Frost Death Knight PvP Stat Priority, Gear, and Trinkets (Shadowlands / 9.2.0)
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
- Mastery = Haste
- 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.
Mastery and Haste 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 Haste improves your ability to use your important burst windows by
increasing resource generation and reducing the global cooldown.
Critical Strike is purely an output stat and does not do as much for our
class as the other stats. Furthermore, during Pillar of Frost using the
talent
Obliteration all of our
Obliterate presses will
already crit, making the stat much less worthwhile during those windows.
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 can come from many different sources. PvP gear, PvE gear, profession gear, and weekly cache gear all have possible stat combinations that are usable. Therefore, the gear decisions you will have to pay the most attention to are Trinkets and Legendaries.
In 9.2, you will have access to your tier set. The tier set can be created
using Cosmic Flux with the Creation Catalyst or obtained from
the weekly Great Vault if you do not wish to raid. The tier set has two
bonuses: Frost DK 2-Piece and
Frost DK 4-Piece.
Recommended Trinkets
All PvP trinkets come with a 2-set bonus that increases Strength by 175 and Stamina by 350. Of the new trinkets introduced in 9.2, the Eternal Aegis and Resonator are the best choices
Cosmic Gladiator's Medallion is the crowd control removal trinket
you will generally be using. It is very good at disrupting an enemy setup
or getting out of a long CC to peel for your teammates, like a Rogue's
Blind or a Mage's
Polymorph.
Cosmic Gladiator's Relentless Brooch is a fantastic option if you are
playing Human or against a spammable CC heavy comp where you are not
worried about being the target. Warlock and Mage comps (without Rogues!) are
definitely good examples.
Cosmic Gladiator's Badge of Ferocity is the perfect output trinket for
Frost Death Knight as it syncs up with your
Pillar of Frost exactly.
Use this for sure.
Cosmic 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
(probably Rogue/Hunter comps). Death Knights scale very well with increased
health effects, because their heals are based on a percentage of your
maximum health.
Cosmic Gladiator's Eternal Aegis is going to be used when you are
the primary kill target against a magic damage composition such as double caster.
This would be used in situations where it is easy for the target to move
out of resonator such as God Comp.
Cosmic Gladiator's Resonator is the primary trinket you will be using.
This trinket is best used when the target has no medallion and cannot escape from
your damage.
Gems and Enchants
Fill every gem socket you have with Versatile Jewel Cluster.
These are the best Frost Death Knight enchants by slot:
- Gloves:
Enchant Gloves - Eternal Strength
- Cloak:
Enchant Cloak - Soul Vitality
- Chest:
Enchant Chest - Eternal Stats
- Rings:
Enchant Ring - Tenet of Versatility
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,
Rune of Razorice,
Rune of Sanguination, and
Rune of Spellwarding all have value
in a PvP setting. Fallen Crusader and Razorice are the standard
output-increasing Runeforges. However, Sanguination provides
increased survivability against all comps, and Spellwarding provides
heavily increased survivability against spell-cleaves. You can
have multiple weapon sets in your bag, and switch them based on the enemy
team composition.
Changelog
- 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.
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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