Cataclysm Classic Frost Death Knight Leveling

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Unlike other classes, Death Knight starts at level 55, so they have a considerable amount of talent points unlocked as soon as you create your character and progress through the Death Knight starting area. While you gain your initial 26 talent points much faster than other classes, it is important to have an idea of how you should spend them to avoid having to respec.

Many of the talents taken throughout the Frost tree are focused on maximzing the damage dealt while leveling by increasing the damage dealt by rotational abilities and providing procs that will allow us to use more abilities like Rime and Killing Machine. The Pillar of Frost cooldown is a major DPS increase that should be used as often as possible to deal as much damage as possible to more quickly kill enemies to minimize your downtime.

Threat of Thassarian increases the damage dealt by basically all of your Strike abilities when Dual-wielding, while this is the recommend build as Dual-wielding generally works better with other talents found throughout the Frost tree if you are set on using a two-handed weapon you can easily shift these points into Might of the Frozen Wastes.

Threat of Thassarian increases the damage dealt by basically all of your Strike abilities when Dual-wielding, while this is the recommend build as Dual-wielding generally works better with other talents found throughout the Frost tree if you are set on using a two-handed weapon you can easily shift these points into Might of the Frozen Wastes. On a Pale Horse increases our movement speed while mounted and we will be spending a considerable amount of time while leveling mounted so the added movement speed will quickly add up.

Threat of Thassarian increases the damage dealt by basically all of your Strike abilities when Dual-wielding, while this is the recommend build as Dual-wielding generally works better with other talents found throughout the Frost tree if you are set on using a two-handed weapon you can easily shift these points into Might of the Frozen Wastes. On a Pale Horse increases our movement speed while mounted and we will be spending a considerable amount of time while leveling mounted so the added movement speed will quickly add up. Howling Blast will largely replace Icy Touch with the Glyph of Howling Blast as it will cause it to apply Frost Fever to all targets hit by Howling Blast. Howling Blast will become our default spender of Frost Runes when fighting three or more enemies but otherwise should only really be used to apply Frost Fever or if you have a Rime proc.

As we branch out into the Blood tree, Bladed Armor acts as a passive Attack Power buff scaling with the amount of armor we have; being a Plate-wearer we will always have a large amount of armor and gain more as we level.

As we branch out into the Blood tree, Bladed Armor acts as a passive Attack Power buff scaling with the amount of armor we have; being a Plate-wearer we will always have a large amount of armor and gain more as we level. Butchery grants 20 Runic Power any time we kill an enemy that yields honor or experience. While leveling you should be killing a lot of mobs that grant experience so this will yield a ton of Runic Power allowing for more Frost Strike casts.

As we branch out into the Blood tree, Bladed Armor acts as a passive Attack Power buff scaling with the amount of armor we have; being a Plate-wearer we will always have a large amount of armor and gain more as we level. Butchery grants 20 Runic Power any time we kill an enemy that yields honor or experience. While leveling you should be killing a lot of mobs that grant experience so this will yield a ton of Runic Power allowing for more Frost Strike casts. Improved Blood Tap reduces the cooldown of your Blood Tap ability which we will be using as often as possible to both refresh our Runes and turn your Blood Runes into Death Runes to allow for more Obliterate casts.

As we branch out into the Blood tree, Bladed Armor acts as a passive Attack Power buff scaling with the amount of armor we have; being a Plate-wearer we will always have a large amount of armor and gain more as we level. Butchery grants 20 Runic Power any time we kill an enemy that yields honor or experience. While leveling you should be killing a lot of mobs that grant experience so this will yield a ton of Runic Power allowing for more Frost Strike casts. Improved Blood Tap reduces the cooldown of your Blood Tap ability which we will be using as often as possible to both refresh our Runes and turn your Blood Runes into Death Runes to allow for more Obliterate casts. The more Runic Power, the more Frost Strike we are able to cast. so Scent of Blood is the last talent we will be taking. While leveling you are likely to be taking a lot of hits, giving this high uptime. Due to the fact we are dual-wielding you will have little to no issue spending the three charges.

In your Prime Glyphs we recommend Glyph of Howling Blast which causes your Howling Blast ability to now effect targets with Frost Fever largely making Icy Touch irrelevant especially while leveling. Glyph of Frost Strike which reduces the Runic Power cost of Frost Strike which will be our primary Runic Power spending while leveling as Frost. For our third and final Glyph slot we will take Obliterate which increases the damage dealt by our Obliterate ability which is our primary spender of Frost and Unholy Runes in single target situations.

For your Major Glyph slots we recommend Glyph of Dark Succor, which causes your next Death Strike when in Frost or Frost Presence to heal you for at least 20% of your maximum health when used within fifteen seconds of killing a target that yields Experience or Honor. While we are not using Death Strike in a rotation as Frost this is still a great way to regain health and minimize downtime. Glyph of Blood Boil increases the radius of your Blood Boil ability which will be our primary spender of Blood Runes in AoE situations. Lastly for our third Glyph slot we will be using Glyph of Hungering Cold which removes the Runic Power cost of our Hungering Cold ability allowing us to use this as a much more effective emergency button if you find yourself fighting more mobs than you are able to handle.

For your Minor Glyphs we recommend Glyph of Death Gate, Glyph of Horn of Winter, and Glyph of Resilient Grip. Glyph of Death Gate greatly reduces the cast time of your Death Gate ability which throughout the leveling process you will find yourself back in Ebon Hold several times. Horn of Winter glyph just maximizes the uptime of the buff you will already be maintaining and Resilient Grip just allows for more Death Grip casts in a situation where you may have otherwise wasted the cooldown on an immune target.

1. Make sure you are in Frost Presence.
2. Apply and maintain diseases using Icy Touch and Plague Strike.
3. Cast Death Grip to close the gap between you and enemies as often as possible to maximize uptime.
4. Use Pestilence to spread your diseases in any situation you are fighting more than one target.
5. Use Obliterate as often as possible to spend your Frost, Unholy and Death Runes.
6. Use Death Strike to maintain health as needed, this should not be an ability you use super often but should be used to maintain your health especially when Glyph of Dark Succor is active.
7. Use Frost Strike to spend your Runic Power when Runes are unavailable or you are at risk of capping your Runic Power.
8. Use Pillar of Frost as often as possible to maximize your kill speed.
9. Make sure you are auto-attacking at all times.
10. Use Mind Freeze to interrupt enemy spell casting as often as possible to mitigate incoming damage.
11. Use Blood Boil to spend your Blood Runes when fighting 3 or more enemies.
12. Use Strangulate as needed to interrupt enemy spell casting, as this is a blanket silencing effect it can be used preemptively to position enemy spell casters.
13. cast Death and Decay when fighting 3+ mobs and you are confident they will survive most of its duration.
14. In situations where you are pulling multiple mobs or expect to be taking high damage consider using Icebound Fortitude to help lessen incoming damage. This can also be used to avoid or free yourself from Stuns.
15. cast Blood Tap to refresh your dormant Blood Runes to further maximize your Obliterate casts as they are converted to Death Runes.
16. cast Horn of Winter on cooldown to maintain the Strength and Agility buffs which will increase your kill speed.
17. cast Anti-Magic Shell to avoid incoming Magic damage or prevent yourself from being effected by incoming Magic effects like slows.
18. Use Howling Blast to apply your Frost Fever ability to enemies in place of Icy Touch once you have unlocked this talent. Howling Blast should be used to any time you are fighting three or more enemies to spend your Frost Runes or any time you have a Rime proc.
19. Once you have reached level 70 switch to using Unholy Presence unless you are consistently fighting 3 or more enemies then consider using Frost Presence.
20. cast Empower Rune Weapon any time the majority of your Runes are inactive. Empower Rune Weapon instantly refresh them and allows you to deal more damage. While leveling DPS increasing cooldowns should be used early and often.

Congratulations on hitting Level 85 in Cataclysm! Now that your leveling process is over, you can learn more about Level 85 Frost Death Knight gameplay by reading our fully detailed guide below.