Frost Death Knight PvP Rotation and Playstyle — Midnight Season 1

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.

• Use Death Grip on the enemy healer to bring them to the enemy DPS or a second DPS if the healer is lining
• You or your teammate must use either an AoE stun or coordinate single target stuns on the two stacked enemies.
• Use Blinding Sleet.
• Use Frostwyrm's Fury.
• Use Pillar of Frost.
• Use Frost Strike.
• Use Empower Rune Weapon.
• Use Obliterate.
• Use Frost Strike.
• Use Empower Rune Weapon.
• Use Obliterate.
• With both charges of Empower Rune Weapon on cooldown. Alternate between Obliterate and Frost Strike OR Howling Blast if and only if you have a Rime proc.

This list serves as your sustained damage rotation priority.

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 as this has a chance to generate additional runic power.
   • Also use Howling Blast any time you have a Rime proc.
3. Use Obliterate to generate Runic Power.
4. Use Frost Strike to spend runic power if you are not taking damage.
5. Use Death Strike to spend runic power if you are taking 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.

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 Blinding Sleet.
4. Use Frostwyrm's Fury.
5. Use Pillar of Frost.
6. Use Frost Strike.
7. Use Empower Rune Weapon.
8. Use Obliterate.
9. Use Frost Strike.
10. Use Empower Rune Weapon.
11. Use Obliterate.
12. With both charges of Empower Rune Weapon on cooldown. Alternate between Obliterate and Frost Strike OR Howling Blast if and only if you have a Rime proc.

If you are playing Rider of the Apocalypse then you want to use Frostwyrm's Fury at the start of your burst rotation to summon all four Horsemen thanks to the Apocalypse Now talent.

If you are playing Deathbringer then you want to pair Reaper's Mark with Pillar of Frost. If your teammates have a stun it is better to skip Frostwyrm's Fury at the start, since we don't gain anything from this ability as Deatbringer.

In order to better explain the specific usage and benefits of the Frost Death Knight kit, we have compiled a more detailed explanation on individual parts of your defensive and cooldown kit, so you can reach your full potential when playing Frost Death Knight in PvP.

Anti-Magic Shell or AMS is your primary magic-based defensive. This is very strong against casters or any classes with magic-based damage such as Retribution Paladin. With a relatively short cooldown, use this if you are being focused and need to negate incoming spell damage.

If you are playing Spellwarden then you should look to use AMS on your healer right before they get crowd controlled. This can be on something such Freezing Trap or Polymorph.

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

IBF can also be offensively if you are close to securing a kill as it will remove stuns on you. You do want to be careful with this strategy as if you do not win then you are giving up your only form of damage reduction

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.

Timing is important with Death Strike. The idea behind Death Strike is that when incoming damage is high, you prioritize it over Death Coil so your healer has time to stabilize.