Frost Death Knight DPS Stat Priority — Shadowlands 9.2.5

The stat priority for a Frost Death Knight is not heavily weighted towards certain stats. In fact what you will notice when simming your character is that your stat weights will be very close together. Because of this, item level is generally considered as the most important decider in a piece of gear. It is still recommended that you sim an item to determine if it is an upgrade or not. However, here is the stat priority you will normally find when simming your character:

1. Mastery;
2. Critical Strike;
3. Haste.
4. Versatility;

Usually a higher item level piece of gear will be a bigger upgrade than a lower item level piece of gear even with better stats. We highly recommend you sim your character to find the stat weights that work best for you.

When you have the Inscrutable Quantum Device (IQD) equipped, your exact stat numbers become more important. Since the trinket's on-use effect gives you stats depending on your current raw values, you need to be careful to keep these numbers in the right places. Mastery should be your highest stat, followed by Critical Strike. During Bloodlust, IQD will choose to empower your highest stat, which is why we want Mastery at the top. Outside of lust, IQD will make a 50/50 choice between your top two stats, which is why we want Critical Strike as your second highest stat.

There is a slight difference in priority between Breath of Sindragosa and Obliteration. Breath generally wants more Crit, almost as much as Mastery. Obliteration instead likes more even levels of Crit and Haste!

Strength is your primary statistic. You should look for it in all of your upgrades. It provides you with Attack Power, which determines the damage your abilities do.

Haste increases your attack speed and your Rune regeneration rate while decreasing the global cooldown.

Critical Strike increases your chance to critically hit with all spells and abilities.

Mastery, through Mastery: Frozen Heart, increases your Frost damage. Frost damage makes up a great part of your total damage.

Versatility increases all your damage and healing done, and decreases all damage taken.

The gems, enchants, and consumables that you choose are directly affected by your stat priority. In order to find the best mix of these, we do recommend that you simulate yourself using a program like Raidbots or Simulationcraft, however, we have a page linked below that will give you advice on this topic.