Frost Death Knight DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — The War Within (11.0.5)
On this page, you will find out the best talents for each tier for your Frost Death Knight in World of Warcraft — The War Within (11.0.5). We also have default talent lists for various types of content, such as raiding or Mythic+. If you play with Warmode on, we have your PvP talents covered as well.
Best The War Within Talents for Frost Death Knight
You have the option to play two distinct builds as the Frost Death Knight. They have different gameplay and feel and excel in different areas. We have Obliteration focused builds that rely heavily on your Pillar of Frost windows to consume and generate lots of Killing Machine procs. We also have Breath of Sindragosa builds, sticking to bosses for 30-60 seconds to maximise your damage. This build also runs Obliteration and plays in a similar manner to the other build, as long as your Breath is not running.
For The War Within, we recommend running the Breath build in raid. The strong Single Target combined with excellent cleave capability makes it beat other builds on the majority of raid encounters. Pure Obliteration builds are still viable, and this is your option if you want to run a 2H weapon.
When it comes to Hero Talents, the choice depends on the build you are running. Breath of Sindragosa wants to run Deathbringer, primarily due to being quite constrained on talent builds, finding it difficult to pick up both Frostwyrm's Fury and Absolute Zero that enable Rider builds. Obliteration builds are much more flexible and can easily pick up everything that enables Rider of the Apocalypse.
Best Talents for Frost Death Knight
Best Single-Target Talents for Frost Death Knight
The Dual-Wield Breath build combines the minigame of Breath of Sindragosa with Obliteration weaving inbetween your Breath windows. It can perform very well in the right hands, especially when you can achieve high Breath uptime. This build relies on Arctic Assault to build and maintain stacks of Razorice. You run Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle and Rune of the Fallen Crusader as Runeforges.
There are two primary swaps you can do in the spec talent tree. Horn of Winter and Murderous Efficiency are essentially equally good. Horn provides more deterministic resource generation, making your Breath of Sindragosa uptime less random and helping with your Obliteration windows, which is why it is the default pick. The next choice is between Inexorable Assault and Frostwyrm's Fury. You lose around 0.5% Single Target DPS by picking Frostwyrm, but gain a significant amount of AoE burst potential. Do note that for this build, you always run Murderous Efficiency due to pathing requirements.
In the Deathbringer talent tree, we have three choice nodes. Dark Talons is locked in since Reaper's Onslaught desyncs our Reaper's Mark from Pillar of Frost. Grim Reaper is also a locked pick due to being 4% better than Reaper of Souls in all situations. Death's Messenger is always picked since the alternative provides no benefit. Finally, Rune Carved Plates is your go-to, as it always provides some nice defensive benefit. Pact of the Deathbringer is situational for very specific situations and is hard to find value with.
If you really want to run Rider of the Apocalypse with this build, simply pick up Frostwyrm's Fury instead of Inexorable Assault. Going for Absolute Zero is tricky since you need to give up Arctic Assault. You lose around 2.5% Single Target DPS but gain quite a lot of burst AoE.
For the class tree, there is a lot more realistic choice. Above the 20 point delimiter, we do not have too many mandatory spells:
- Death Strike
- Icebound Fortitude
- Runic Attenuation
- Anti-Magic Barrier
- Permafrost
- Icy Talons
- Gloom Ward
- Veteran of the Third War
- Brittle
- Unholy Bond
- Soul Reaper
- Unholy Endurance
- Unholy Ground (pathing)
Picking these up leaves us with 5 points that we can allocate freely. Cleaving Strikes is mandatory on any cleave fight. Mind Freeze for any fight with interrupt being required. Blinding Sleet if you need AoE CC. Wraith Walk and/or March of Darkness for extra mobility. Anti-Magic Zone and potentially Assimilation to get a nice defensive raid cooldown. There is simply a lot of choice here, and you can cater your utility to each encounter!
The bottom part of the tree has a lot less choice. Blood Draw can be exchanged for Runic Protection on fights with a lot of physical damage intake. Furthermore, where you simply do not take any magic damage at all, Null Magic can be allocated to Osmosis or someplace further up the tree. Finally, when you cannot gain particular value from Unyielding Will, this point can be put better to use at Osmosis or, again, further up the tree.
Best Obliteration Single-Target Talents for Frost Death Knight
Obliteration builds see two distinct playstyles revolving around the Shattering Blade talent. Without it, you run a Rider of the Apocalypse build that has probably the simplest rotation of all Frost DK builds. With it, you pick up Deathbringer instead and play around the Razorice minigame. It is important to note here that Shattering Blade builds run Rune of Razorice + Rune of the Fallen Crusader as runeforges whereas non-Shatter runs Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle + Fallen Crusader. As a general rule, the Deathbringer is more popular and sees more play. However, they are very close in terms of actual power.
For Hero Talents, when you run Deathbringer, pick up Grim Reaper and Dark Talons. With Rider of the Apocalypse, choose Fury of the Horsemen in the DPS node.
For spec tree choices, we are pretty set on the default builds. Frostwyrm's Fury can be picked up instead of Inexorable Assault in the Shattering Blade version. This sacrifices around 1% Single Target for a big AoE burst gain. In the non-Shatter build, Horn of Winter can be replaced for Inexorable Assault or Piercing Chill. This loses you around 1% Single Target DPS but drops a button from your rotation.
For the class tree, there is a lot more realistic choice. Above the 20 point delimiter, we do not have too many mandatory spells:
- Death Strike
- Icebound Fortitude
- Runic Attenuation
- Anti-Magic Barrier
- Permafrost
- Icy Talons
- Gloom Ward
- Veteran of the Third War
- Brittle
- Unholy Bond
- Unholy Endurance
- Unholy Ground (pathing)
Picking these up leaves us with 6 points that we can allocate freely. Mind Freeze for any fight with interrupt being required. Blinding Sleet if you need AoE CC. Wraith Walk and/or March of Darkness for extra mobility. Anti-Magic Zone and potentially Assimilation to get a nice defensive raid cooldown. There is simply a lot of choice here, and you can cater your utility to each encounter!
A quick note on Soul Reaper. With Dual-Wield builds, the talent is barely a DPS upgrade to pick (0.3% DPS). The rotation simply does not have room for the extra GCDs required to make the most of Soul Reaper. For 2H builds, it is a bit better, and picking Soul Reaper is about 0.5% DPS gain.
The bottom part of the tree has a lot less choice. Blood Draw can be exchanged for Runic Protection on fights with a lot of physical damage intake. Furthermore, where you simply do not take any magic damage at all, Null Magic can be allocated to Osmosis or someplace further up the tree. Finally, when you cannot gain particular value from Unyielding Will, this point can be put better to use at Osmosis or, again, further up the tree.
Deathbringer Shatter Build
Rider Non-Shatter Build
Best Mythic+ Talents for Frost Death Knight
For Mythic+, we are running Dual-Wield Obliteration builds. Your damage comes from Icy Death Torrent, Glacial Advance via Arctic Assault, as well as Obliterate cleave in your Death and Decay. If you choose to run the 2H version, you add some more Obliterate damage but lose some value from talents that synergize with attack speed and the second runeforge.
Similar to the Single Target case, you go for the Shattering Blade route, picking up Shattered Frost talent as well, with Deathbringer hero talents. This includes a lot of Razorice stack bursting with Frost Strike as well as tab-targeting to optimise your DPS. The other option is to go for a more simple Rider of the Apocalypse build that runs both Glacial Advance and Avalanche, as well as Absolute Zero. This second build is your go-to with a 2H weapon.
As you reach higher and higher keys, the DW Breath of Sindragosa gains a lot of power, especially if you can get your group to play around your Breath windows. You will see the majority of high io DKs running this build. We have linked it below!
For the class tree, we are pretty locked for the most part. Both Blinding Sleet and Mind Freeze are mandatory, along with Cleaving Strikes. Wraith Walk can be exchanged for Grip of the Dead. Furthermore, Coldthirst can potentially be freed up and allocated to Anti-Magic Zone, or Grip of the Dead again.
Deathbringer Shatter Build
Deathbringer Breath Build
Rider non-Shatter Build
Best Mythic+ Talents for Frost Death Knight
The Delves build we run is identical to our Mythic+ build. It brings a good balance of Single Target, AoE, and survivability.
PvP Talents (War Mode)
In this section, we will rank the PvP talents that are best for leveling and doing open-world content.
- PvP talents enabled in the outdoor world.
- 10% increase in World Quest rewards at maximum level.
- 10% more experience gained while leveling.
- Earn Conquest Points, which can reward gear every week.
With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended to enable the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at maximum level. However, you will make yourself available for open-world PvP, and the possibility of being "ganked" while leveling or doing World Quests exists.
Frost Death Knight War Mode Talents
In this section, we will rank the PvP talents best for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content. Below is a ranking of both General PvP Talents and Frost Death Knight-specific PvE talents.
Frost Death Knight PvP Talents
- Necrotic Aura causes all enemies within 8 yards to take 4% increased magical damage. This has good synergy with a large part of your kit and is a major DPS increase.
- Bloodforged Armor reduces Physical damage taken by 20% for 3 seconds after using Death Strike. Solid defensive value in a PvE environment!
- Deathchill causes your Remorseless Winter and Chains of Ice to root the target in place for 4 seconds. Your Remorseless Winter causes all targets within 5 yards to be afflicted with Deathchill. If a target is afflicted with Chains of Ice, then casting Chains of Ice again will afflict them with Deathchill. A good option for controlling the enemies you fight against!
- Delirium causes your Howling Blast and Frost Strike to apply Delirium to the target. Delirium reduces the cooldown recovery rate of movement abilities by 25% stacking up to 2 times for 15 seconds.
- Dark Simulacrum places a dark ward on the target for 12 seconds; when the target spends Mana on a spell, you gain a duplicate of that spell. This ability has a 20-second cooldown and costs 20 Runic Power. It can be used to steal a very strong spell that can turn the tides of a fight.
- Strangulate silences the target for 4 seconds. Okay, against casters in PvE, but generally not worth the point.
- Bitter Chill reduces the target's haste by 8% when affected by Chains of Ice. Frost Strike extends its duration. Good for PvP CC but generally worthless in PvE.
- Rot and Wither applies a 100% absorb shield for the damage dealt by Death and Decay. Not worth it in any PvE content.
- Shroud of Winter reduces the cast range of enemies within 8 yards around you by 30%. Not useful in PvE.
- Dead of Winter causes your Remorseless Winter to stun an enemy for 4 seconds when it deals damage 5 times to that enemy. It also increases Remorseless Winter's cooldown by 25 seconds and reduces the radius by 5 yards. This is a bad PvP talent since it reduces our DPS. Remorseless Winter is a big part of our DPS, and increasing its cooldown is a bad thing.
- Spellwarden reduces the cooldown of Anti-Magic Shell by 10 seconds, and allows you to cast it on allies. Somewhat useful defensive talent to pick up!
Necrotic Aura is the most beneficial PvP talent by far since it provides and actual DPS increase. Bloodforged Armor is a solid defensive upgrade and Deathchill helps to control your enemies. All other talents are not very impactful or simply worse for our damage throughput!
Changelog
- 08 Nov. 2024: Added a specific M+ Breath build.
- 21 Oct. 2024: Updated builds with new 11.0.5 talents.
- 08 Oct. 2024: Updated 2H build to run avalanche instead of scythe.
- 01 Oct. 2024: Updated builds to include shattering options.
- 09 Sep. 2024: Updated for The War Within Season 1.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Updated talents for Season 4 due to new tier set.
- 21 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 29 Nov. 2023: Updated builds after Frost DK Buffs.
- 22 Nov. 2023: Updated Obliteration raid builds to run enduring chill.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.2.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.7.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.5.
- 01 Jun. 2023: Removed DW oblit build and updated 2h oblit viability in raid.
- 01 May 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1. Included FwF in talent builds and added a Breath M+ altenrative build.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Updated talents for 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Death Knight Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Bicepspump, a semi-hardcore player raiding with Pescorus on Kazzak. He is heavily involved in the DK DPS theorycrafting community, testing hyoptheses and investigating the correct priority to use. He produces guide content on YouTube and frequently streams on Twitch.
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