Frost Death Knight PvP Rotation and Playstyle (Shadowlands / 9.2.5)

Frost Death Knights excel at sustained pressure, powerful AoE burst setups, and mobility & cooldown disruption. They are also difficult to peel because of Death's Advance, Anti-Magic Shell, Death Grip, and Icebound Fortitude all preventing CC or escapes from the enemy team. Therefore, your main job is to make sure you rotate these cooldowns intelligently to keep your pressure up. If your sustained damage is high enough and it is difficult to peel you, enemy teams will run quickly out of cooldowns which will allow you to win the game during one of your AoE setups with Chill Streak and Frostwyrm's Fury.

Make sure to communicate with your teammates the kill target and the grip target. You will be pulling one player to another in order to set up AoE burst on the two stacked targets. Generally the grip target is the healer, but sometimes it has to be the other DPS, namely against caster cleaves. It is important that you get a setup every 1 minute as it is better to get more setups with two DPS than it is to wait for the perfect setup with both DPS and the healer.

The opener refers to your team's opening crowd control chain and damage done as soon as you get out of the gates. The main goal in the opener is to force your enemies to use their cooldowns and/or trinket. To do this, Frost Death Knights will set up an AoE burst window for them and their partner with Death Grip. Generally, your opener should be coordinated around the enemy's cooldowns. Frost DKs specialize in counter-setups with the use of Blinding Sleet. For example, if a Fire Mage uses Combustion you can grip another target to the mage and use Blinding Sleet. This will not only stop their damage but allow you to set up your opener.

This is the rotation you should use on your target at the beginning of the game.

1. Use Chains of Ice to keep your primary target slowed.
2. Use Howling Blast to apply Frost Fever.
3. Coordinate with your teammate to begin your burst rotation.

Your AoE setup is the defining strength of Frost Death Knight's damage output. This burst rotation should be done on cooldown to force the enemy team to run out of answers.

1. Use Death Grip on the enemy healer to bring them to the enemy DPS.
2. You or your teammate must use either an AoE stun, or coordinate single target stuns on the two stacked enemies.
3. Use Empower Rune Weapon.
4. Use Pillar of Frost.
5. Use Remorseless Winter.
6. Use Chill Streak.
7. Alternate between Obliterate and Frost Strike OR Howling Blast if and only if you have a Rime proc.
8. When pillar is nearly out of duration, use Frostwyrm's Fury, unless you used it to AoE stun the enemy in the beginning.

Sustained damage is damage you do when your burst cooldowns are not available.

1. Use Chains of Ice to keep your primary target slowed.
2. Use Howling Blast to apply Frost Fever.
   • It is important to maintain Frost Fever on as many targets as you can.
   • Also use Howling Blast any time you have a Rime proc.
3. Use Remorseless Winter off cooldown.
4. Use Obliterate to generate Runic Power.
5. Use Frost Strike to spend runic power if you are not taking damage.
6. Use Death Strike to spend runic power if you are taking damage.

Anti-Magic Shell is your primary defensive ability. This is very strong against caster classes. With a relatively short cooldown, use this if you are being focused and need to negate incoming spell damage.

Icebound Fortitude is another strong defensive ability. This will give you immunity to all stuns and reduce all damage on you. Use this when you are in a stun and being focused.

Lichborne allows you to use Death Coil on yourself to provide solid healing. This can be done even when you do not have a target nearby and increases in value with Strength procs, unlike Death Strike. Therefore, it has great situational uses. It also gives you 10% leech, which provides additional healing when damage is done.

Death Strike is another primary defensive. If you are the primary target for the enemy team and have Runic Power, use Death Strike to heal yourself for a percentage of the damage that was dealt to you.

Blinding Sleet can be used offensively or defensively. This can be used as an interrupt for enemy casting while a teammate is being focused. This can also be used aggresively to setup stuns on the enemy team.

Anti-Magic Zone should be used when your team is stacked and the enemy team is doing strong single target or spread spell damage.

Death Strike is an ability that uses Runic Power and heals you for 35% of all damage taken in the last 5 seconds. This means that if you need to be healed and your healer is in crowd control, you should spend Runic Power on Death Strike instead of Frost Strike.

Death's Advance, although not exactly a defensive ability, should be used when you need to get to an enemy or disruptive slows on you.

It is advised to use Macros to use abilities on enemies or allies without having to target them. For this reason, we have a page dedicated to them.