Frost Death Knight DPS Guide — The War Within (11.0.5)

The Frost Death Knight has received a couple of changes for the 11.0.5 patch, primarily focusing on the Deathbringer tree. The changes are overall a buff to the Frost Death Knight, with us seeing an increase of around 8.5% in Single Target and 10%+ in Mythic+, which is quite significant for sure! Below is a compiled list of all changes and their general impact.

• Arctic Assault now fires a Glacial Advance through the target at 80% effectiveness — A small nerf to a very powerful talent. Probably will not deter us from using it due to it providing the Razorice debuff in multiple builds (as well as dealing a ton of damage).
• Bind in Darkness now also increases the damage Rime empowered Howling Blasts do to the primary target by 30% — A nice boost to our Rime value, pushing it up slightly in the priority.
• Dark Talons now gives a consumed Killing Machine a 25% chance to grant 3 stacks of Icy Talons and increase the max number of Icy Talons by 3 for 6 seconds — This used to add 1 stack at a time, lasting until the buff itself dropped. Makes dropping Icy Talons a much smaller loss, making the talent more viable in scenarios where you would drop it frequently (like Mythic+).
• Exterminate now always has a 30% chance to reapply Reaper's Mark — This used to be 20% baseline, buffed to 30% with Painful Death (which has been removed).
• Grim Reaper now also provides a Killing Machine proc when Reaper's Mark is used — Nice buff to the talent point, which also makes more sense in the rotation, as you can now Pillar of Frost + Reaper's Mark -> consume Killing Machine.
• Blood Fever has been replaced with Reaper of Souls and is now a choice node with Grim Reaper. Reaper of Souls resets the cooldown of Soul Reaper when used, reducing its cost to 0 Runes and making it always explode regardless of target health. Furthermore, it buffs Soul Reaper damage by 20% — A nice buff to Soul Reaper and a strong incentive to incorporate it more in our rotation. Ends up playing well with pure Obliteration builds, but you end up in some weird scenarios with Breath of Sindragosa builds due to the free Soul Reaper not generating any Runes, making it act similarly to a Rime proc.
• Swift End has been replaced by Reaper's Onslaught, now only providing 15 seconds of cooldown reduction on Reaper's Mark and the reduction of Obliterates empowered by Exterminate, no longer reduces the cost of Reapers Mark by 1 Rune. Now a choice node with Dark Talons — A nerf to the talent itself with the continued issue of desyncing your Reaper's Mark from Pillar of Frost in most builds.
• Soul Rupture now explodes for 30% of damage dealt (was 20%) — Nice little buff.
• Swift and Painful is a new talent that provides a 10% Strength buff if no targets are hit by Soul Rupture. Furthermore, Wave of Souls is 100% more effective on the main target of your Reaper's Mark — A nice way of providing some value to Soul Rupture even in Single Target situations.
• Wither Away is no longer a choice node — Now a mandatory talent in the tree.

Quite a lot of changes to digest there. In practice, we will run Grim Reaper and Dark Talons in most situations. This pushes Reaper's Mark to be used with Pillar of Frost all the time, simplifying our macros quite a lot. Furthermore, the change to Dark Talons is quite nice as it removes some situations where you felt really bad dropping your Icy Talons buff. As we mentioned previously, these are quite hefty buffs to us overall but have no huge impact on our gameplay or our standard spec tree choices (except for making Deathbringer even better than it previously was).