Frost Death Knight DPS Macros and Addons — The War Within (11.0.5)
On this page, you will find a number of useful macros and addons to make your life easier when playing your Frost Death Knight in World of Warcraft — The War Within (11.0.5).
Macros
Generic Macros for Death Knights
Raise Ally
- #showtooltip Raise Ally
- /cast [@mouseover,help][@target]Raise Ally
This macro casts Raise Ally on your mouseover target, if they are a friendly player. Otherwise, it casts Raise Ally on your current target.
Mind Freeze
- #showtooltip Mind Freeze
- /cast [@focus,harm,nodead][] Mind Freeze
This macro allows you to interrupt your focus target, if you have one, and if not to simply interrupt your current target.
Specific Macros for Frost Death Knights
Breath of Sindragosa Macro
- #showtooltip Breath of Sindragosa
- /use trinket
- /cast Pillar of Frost
- /cast !Breath of Sindragosa
- /cast Reaper's Mark
- /cast Empower Rune Weapon
- /cast Raise Dead
This macro bakes in a ton of off-gcd spells and abilities into a single button. Replace the "trinket" here with whichever trinket you want to use. The "!" before Breath is added to prevent unintentionally canceling its effect by double-tapping the macro.
Obliteration Trigger Macro
Maximising the value of Obliteration means fully utilising all the available GCDs you have during the window. Since Pillar of Frost is off the GCD, we want to macro it with a GCD-button to start using your abilities ASAP in the window. When playing Deathbringer, this means always using your Pillar with Reaper's Mark as they have the same Cooldown (with the standard talents). The macro looks like the one below:
- #showtooltip Pillar of Frost
- /cast Pillar of Frost
- /cast Reaper's Mark
- /cast Raise Dead
- /cast Empower Rune Weapon
- /use trinket
If you are not playing Deathbringer, you will need more Macros. Essentially, you want to create separate ones for Frostwyrm's Fury, Frost Strike, Glacial Advance, Obliterate, Howling Blast and Soul Reaper. Each macro represents a specific scenario where the corresponding ability is your "initiator" ability:
- Frostwyrm's Fury (when playing Rider of the Apocalypse) whenever it is available.
- Obliterate if you have a Killing Machine proc.
- Howling Blast if you have a proc of Rime.
- Soul Reaper if you have 3+ Runes and the boss is below 35% health.
- Frost Strike (Single Target), Glacial Advance (AoE) otherwise.
Death Grip Mouseover Macro
- #showtooltip Death Grip
- /cast [target=mouseover,exists] Death Grip; Death Grip
This macro will cast Death Grip on your mouseover target.
Anti-Magic Zone Cursor
- #showtooltip Anti-Magic Zone
- /cast [@cursor] Anti-Magic Zone
This macro instantly casts Anti-Magic Zone at your cursor's location. It is useful for activating the Zone a tiny bit more quickly by spamming this macro button. It also generally helps in placing it effectively.
Control Undead
Controlling an Undead creature in dungeons is a nice way to add some minor extra damage, as well as control a specific mob for however long you want. It does need re-controlling every 2 minutes, and this macro is perfect for that! It will target your pet, dismiss it, and then instantly control it again.
- #showtooltip Control Undead
- /target pet
- /script PetDismiss()
- /cast Control Undead
Addons
Generic Addons for Death Knights
ElvUI
ElvUI is a complete replacement of the default User Interface. It comes with almost everything you need to perform properly: action bars, unit frames, cooldown timers, proc displays, etc.
Boss Mods: Deadly Boss Mods or Bigwigs
Boss mods are addons that warn you about boss abilities and give you live advice on how to handle some mechanics. We strongly recommend you to get one such addon. At Icy Veins, we mostly use Deadly Boss Mods, the most popular boss mod. A good alternative is Big Wigs.
GTFO
GTFO is a lightweight addon that notifies you when you are standing in harmful effects or when you are making other such mistakes. It is very useful, even if your boss mod is already alerting you of such things.
Parrot or Mik's Scrolling Battle Text
Parrot and Mik's Scrolling Battle Text are highly customisable addons for displaying floating battle text while in combat (incoming heals, damage of your spells, etc.). They both work very well by default.
Weak Auras
WeakAuras is an extremely useful addon that allows you to have visual effects on your screen, helping you track your buffs, debuffs and cooldowns. It is highly customisable and it can make it much, much easier to keep track of your procs and play your spec more proficiently. It can also be used for a variety of other functions.
Recount / Skada / Details!
Recount is a well known addon that most people use for displaying current DPS or HPS (Healing Per Second). This add-on is not really lightweight, and provides a very high amount of information (and it can sometimes cause issues with performance). It is generally a good option to use Recount for checking what you take damage from and if the share of damage/healing you do with each of your abilities is similar to that of other players of your class.
An alternative to Recount (similar in function, so the choice is personal preference) is Details!.
A lightweight alternative to Recount and Details! is Skada Damage Meter.
Omen Threat Meter
Omen Threat Meter is the most popular addon for displaying the current threat levels on your target. We recommend you to use it to avoid taking aggro when the tank is still building up threat on an enemy.
Grid and GridClickSets (Optional)
ElvUI comes with decent raid frames. The only real reason for using Grid and GridClickSets is if you want to be able to mouseover dead raid or party members to resurrect them with Raise Ally. If you choose to go with Grid, then you might want to also use GridStatusRaidDebuff.
Specific Addons for Frost Death Knights
Currently, we do not believe that you need any additional addons to play your specialisation to its full potential.
Changelog
- 26 Oct. 2024: Updated Obliteration macros for better clarity.
- 21 Oct. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 11.0.5.
- 09 Sep. 2024: Updated for The War Within Season 1.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Season 4.
- 22 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 01 Dec. 2023: Clarified loss when not using Oblit Macros.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.2
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
- 10 Jul. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.5.
- 01 May 2023: Reviewed and Updated for Patch 10.1. Emphasised that oblit macros are not necessary.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Death Knight Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Bicepspump, a semi-hardcore player raiding with Pescorus on Kazzak. He is heavily involved in the DK DPS theorycrafting community, testing hyoptheses and investigating the correct priority to use. He produces guide content on YouTube and frequently streams on Twitch.
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