosa, you will most likely have a lot of Runic Power, making it important to not overcap on Runic Power as you hit your Obliterates. Only use Obliterate if you have more than 3 Runes (avoiding overcapping on Runes) or if your Runic Power deficit is greater than 20.

There are other spells to use within your Breath of Sindragosa window. Howling Blast should be used with procs of Rime (as long as you are at a healthy level of Runic Power, 60+ or so). Remorseless Winter should also be used when available (your Breath of Sindragosa window is the easiest time to extend your Gathering Storm stacks).

Using your resource-generating cooldowns smartly in your Breath of Sindragosa window is also crucial. Empower Rune Weapon and Horn of Winter will give you the resources needed to maximize your Breath duration. Use Empower Rune Weapon when you cast your Breath and save Horn of Winter for later, using it when you run out of Runes. After your Breath finishes, save Horn for before your Pillar of Frost windows, to optimise your Obliteration damage.

This talent can either be used as a single-target moderate damage cooldown, a big AoE burst cooldown, or as a utility tool to help grip adds together. For any fight that has adds, you should save this cooldown for when they spawn. Both to maximize your own damage as well as the damage of your party. For pure single target, you simply use this spell on cooldown.

The huge AoE burst of this spell warrants saving it for any potential add phases. As the value grows linearly with added targets, one use of this spell on three targets is better than three overall uses. Do always try to time it with your Pillar of Frost in AoE. For pure single target with Obliteration, wait until just after your Pillar of Frost to use it. If you are running Rider of the Apocalypse, use it with your Pillar press instead to summon the Horsemen for the duration of your Pillar!

Throws a snowball at your enemy that bounces to nearby enemies, dealing damage each time. Can bounce off yourself if no enemies are nearby. Good synergy with Pillar of Frost with Icecap as you can send Chill Streak before each Pillar window, allowing the bounces to overlap with the Strength buff. Use Chill Streak the GCD before Pillar of Frost when running both these talents.

Cold Heart turns your Chains of Ice slow into a powerful nuke that ramps over 40 seconds. As a rule of thumb, use Chains of Ice when above 16 stacks of Cold Heart. Do try to time it with procs of Unholy Strength, using Chains of Ice if this proc is about to fall off and you are above 16 stacks. It is also a good idea to use Chains of Ice in your Pillar of Frost window, as long as you have not specced into Obliteration. With Icecap, you can hold it for each Pillar of Frost window.

If you are using Breath of Sindragosa, make sure to use Horn of Winter when you are low on Runes within the Breath of Sindragosa window. It is important not to hold on to it for too long as you will end up losing casts overall. Use it as soon as you cannot use Obliterate and it will not overcap Runic Power for you. Around 15-25 seconds into your Breath. With Obliteration, use it before your Pillar window to boost your resources for the burst.

Frostscythe is quite similar to Frostwyrm's Fury for its use. We simply press it as it comes up as long as we are not in our Pillar of Frost window (the opportunity cost of using it during Pillar tends to be too high).