Frost Death Knight DPS Stat Priority — Dragonflight 10.2

The Frost Death Knight has a stat priority that changes quite significantly depending on your build and the situation you are optimizing for. Still, item level will be your go-to metric when gearing as an item upgrade rarely is a downgrade due to the stats of the item. When it comes to figuring out upgrades, always make sure to simulate your character (usually using Top Gear on raidbots) to find out what is best for your own character! The general stat priority is the following:

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

There is a slight difference in priority between Breath of Sindragosa and Obliteration. Breath generally likes an absurd amount of Crit. The BiS profile has around 5.5k raw Crit stat from the gear alone! This is primarily due to how well Crit synergizes with Breath of Sindragosa uptime! More Crit means more procs of Killing Machine, which provides more Runes via Murderous Efficiency, leading to more Runic Power to fuel your Breath. Furthermore, Invigorating Freeze also scales with Crit, which provides more Runic Power. In addition to this, Crit is just great due to increasing all ability damage, as well as significantly increasing Obliterate damage via Killing Machine!

Obliteration generally favors a balanced stat distribution where Crit, Haste, and Mastery all have roughly the same raw value. Versatility is lower in value and should be kept as low as possible essentially. Haste and Critical Strike has value both due to how they help lower the cooldown on Pillar of Frost via Icecap, as well as increasing the number of natural procs of Killing Machine. Mastery is good because such a large portion of our overall damage is Frost strike (largely due to Killing Machine Obliterates)!

When it comes to specific breakpoint, having 25% Haste is a good idea. The number of GCDs you can fit in every Pillar of Frost windows increases by 1 for every 12.5% Haste you add. 25% is generally a reachable number to aim for.

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.

Crit also increases the number of Killing Machine procs since it increases the number of critical auto attacks you do!

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 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.