Frost Death Knight DPS Stat Priority — The War Within (11.1.7)

The Frost Death Knight has a stat priority that varies somewhat depending on build. Critical Strike is generally best and you will typically have the most of it by raw amount compared to the other secondary stats. We have a number of abilities that directly benefit from the number of Critical Strike autos we can generate, thus increasing the value of Crit. You should be careful focusing too much on that fact, however, as we scale well with main stat and other secondaries as well. The general stat priority is the following:

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

Crit and Haste (to some degree) have good synergy with the Frost Death Knight kit due to several abilities being based off Critical Auto Attacks (which themselves scale via Critical Strike and Haste). Killing Machine, Icy Death Torrent and The Long Winter, to name a few, are all scaled with the number of critical autos you can get off. The exact distribution you are looking for depends on your Build. Breath of Sindragosa absolutely loves Critical Strike and you should aim to stack as much of it for this build. Shattering Blade builds are looking for a better balance between Crit, Mastery and Haste with Rider of the Apocalypse especially dropping quite a lot of Critical Strike in favour of the other two. As always, make sure to simulate your character to find the best distribution for yourself!

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. It increases the number of Killing Machine procs via the increased attack speed.

Critical Strike increases your chance to critically hit with all spells and abilities. Crits deal double damage by default, but several effects can increase your crit damage, and make crits even stronger.

Crit also increases the number of Killing Machine procs since it increases the number of critical auto attacks you do! Furthermore, it scales well with several abilities in the Frost Death Knight kit like Icy Death Torrent, The Long Winter and Bind in Darkness.

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. To find the best mix of these, we 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.