Frost Death Knight DPS Stat Priority — Dragonflight 10.2.6
On this page, you will find out the optimal stat priority for your Frost Death Knight. We first present the stat priority, before delving into more complex explanations. Our content is updated for World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.2.6.
The Basics of Stats for Frost Death Knight
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:
- Critical Strike;
- Haste;
- Mastery;
- 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)!
The below section is primarily to help you understand how Haste interacts with our toolkit. If you are looking for a specific number to go for, simulations will generally put you a bit over 25% Haste.
The Frost Death Knight also has a breakpoint in their stats. A breakpoint here is a specific value where a stat suddenly becomes a lot more valuable. In our case here, this revolves around the number of GCDs that you can fit in your Pillar. Having a 12-second duration, the more Haste, the more GCDs we can fit in it. At 0% haste, this is exactly 8 GCDs; at 12.5% haste, we can fit another GCD; at 25% haste we get another and so on. The difference between fitting an extra GCD versus not fitting it ends up being a big difference, thus making it valuable going from 24.9% to 25% Haste, for instance.
Now, there are multiple factors to consider for these breakpoints. First of all, any Haste buffs active during a specific Pillar of Frost window will change the default Haste needed to reach a specific breakpoint. For instance, with Bloodlust and Empower Rune Weapon active, you need 25.5% base Haste to reach the 87.5% breakpoint. For Death and Decay with Unholy Ground active, you need 20.4% Haste (DnD third GCD) or 20.04% Haste (DnD second GCD) to reach a breakpoint. The point here is that there are multiple breakpoints at a variety of different Haste values. As a general rule, trust your sims to figure out what Haste you should run!
Finally, the breakpoint assume you enter your Pillar of Frost window properly (using one of the macros that generates a Killing Machine proc at the same time as pressing your Pillar). If you instead tap Pillar and then your second ability, you will introduce a delay! The longer delay, the more Haste you need to actually fit in the correct amount of GCDs in your Pillar. As a general order-of-magnitude number, every 100ms of delay between Pillar and your first GCD requires you to have 1% more Haste to hit the breakpoint!
Getting a Better Understanding of Frost Death Knight Stats
Statistics Priority
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.
Gems, Enchants, and Consumables
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.
Changelog
- 21 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 01 Dec. 2023: Added more context to haste breakpoints.
- 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 Jun. 2023: Moved Haste above Mastery in priority.
- 01 May 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1. Emphasised the very high Crit priority for Breath.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Updated 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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