Frost Death Knight DPS Spell List and Glossary — Dragonflight 10.2
On this page, we present you with all spells and procs that you need to understand as a Frost Death Knight in World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.2.
Introduction
If you are new to Frost, this is a great place to start to get an understanding of how the spec works. On this page we will discuss what abilities you have, what they are used for within the specialization, how they interact with each other and also with important cooldowns. If you already have experience with Frost and are comfortable with it in the current expansion, it is recommended you skip this section and move on to the rest of the guide.
Main Resources of Frost Death Knights
Runic Power and Runes are your two primary resources. We have 6 Runes in
total
that passively generate over time, taking 10 seconds to recharge (decreased by
haste).
Runes are the most common resource we use for our abilities, which include
Obliterate and
Remorseless Winter. Spending Runes
generates 10 Runic Power per Rune used. We use Runic Power as our spender on
abilities such as
Frost Strike and
Glacial Advance
Unlocking Abilities
Spells and passive abilities are unlocked as you level up and spend talent points. This page will simply list every single ability you can obtain, not recommending any specific talent setups or rotations to use. If you want to understand which abilities are best to pick up when leveling, please follow the below link.
Frost Death Knight Baseline Abilities
These are the abilities that you obtain without selecting anything in the talent trees.
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
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DC | Costs 30 Runic Power to cast, dealing Shadow damage to the target. Can be cast on an Undead ally (including yourself) to heal it. |
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DnD | Costs 1 Rune and places a damaging area at the
target location, which persists for 10 seconds. If you have selected
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DA | ![]() |
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- | Costs 1 Rune and deals moderate damage. Is replaced
once we choose a specialisation (![]() |
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RC | A passive that gives you a 2% chance per Runic Power spent to instantly regenerate a Rune. Always picks a fully depleted Rune if possible, or the least depleted one if possible. |
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- | A passive that grants you a free ![]() ![]() |
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- | A passive that grants 20% mounted movement speed. |
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- | Pulls your target towards you. Also has a shorter GCD compared to normal spells at 0.5 seconds. This means that you can quickly use another ability after gripping something. |
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- | Costs 30 Runic Power and battle resses a targeted dead ally, bringing them back to life (even in combat). |
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- | Turns you undead for 10 seconds. This makes you immune to charm, fear, and sleep, and grants you 10% leech. You can also activate this ability to break any of these CCs, making it a useful tool if you are accidentally hit a mechanic that applies such a CC. |
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- | Taunts the targeted enemy, forcing them to attack you. |
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- | Allows you to apply a powerful Runeforge to your weapon, acting as a (usually) better enchant. You do this in the Acherus Hold at the Runeforges. |
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- | Summons a gate that will teleport you to Acherus. Here you
can Runeforge your weapon and practice your rotation on target dummies. Using
the ![]() |
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- | Costs 1 Rune and grants everyone in your group the ability to walk on water. Breaks on any damage taken. |
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- | Our Mastery, increasing all Frost damage we do. Doesn't work on damage sources from items. |
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RW | Costs 1 Rune, dealing AoE Frost damage around you for
8 seconds. It also slows all enemies affected by 20%. Our primary non-cooldown
ability for AoE damage that is also worthwhile to press in Single Target.
It can be significantly buffed with talents such as ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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MotFW | Increases the damage of ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Turns your ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Frost Death Knight Class Tree Active Abilities
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
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Chains | Costs 1 Rune and slows your target by 70% for 8 seconds. This is generally your primary way of slowing any given target. Great for when you need to kite dangerous mobs in the open-world, or kill a fleeing enemy. |
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DS | Costs 45 Runic Power and constitutes our primary mean of healing ourselves. The amount heal increases with the damage we've taken in the last 5 seconds, making it excellent to use after you have taken a big hit. It heals for 25% of the damage taken with a minimum of 7% max hp healed every time. |
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- | Summons a ghoul to fight with us for 1 minute. |
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- | Interrupts your target. Has a 15 yards range, a benefit over other melee interrupts that often require melee range. |
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AMS | Absorbs up to 30% of your maximum health in magic
damage over 5 seconds, generating Runic Power based on the damage absorbed
(up to 30 Runic Power maximum).
This should be used to mitigate magic damage throughout the fight, while the
added Runic Power will help increase your DPS. It also prevents any magical
debuffs from being applied to you. This can be very useful to dodge mechanics!
The
Runic Power gain is also especially useful when running
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Sleet | Blinds all targets in a cone in front of you for 5 seconds. When the enemies are broken out of the sleep via damage, or if the duration finishes, they are slowed by 50% for 6 seconds. Great ability to stop a group of enemies from casting, as well as controlling them efficiently. Your tank will love this ability whenever they need to kite. |
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SacPact | Costs 30 Runic Power and sacrifices your primary ghoul, dealing AoE damage (linearly to 8 targets, square root afterward) and healing you for 25% of your maximum hp. Primarily used as an emergency heal but can also be used at the end of the 1-minute ghoul duration to gain a bit of extra AoE damage. |
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- | Costs 1 Rune and controls the targeted Undead enemy for 2 minutes. This requires that the enemy is sufficiently low-level (does not work on bosses and certain mobs in dungeons). You can use the abilities of the dominated undead at reduced effectiveness. Overall, a good ability to leverage whenever you can. |
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IBF | Provides a 30% damage reduction for 8 seconds, additionally making you immune to stuns. Can be used when stunned as well to break out of the CC. Primary defensive cooldown for us with the added benefit of the stun break! |
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AMZ | Places a zone on the ground that reduces magic damage taken by 20% for 10 seconds for everyone standing in it. The maximum amount that can be absorbed is equal to 1.5 times your Maximum Health, increased by your Versatility. |
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Asphyx | Stuns your target for 5 seconds. Simple single-target stun with a range of 20-yard range. |
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- | Heals you for 50% of your maximum health, as well as putting a healing absorption heal for 30% of your maximum health. A panic-button heal with a downside. The effective healing is only 20%, but you still find a lot of instances where this provides the required breathing room for your healers or you need to bring yourself back to health. |
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WW | Provides 70% movement speed for 4 seconds. Any ability used during the channel will break the effect. Useful as a movement speed increase in instances when you need to move between A and B without doing anything else. |
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ERW | Provides a buff for 20 seconds, increasing your
haste by 15% and generating 1 Rune and 5 Runic Power every 5 seconds. Provides a
good amount of extra resources in your rotation, as well as a haste boost to
synergize with your other cooldowns. Synergizes well with
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Limb/AL | Grows an extra arm for you for 12 seconds, dealing
AoE damage around you, as well as pulling a random enemy towards you every
second.
The enemy must be outside melee range to be liable to grip. Great utility tool
that will help your party group up any pack of mobs. Also provides three procs
of
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SR | Costs 1 Rune, deals low damage, and applies a debuff to your enemy. After 5
seconds, if the target is below 35% health, this debuff explodes, dealing heavy
ShadowFrost damage. If the target dies while under the effect of Soul Reaper,
you
gain ![]() |
Frost Death Knight Spec Tree Active Abilities
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
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FS | Costs 25 Runic Power, dealing Frost damage to your target. This is our primary Runic Power spender in Single Target, forming part of our Core rotation. |
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Oblit | Costs 2 Runes, dealing Physical damage (or Frost damage if talented). Our
primary
Rune spender! It can be significantly buffed through a variety of procs and
talents such as ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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HB | Costs 1 Rune, dealing frost damage to your target
and nearby enemies. The damage scales as square-root, meaning the damage per
target decreases as you add additional targets. The total damage always
increases.
This spell also applies our DoT ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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GA | Costs 30 Runic and deals Frost damage to enemies
in a line, in the direction you are facing. Also applies ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Pillar/ PoF | Increases your strength by 25% for 12 seconds. Additionally,
every Rune you spend when the buff is active increases your strength by an
additional 2%. Iconic Frost DK cooldown that we leverage to boost our other
cooldowns. It has multiple talents that directly interact with it, such as
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FsC | Costs 1 Rune and deals Frost damage in a cone in front of you.
Additionally, any crits with this ability deal 400% damage instead of 200%. If
you have ![]() |
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HoW | Instantly grants you 2 Runes and 25 Runic Power. Good
addition of resources to the rotation and especially good with
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CS | Costs 1 Rune and throws a snowball at your enemy. This
ball will bounce to the closest enemy within 6 yards for a total of 9 bounces.
Very powerful cooldown for 2-target stacked encounters. It still does great
damage at larger target counts as well. Good boost in Single Target as well with our
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ERW | Either grants the ![]() |
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FwF | Calls down a dragon to breath frost damage to all enemies in a line in front of you, traveling 40 yards. Huge burst AoE cooldown that can be leveraged well on extra-large packs in Mythic+ or add spawns in Raid. |
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Breath/ BoS | Deals Frost damage in a cone in front of you dealing full damage to your primary target and 1/ sqrt(n) times as much on all secondary targets (n is the number of total targets). The ability will drain 16 Runic Power per second, stopping once you reach below 16. Alters your rotation significantly and presents an optimization problem to maximize its duration. Great cooldown both for Cleave, Single Target, and AoE, which great Frost Death Knights can leverage to excel! |
Frost Death Knight Class Tree Passive Abilities
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
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- | Makes your ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Provides a shield on yourself based on 40% of your auto attack damage. Provides a good deal of tankiness, both from passive healing but also as prevention to one-shot mechanics. |
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- | Grants you 10 Runic power and reduces the cooldown
of ![]() |
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- | Increases the healing of ![]() ![]() |
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- | Lowers the cooldown of ![]() |
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- | Grants you an extra 25% movement speed during the first
3 seconds of activating ![]() |
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- | Gives your ghoul from ![]() |
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- | Passively increases your Leech by 3%. |
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- | Passively increases your Avoidance by 3%. |
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VoTW | Increases your stamina by 10/20%, making you significantly more tanky overall. |
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- | Grants your diseases a chance to apply a debuff to your enemy, increasing the damage you do against them by 6% for 5 seconds. |
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- | Reduces the cooldown of ![]() |
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- | Increases your critical hit chance by 2%. A strong throughput talent overall. |
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- | Increases your strength by 2%. A strong throughput talent overall. |
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- | Slows any enemy that you ![]() |
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- | Increases the number of targets hit by your
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GW | Increases the effectiveness of all absorbs on you by 15%.
Big survivability increase both from empowering our own abilities, such as
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- | Increases the amount absorbed by ![]() ![]() |
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- | Increases the range of ![]() |
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- | Adds a 90% slow to your ![]() |
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- | Converts your ![]() |
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RA | Gives your auto attacks a chance to grant you 5 Runic Power. This provides around 50 Runic Power per minute, adding a significant amount of resources to our rotation. This is one of the major factors to why our rotation feels smooth in Dragonflight. |
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- | Provides a 5% Haste buff whenever you stand in your
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- | Applies a stacking debuff with your auto attacks, reducing the enemy's attack speed by 5% per stack up to 20% at 4 stacks. Helps your tanks survive in a scenario (or yourself when doing open-world content). Stacks with similar abilities that also reduce attack speed! |
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- | Heals you for a moderate amount if you drop below 30% health. Can only occur once every 3 minutes. Does provide some protection from dying but generally occurs too infrequently and with too little healed to be that useful in PvE. |
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WotN | Reduces the damage you take below 30% by 20/35%. Big boost to our survivability since the damage we take below 30% is by far the most useful to mitigate. |
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- | Provides an extra charge to ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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IT | Provides a 3/6% increase in attack speed for 10 seconds
every time we spend Runic Power, stacking up to 3 times. Gives us a nice boost
to the number of ![]() |
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- | Makes spending Runes give a chance to increase our strength by 3/6% for 8 seconds. |
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- | Increases the effectiveness of our Runeforges by 10/20%.
This includes every aspect of the Runeforge, making
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Frost Death Knight Spec Tree Passive Abilities
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
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KM | Gives your critical auto-attacks a chance to make
your next ![]() ![]() |
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- | Provides a 45% chance for ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Gives a 2% stacking strength buff every time you deal damage to an enemy with an ability that costs Runic Power. Lasts for 6 seconds and stacks up to 3 times. Provides an ability to track in your core rotation where you need to prioritise Runic Power abilities every so often to maintain it at full uptime. |
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- | Increases the damage of your ![]() |
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- | Increases your maximum Runic Power by 10/20, bringing the
total to 110/120. This stacks with our ![]() |
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- | Increases the damage of our ![]() |
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- | Increases the damage increase of ![]() |
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- | Increases the damage of ![]() ![]() |
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RotFC | Increases the chance for ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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CH | Gives a stacking buff every 2 seconds that makes your
next ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Allows ![]() |
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- | Provides a 10/20% strength buff after your
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Whelp | Summons a mini dragon when we use ![]() ![]() |
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BC | Increases the damage of ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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ME | Gives a 50% chance to generate a Rune when
you consume a proc of ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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IA | Provides a stacking buff on yourself every 8 seconds.
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- | Reduces the cooldown by ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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GS | Increases the duration of ![]() ![]() |
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- | Makes your ![]() ![]() |
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EC | A 20% chance to increase the total amount
of bounces by 1 every time ![]() |
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- | Provides a stacking 1% critical strike buff whenever
you consume a proc of ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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SB | Makes your ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Provides some extra AoE damage whenever we consume a proc
of ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Makes your ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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EF | Applies a debuff to any enemy damaged by your
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- | Gives your ![]() ![]() |
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- | Increases the chance to generate Runic Power
from ![]() ![]() |
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Oblit | Makes your ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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AZ | Reduces the cooldown of ![]() |
Changelog
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.2.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
- 10 Jul. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.5.
- 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Updated 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 is also a moderator in the Acherus Death Knight 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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