Frost Death Knight PvP Rotation and Playstyle (Shadowlands / 9.0.2)
PvP requires you to perform various actions in the course of a duel, match, or battleground: interrupting/silencing enemies, damaging them, bursting them down, defending yourself, keeping yourself alive, etc.. It is a game mode that fully utilizes your kit, especially spells that are rarely used in PvE. On this page, we go through all the spells you need to use in PvP as a Frost Death Knight, how you should use them, and we explain what your playstyle should be.
This page is part of our Frost Death Knight PvP Guide.
Playstyle for Frost Death Knights
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.
Before Gates Open
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.
The Opener
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.
This is the rotation you should use on your target at the beginning of the game.
- Use
Chains of Ice to keep your primary target slowed.
- Use
Howling Blast to apply
Frost Fever.
- Coordinate with your teammate to begin your burst rotation.
Burst Damage
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.
- Use
Death Grip on the enemy healer to bring them to the enemy DPS.
- You or your teammate must use either an AoE stun, or coordinate single target stuns on the two stacked enemies.
- Use
Empower Rune Weapon.
- Use
Pillar of Frost.
- Use
Remorseless Winter.
- Use
Chill Streak.
- Alternate between
Obliterate and
Frost Strike OR
Howling Blast if and only if you have a
Rime proc.
- 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
Sustained damage is damage you do when your burst cooldowns are not available.
- Use
Chains of Ice to keep your primary target slowed.
- 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.
- It is important to maintain
- Use
Remorseless Winter off cooldown.
- Use
Obliterate to generate Runic Power.
- Use
Frost Strike to spend runic power if you are not taking damage.
- Use
Death Strike to spend runic power if you are taking damage.
Defensive Techniques
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.
Macros
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.
Changelog
- 05 Dec. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands Season 1.
- 14 Oct. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands pre-patch.
This guide has been written by Flarkness, a multi r1 DK who has reached 3300 rating. He streams competitive gameplay and coaching on Twitch and creates guides, highlights, and news videos on Youtube.
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