Frost Death Knight DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Shadowlands 9.2.5
On this page, you will learn how to optimize the rotation of your Frost Death Knight in both single-target and multiple-target situations. We also have advanced sections about cooldowns, procs, etc. in order to minmax your DPS. All our content is updated for World of Warcraft — Shadowlands 9.2.5.
Frost Death Knight Rotation
Welcome to our Rotation page for Frost Death Knights. Here we will go over everything you will need to know in order to optimally play your spec for Raiding and Mythic+ scenarios.
Mythic+ Rotation
Frost is a very interesting Mythic+ spec, as it has fantastic single-target burst potential and AoE burst potential, however this differs depending on your talents. For more information about Mythic+ as a Frost Death Knight, please check out our Mythic+ guide linked below.
Easy Mode
If these rotations seem fairly complicated, then you may want to check out our Easy Mode page that gives you a much more simplistic build and rotation to play.
PvP
Since the guides on this page are for PvE content, if you are looking for a PvP rotation guide, then please visit our PvP page linked below.
Single Target Rotation for Frost Death Knights
The single target rotation is based on the following priority. I have not included the usage of your cooldowns here; find detailed explanations of those further down the page!
- Use
Remorseless Winter on cooldown (for
Gathering Storm, if you have taken this talent).
- Use
Howling Blast, if you have a
Rime proc or if your
Frost Fever has dropped from the target.
- Use
Obliterate, if you have a
Killing Machine proc or 4+ Runes.
- Use
Frost Strike, if you have 70+ Runic Power.
- Use
Obliterate.
- Use
Frost Strike.
Now, we will translate this into something a bit more readable!
- Use
Remorseless Winter on cooldown! It is important to pay a lot of attention to this ability since it naturally aligns with your
Pillar of Frost windows if you use it properly. It is also a significant portion of your damage!
- Spend your procs of
Rime on
Howling Blast. We have this high in our priority since we want to avoid "overcapping" procs. This is when you generate a proc when you already have one, wasting one use. Casting a naked
Howling Blast (without Rime) is kind of worthwhile. It does not matter too much if you do it or not.
- Use
Obliterate to consume procs of
Killing Machine and avoid capping on Runes. Killing Machine procs are triggered off your critical auto attacks so it is important that we spend them quickly to avoid wasting any procs. We also want to avoid sitting at 4+ Runes available since that means we lose out on Rune recharge. You can recharge 3 Runes at the time max. Any time you are not doing so, you lose out on Rune recharging!
- Use
Frost Strike to avoid capping Runic Power. This priority comes after managing your
Killing Machine procs and Runes. For Frost Death Knight, Runic Power simply is not worth as much as Runes. We will overcap on it and not care generally!
- Use
Obliterate to spend Runes and generate Runic Power. Use
Frost Strike to spend the Runic Power you generate. This is the majority of your rotation where you build and spend your resources.
Multiple Target Rotation for Frost Death Knights
If you are using Glacial Advance, then use instead of
Frost Strike
whenever you would have used
Frost Strike. With
Frostwyrm's Fury,
it is recommended that you synergize with
Pillar of Frost and as many
targets as possible.
The multiple target rotation is as follows.
Frostscythe Talented
Glacial Advance Talented
- Use
Remorseless Winter.
- Use
Howling Blast, only if you have a
Rime proc.
- Use
Obliterate.
- Use
Frost Strike.
Your AoE rotation is identical to your single-target rotation if
you do not pick up Frostscythe nor
Glacial Advance. You generally
do not care as much about Runic Power and it is fine to cap it when prioritising
Rune Spenders.
Breath of Sindragosa
Breath of Sindragosa is a unique cooldown that offers a completely
different playstyle from the other tier 7 talents. Currently you will experience an average
duration of 25 seconds without
Heroism /
Bloodlust, and
40+ seconds with Heroism / Bloodlust. There are outliers where you
do not get sufficient
Runic Empowerment procs,
Frost Fever
procs or get a mechanic that causes you to go out of melee.
With Pillar of Frost being a 1-minute cooldown,
this means that it does line up well with
Breath of Sindragosa and
Empower Rune Weapon.
Opener for Breath of Sindragosa
- Use
Remorseless Winter
- Use
Obliterate (use
Howling Blast if you get a
Rime proc).
- Use
Obliterate (use
Howling Blast if you get a
Rime proc).
- Use
Pillar of Frost.
- Use your Covenant Ability.
- Use
Breath of Sindragosa.
- Use
Raise Dead.
- Use
Blood Fury if Orc,
Berserking if Troll.
- Follow the "rotation during Breath of Sindragosa priority" (below).
Rotation During Breath of Sindragosa
- Use
Obliterate if you are low on Runic Power (less than 30 RP).
- Use
Remorseless Winter on cooldown (for
Gathering Storm, if you have taken this talent).
- 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 50 Runic Power (or ~30 if you are using
Rage of the Frozen Champion).
- Use
Obliterate if you are nearly capped on Runes or have less than 45 Runic Power.
- Use
Remorseless Winter.
- Use
Obliterate.
- Use
Arcane Torrent if you are a Blood Elf and it will not overcap your Runic Power.
Basically, your goal during Breath of Sindragosa is to keep the
duration up by using
Obliterate to generate lots of Runic Power. You
should only be using abilities like
Howling Blast with a
Rime
proc, when you are not in danger of dropping Breath of Sindragosa, as it does
not generate Runic Power (if you do not have the
Rage of the Frozen Champion legendary).
Death and Decay has some use when running
Breath of Sindragosa
in an AoE scenario. It can be used as a last-resort Runic Power generator at the
end of your Breath!
Anti-Magic Shell is a defensive ability that can be used offensively
to generate Runic Power. This can be used to extend the duration of Breath
of Sindragosa. Make sure that the ability you are using Anti-Magic Shell on
is magic damage.
Obliteration
Obliteration plays very smoothly and fluidly, as opposed to
Breath of Sindragosa.
Opener for Obliteration
- Use
Chains of Ice at 20 stacks (if you have taken
Cold Heart).
- Use
Remorseless Winter.
- Use
Obliterate (if you got an early
Killing Machine proc).
- Use
Empower Rune Weapon.
- Use
Blood Fury if Orc,
Berserking if Troll.
- Use
Pillar of Frost.
- Use
Raise Dead.
- Use
Howling Blast.
- Use
Obliterate.
- Follow the "rotation during Obliteration priority" (below).
We cast a naked Howling Blast in this opener to immediately proc
a
Killing Machine in your
Pillar of Frost window.
Rotation Priority during Pillar of Frost (Obliteration)
- Use
Obliterate with a
Killing Machine proc.
- Use
Howling Blast if you have a
Rime proc and to generate a
Killing Machine proc.
- Use
Frost Strike to generate a
Killing Machine proc.
- Use
Howling Blast to generate a
Killing Machine proc.
The idea here is to weave your abilities so as to both generate
and consume the maximum amount of Killing Machine procs! You can
get procs of Killing Machine naturally, forcing you to sometimes
use
Obliterate twice in a row. 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.
Cooldown Usage for Frost Death Knights
As a Frost Death Knight, you have 4 Core DPS cooldowns. Below, we explain how they are best used.
Pillar of Frost should be used on cooldown, stacking it with potions or any on-use trinkets you have. Alternatively, you can save it for moments when you need increased damage. When using
Breath of Sindragosa you should always pair these 2 cooldowns together, as well as
Empower Rune Weapon.
Empower Rune Weapon should generally be used together with
Pillar of Frost. If you are talented into
Breath of Sindragosa then sync up your Empower Rune Weapon with Breath of Sindragosa, ideally delaying it a couple of seconds so as to utilise the resources you gain effectively. For
Obliteration, you want to use Empower Rune Weapon 3 seconds before your Pillar of Frost. This ensures you naturally pool a sufficient amount of resources for the window, while maintaining full Pillar uptime on the Haste buff!
Frostwyrm's Fury should be used as many times as possible throughout an encounter. Ideally, it should be used against multiple targets (and it is worth saving for this purpose), but it can also be used against a single target. You ideally want to use it at the end of your
Pillar of Frost window, when your Strength buff is at its highest. Once exception for this is when you are running
Obliteration with the
Frost DK 4-Piece tier bonus. You then want to move Frostwyrm's Fury outside your Pillar window in single-target scenarios.
Remorseless Winter should always be used on cooldown in AoE. If you have specced into the
Gathering Storm talent (like a lot of people usually do), you also want to use this spell on cooldown in single target.
You can read more about these cooldowns, as well as about any cooldowns you gain from talents in our dedicated section.
Optional Read: Mastering Your Frost Death Knight
Following the guide up to this point will allow you to play a Frost Death Knight at a very high level. That said, below we go into a bit more detail about some aspects of the specialization.
Runes and Runic Power
Death Knights use a dual resource system of runes and Runic Power. While it is quite straightforward in how it works, we will explain it here for the sake of completion.
Runes
You have a total of 6 Runes, which are available by default. Some of your abilities have Rune costs, and whenever you use an ability that consumes one or more Runes, those Runes will immediately begin recharging. The exact amount of time it takes a Rune to recharge depends on how much Haste you have.
Whenever a Rune is consumed, you gain 10 Runic Power (more on that below).
At most, 3 of your runes can be charging up at the same time. It is therefore optimal to keep at least 3 runes on cooldown in order to maximise the recharge rate over the course of the fight.
Runic Power
Runic Power is a resource that resembles Rage, in the sense that it decays when out of combat, but does not decay during combat. As mentioned above, consuming Runes generates 10 Runic Power per Rune spent, and this is the primary means of generating Runic Power, although some abilities also help with this. You can have a maximum of 100 Runic Power.
Dual-Wielding Versus Two-Handed
Currently Dual-Wield and Two-Handed are both very viable builds although Two-Handed plays better in PvP situations while Dual-Wield plays better in PvE situations.
Mastery: Frozen Heart
Mastery: Frozen Heart increases all Frost damage that you do.
Procs
Frost Death Knights have two procs that will regularly show up in the rotation, so it is important that you understand them.
Killing Machine Procs
Your auto-attack critical strikes have a chance to make your next
Obliterate (or
Frostscythe, if you have taken this talent) a
guaranteed critical strike. Thanks to
Killing Machine at Level 58, you
get
Killing Machine Rank 2 which makes your next
Obliterate
deal Frost Damage, meaning it will scale off your Mastery and ignore armor.
Killing Machine works based on the number of auto-attack critical strikes you
have had since the last proc. For dual wield, the first time you get an
auto-attack critical strike after your previous proc, you have a 30% chance to
get a new proc. If this fails, the next auto attack has a 60% chance. If this
also fails, you get 90% proc chance and then 100% proc chance if 3 auto-attack
critical strikes have failed in a row.
Wielding a Two-Handed weapon increases these proc chances. You have a 70%
chance to proc Killing Machine on your first auto-attack critical
strike and then 100% if this first auto-attack fails to generate a proc. Still,
due to the lower attack speed of a Two-Handed weapon, and since you only have
one weapon to attack with, the number of procs is 80% higher for Dual-Wield
compared to Two-Handed.
Generally, these procs should be used right away so as to ensure that no procs are overwritten.
If you have the Obliteration tier 7 talent, then this ability
causes each
Frost Strike and
Howling Blast to trigger
Killing Machine (for the duration of
Pillar of Frost).
Each time you trigger Killing Machine, you should consume the proc before
getting a new one, so as not to waste any procs.
Rime Procs
Your Obliterate has a 45% chance and your
Frostscythe a 22.5% chance to cause your next
Howling Blast to be free of cost and deal 300% additional damage,
thanks to
Rime. These procs should be used quickly, most importantly
before Obliterate or Frostscythe are used again to prevent the buff from being
overwritten.
Advanced Cooldown Usage
Pillar of Frost (Core)
Pillar of Frost grants you 20% Strength increasing by 1% for each
rune you spend for 12 seconds, with a 1-minute cooldown.
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 until a high priority target
becomes available. When using Breath of Sindragosa
you should always pair it with
Pillar of Frost and
Empower Rune Weapon.
Empower Rune Weapon (Core)
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 105-second
cooldown (before level 56, the cooldown is 2 minutes).
Empower Rune Weapon should generally be used in conjunction with
Pillar of Frost. The extra haste and resources helps to make the most
of these damage windows.
If you are using the Breath of Sindragosa talent, Empower Rune
Weapon is crucial to extending its duration. It is ideal to wait a couple
of seconds into your
Breath of Sindragosa window before activating
Empower Rune Weapon. This is to avoid overcapping resources. As a general
rule of thumb, 2-3 GCDs outside of lust and something like 5-7 GCDs during lust
are okay numbers to aim for.
With Obliteration, it is ideal to use
Empower Rune Weapon 3
seconds before your Pillar window. This helps with pooling while maintaining full
Pillar uptime on the Haste buff.
Remorseless Winter (Core)
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.
Always use this spell in AoE scenarios on cooldown. On single target, use it
on cooldown if you have specced into the Gathering Storm talent or if
you are running
Biting Cold or
Everfrost. 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 are able to
spend enough Runes as 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.
Frostwyrm's Fury
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 the end
of your Pillar of Frost window. The only exception of this is with
Obliteration and the
Frost DK 4-Piece tier set bonus in pure
single-target. The opportunity cost of pressing
Frostwyrm's Fury becomes
too great at that point, pushing it outside the Pillar window!
Cold Heart (Talented)
Cold Heart turns your
Chains of Ice slow into a
powerful nuke that ramps over 40 seconds. This unfortunately makes it misalign
with our 60 seconds
Pillar of Frost cooldown. 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. If using it in Pillar of Frost, use it as the last GCD
within that window.
Horn of Winter (Talented)
If you are using Horn of Winter as your tier 2 talent, then you
should cast it as often as you can, whenever nothing on your rotational
priority list is available. 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.
Breath of Sindragosa (Talented)
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+). 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) and less than 70 Runic Power.
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 (30+ with the
Rage of the Frozen Champion legendary, 50+ without it).
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,
Swarming Mist,
Horn of Winter,
Hypothermic Presence are
best used when you start to starve on resources. If you pop them too early, you
will overcap and lose effectiveness. Generally, wait at least 5 GCDs before
using any of these resource cooldowns. If you find yourself losing your Breath
of Sindragosa way before the resource Cooldowns finish, alter your timing and
use them earlier the next time!
Hypothermic Presence (Talented)
Generally, use this cooldown as soon as it comes up. If you are running
Breath of Sindragosa, make sure to hold it until you start starving
on resources.
Changelog
- 31 May 2022: Page reviewed for Patch 9.2.5.
- 20 Feb. 2022: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.2.
- 01 Nov. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.5.
- 30 Jun. 2021: Reviewed and updated for Patch 9.1.
- 04 Jun. 2021: Reviewed and expanded Cooldown usage.
- 09 Mar. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.0.5.
- 23 Feb. 2021: Added rotation switches for the single target rotation.
- 24 Jan. 2021: Guide reviewed and completely updated.
- 08 Jan. 2021: Updated rotation priority.
- 14 Dec. 2020: Updated the description of Dual-Wield vs Two Handed Frost.
- 23 Nov. 2020: Updated the rotation priority and guide for Shadowlands.
- 12 Oct. 2020: Page updated for the Shadowlands pre-patch.
More Death Knight Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Bicepspump, a semi-hardcore player raiding with Wicked Vigilantes on Kazzak. He is heavily involved in the DK DPS theorycrafting community, testing hyoptheses and investigating the correct priority to use. He is also a useful-minion in the Acherus discord, frequently answering questions and discussing optimisations (do not hesitate to reach out). He produces guide-content on YouTube and frequently streams on Twitch.
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