Frost Death Knight DPS Stat Priority — The War Within Pre-Patch

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 a lot of Crit, synergising well with Murderous Efficiency. Obliteration favors a more balanced stat priority with Crit, Haste and Mastery being roughly equal in priority.

Haste and Crit have good synergy with the Frost Death Knight kit due to several abilities being based off Critical Auto Attacks. Killing Machine, Icy Death Torrent and The Long Winter all scale with the number of critical autos you can get off. Due to this, Haste and Crit work really well for us!

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.