Frost Death Knight PvP Stat Priority, Gear, and Trinkets — The War Within (Season 1)
Choosing your gear carefully is important for your Frost Death Knight in PvP. We give you a stat priority to help you choose items with the right stats, followed by advice on how to choose the rest of your gear and your trinkets.
This page is part of our Frost Death Knight PvP Guide.
Stat Priority for Frost Death Knights in PvP
The stat priority for Frost Death Knights in PvP is as follows:
- Versatility
- Haste
- Mastery=Critical Strike
Versatility is the best stat by far. Versatility, in PvP, has the highest contribution to output while also heavily increasing survivability through healing and damage mitigation. No other stat can compete with Versatility in value in PvP.
Haste improves your ability to use your important burst windows by increasing resource generation and reducing the global cooldown.In fact, every 12.5% haste will give an extra global during Pillar of Frost. As a general rule, aiming for 20% haste will ensure you have two extra globals with Empower Rune Weapon active.
Mastery and Critical Strike are both very valuable stats, and a combination of both should be used. Mastery drastically improves output to important abilities like Chill Streak and Obliterate during Killing Machine while Critical Strike syngerizes with our talents such as The Long Winter.
If you are opting for a dual-wield setup then you want to learn more towards crit. 12-15% Critical Strike is a good goal but if you are using a 2-handed weapon then you want to prioritze Mastery with only a small amount of crit, about 5%.
Gear Recommendations
General Guidelines
As for gearing, there are no pieces you truly need to target for slots like legs or boots; you are just looking for the proper stats on them, which will come from honor, conquest, professions, and the weekly cache. Due to the introduction of the new crafting system, you are able to craft either Haste or Versatility alongside Mastery in every slot, allowing for maximum burst potential. It is recommended that you aim for at least 20% haste and then move the rest of your stat budget to mastery. Lower haste may be viable if you want more burst but you will lose globals during Pillar of Frost.
Embellishments
At the start of the expansion, it is likely that the recommended Embellishments will change. However, a safe pick will be Duskthread Lining as this provides flat versatility above 80% health. This is similar to Zone of Focus from Dragonflight.
Recommended Trinkets
Forged Gladiator's Emblem can be an option if you need to play particularly defensive against a comp you have not been able to survive against (such as Rogue/Hunter comps). Death Knights scale very well with increased health effects because their heals are based on a percentage of your maximum health. Despite this, it is best to use other trinkets over an Emblem.
Forged Gladiator's Insignia of Alacrity is a viable option. The trinket provides a main stat proc along with static Haste. Early on, there will be low haste values, so this trinket will prove to be useful.
Forged Gladiator's Badge of Ferocity is best used with your damage cooldowns. Badge has a higher value later into the season and is generally used over Insignia.
Gems and Enchants
Fill every gem socket you have with Quick Onyx except one slot will need the new PvP gem Enduring Bloodstone.
These are the best Frost Death Knight enchants by slot:
- Wrist: Enchant Bracer - Chant of Armored Leech or Enchant Bracer - Chant of Armored Speed
- Cloak: Enchant Cloak - Chant of Leeching Fangs or Enchant Cloak - Chant of Burrowing Rapidity
- Chest: Enchant Chest - Oathsworn's Strength
- Legs: Stormbound Armor Kit
- Rings: Enchant Ring - Cursed Mastery
- Neck: Vicious Jeweler's Setting
- Boots: Enchant Boots - Defender's March
Death Knights get a special weapon enchant called Runeforges. Runeforging is done by using your Death Gate to get back to Acherus, the Ebon Hold. Rune of the Fallen Crusader and Rune of Razorice, both have value in a PvP setting. Fallen Crusader and Razorice are the standard output-increasing Runeforges but you could consider Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle if you are playing Dual-Wield Frost.
Changelog
- 09 Sep. 2024: Reviewed for The War Within Season 1.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for War Within Launch.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Reviewed for War Within Prepatch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Season 4.
- 19 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.2.0.
- 01 Sep. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.7.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.5.
- 05 May 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.
- 21 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 30 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 22 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
- 31 Jul. 2022: Reviewed for Shadowlands Season 4.
- 31 May 2022: Reviewed for Patch 9.2.5.
- 02 Mar. 2022: Page updated for Patch 9.2.
- 11 Dec. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.1.5.
- 02 Jul. 2021: Updated for Patch 9.1.
- 20 Mar. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.0.5.
- 05 Dec. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands Season 1.
- 12 Nov. 2020: Updates made by new writer.
- 14 Oct. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands pre-patch.
Other PvP Guides
Keator is a Rank 1 Death Knight and has been playing Death Knight since Wrath. After having raided in US Top 50 guilds for multiple expansions, he decided to dive into PvP where he found his passion. He also streams occasionally on Twitch.
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